Ambassador Aalla .. The Turkish regime cut off drinking water to Hasakah is a war crime and aims to displace Syrian citizens in line with its expansionist and colonial goals.

Geneva - Sana

The permanent representative of Syria to the United Nations office and other international organizations in Geneva, Ambassador Husam al-Din Ala, confirmed that the Turkish occupation forces and their mercenaries to cut drinking water from Hasakah and its surrounding areas constitute a war crime and a violation of the provisions of international human rights law and aims to displace Syrian citizens in line with the objectives of this The system is expansive and colonial.

This came in a letter to the High Commissioner for Human Rights and verbal notes to the missions of member states in Geneva and the Special Rapporteur on the right to safe drinking water and sanitation services about developments related to the Turkish regime forces and its mercenaries stopping the operation of the Alouk water pumping station.

Ambassador Aalla said: With reference to the previous memorandum No. 205 dated 11/10/2020, which concerns the conditions of more than a million Syrian citizens suffering from a shortage of potable water as a result of the suspension of the Alouk pumping station, the Turkish occupation forces once again cut off the water supply to the station, which represents the main source. To supply more than one million people in Hasaka city and neighboring residential areas with drinking water since the 30th of last November.

Ambassador Aalla pointed out that the city of Hasaka continues to suffer from the repeated cutting of drinking water, as it has witnessed so far 17 interruptions in water supply since the ninth of October of last year, after the Turkish occupation forces occupied the city of Ras al-Ain in the northwestern countryside of Hasaka, where the Alouk station is located.

Ala stressed that this measure comes within the framework of the systematic practices of the Turkish regime that aim to displace Syrian citizens from the areas it occupies to impose demographic changes in line with its expansionist and colonial objectives regardless of the humanitarian needs of the residents of those areas, which is a violation of the provisions of international human rights law that guarantee the right of all A person has access to safe drinking water as a basic right that all countries must accept, in addition to the right to life and the right to health, especially in light of the challenges associated with the "Covid 19" pandemic, which include intensifying efforts and procedures to secure public health services.

The permanent representative of Syria to the United Nations office and other international organizations in Geneva stated that the Turkish occupation forces impose severe restrictions on people in the region and deprive them of their livelihood, adding that moreover, these practices do not comply with the obligations related to avoiding any measures that may lead to an arbitrary suspension of water supplies. Or those that pollute the water or deny its use as a means to achieve political, military and economic goals, and this is what the Turkish regime does, either directly or through terrorist organizations associated with it.

Ala pointed out that “cutting water to more than a million people is a flagrant violation of the principles of protecting civilian infrastructure and ensuring the continuity of its work,” stressing that “this behavior is a war crime added to the crimes of the Turkish regime by aggression on Syrian territory and the occupation of parts of it.”

Ala called on the Special Rapporteur on the right to safe drinking water and sanitation services to continue monitoring these recurrent hostilities carried out by the Turkish occupation forces against the Syrian people and to shed light on their catastrophic consequences, and to call on this system to respect the basic rules of international law and to re-pump water from Alouk and El Kef station. For the recurrence of such crimes.

The Turkish occupation forces in the countryside of the occupied city of Ras al-Ain deliberately cut off the water of the Alouk project, threatening the lives of about one million citizens who live in the city of Hasaka and its surroundings and the western countryside of the governorate.