The details of the journey of the Syrian fear displaced between the greed of smugglers and their gambling and the torture of gendarmes and their bullets

More that 230 citizens were killed after being shot by Jandarma…tens of missing people and thousands were brought back and humiliated and tortured… Smugglings and briberies to Turkish officers and members

Between being displaced in your country and a refugee in neighboring ones, a bullet might miss you, or a guard may not see you, this is the distance between the Syrian territory and the Turkish one, and the possibilities may be bit more, a murder, a wounded, a displaced, a missing, an abdicated, a dead body in a river or in the forests, and in the headlines you are a victim of a smuggler, or a body found dead in unknown circumstances, as the families stay in the open air in front of the crossing office at Bab-Hawa official crossing, and in parks and in front of the nearby hospital, to summarize the whole scene, the scene of the son of Idlib province and many of those who displaced to it as a result of the shelling or in applying “reconciliations” that took place in their areas, especially in Homs and Rif Dimashq provinces and the outskirts of the capital Damascus, of who left their houses, cities, towns and villages, and others left due to the hostilities between the parties of fighting in their residence areas, while those who risk their lives are seeking to reach a place where they can live safely away from the shelling, raids and clashes.

At the end of 2014 and with the beginning of 2015, the border was closed, and the crossing was tightened on those who want to cross to Turkey, and the increase of tighten on the border, started by bringing the arrivals back until they are killed, passing by beating, indignity, torturing, harassment, and other acts, that violated all the standards of human rights, and turned the Syrian citizen who escapes from death, into just a corpse or a man whose dignity is defamed, under the pretext of “attempting to enter the neighboring country illegally”, while the border guards forgot that the border was closed against the refugees to “prevent the flux of more foreign fighters to the Syrian territory”, such matter prompted Turkey to build a border wall separates between it and the Syrian territory, that was invaded by Turkey, which prompted the citizens to take long dangerous ways through valleys, hills and mountains to reach the Turkish interior, and their journey became as if they are escaping from death to another one of another kind while the perpetrator is almost the same.

The death on the border, did not stop depending only on paying the large sums of money from the families and citizens leaving to Turkey, for the smugglers, but it also reached that the smugglers take the money of those who are transported to Turkey sometimes it reached the extent of killing and throwing bodies in distant places, accompanied by silence of the victims of the smuggling, of who were described by civilians to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights as they are “beneficiaries of the smuggling”, while local and medical sources confirmed to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that incidents of killing and injury take place almost daily against citizens who tried to enter the Turkish territory illegally, while the most important place for smuggling became the area opposite Al-Dorriyeh border village in Idlib countryside, where the smuggling concentrated, due to the presence of a wide gap in the border wall, stretched to hundreds of meters opposite the border villages between Salhab and Zanbaqi, which the Turkish forces have not completed to build, but it is guarded by Turkish troops, which forced the smugglers, to dig tunnels under the wall, or to use a ladder to climb, and cut the barbed wire, and it is usual to be reported about falling citizens off the wall or being injured, in which the Turkish border guards are working through their guarding posts and points that are spread on the border with Idlib, on monitoring and targeting every movement on the border, until it reached that they kill citizens in their land in Idlib countryside, during working in these lands that adjacent the border, under the pretext of “the suspicion of trying to cross the border”, and the last incident of this kind was the killing of a child and the injury of a member of his family while they were picking olives in the northern countryside of Idlib as well as opining fire by the Turkish border guards on vehicles, caused injuries among those who are traveling in these vehicles near Al-Dorriyeh village, while the Turkish Jandarma killed a woman and shot paramedics of the Civil Defense team, and the body was left in the forest for more than three days until families and rescuers could pull it out, while tens were lost, and thousands were sent back to Syria during the past years after hundreds of them were tortured, beaten and insulted.

The Syrian – Turkish border witnesses a daily scene of families stay in the open air, in weather and health conditions that are almost the worst, to the extent that the vicinity of the place where the citizens who want to leave to Turkey gather, turned into a landfill that causes many diseases, while some of them turned to live in houses near the Syrian – Turkish border, in an attempt to get a chance to cross the border, and security sources told the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that they had received several complaints from citizens complaining that they were harassed, robbed and cheated, while they were trying to escape to Turkey, and some cases against the smugglers and those who working with them were documented, while several cases were also documented against the Turkish border guards, and one of the sources of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitored at the end of March 2017, and the beginning of April 2017, a harassment by members of the border guards, against a Syrian citizen woman, that prompted the young men who were existed to fight against the members of the border guards, in which the later took them to the prison where they were insulted and beaten hard, while one of the cases was documented against a smuggler who was directly accused of robbing a girl during the attempt to smuggle her into Turkey, in which he was taken to a prison of the security factions in Idlib, then he was released after he paid a fine and returned the stolen objects.

After the repeated cases of killing and disappearances of citizens while during their attempts to leave to Turkey, the crossing office of Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham forced the smuggler to deduct a receipt and pay a sum of 25 dollars in Al-Dorriyeh border center of Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham, while the center also checks the identities of those who leave to Turkey, and arrests those who are wanted by Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham who are wanted and accused in a crime or a misdemeanor and so on, in addition to arresting dissidents from the regime forces and so on, in which the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documented in August 2017, the arrest of a dissident from the regime forces in Jisr Al-Shughur countryside and he was taken to Harem Prison, in which several sources confirmed to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that the smuggling is not carried out randomly, but it is carried out at an organized way, as it is an organized system, which is composed of Syrian smugglers operating inside Syria, and Syrian citizens in the Turkish side of the border, and some talked about it has Turkish soldiers and officers that take part in the smuggling, and facilitating it, after dealing with the smugglers to pay a proportion of the operation to their personal account, and the sources accused the Turkish officers and members that they meant to target the fugitives on the border randomly, to force those who want to resort to Turkey, to follow smugglers, so that they can get their proportions, and the sources said that “there are Turkish officers in the observatories opposite Kawargho and Andnaniyeh villages, who receive bribes, in return for allowing a certain number of people of who wish to enter Turkey, and this type of smuggling is the safest and easiest, but most of them can not pay the high sums, so they have to choose to sneak at night and pay less money”, and the sources described this operation that “it like a military operation, as the discovery of any movement can end the lives of those who were smuggled to Turkish territory by the Turkish border guards who send police dogs to catch them”, where these citizens are pushed to receive insults and swearwords by the smugglers due to the inability of some to complete the path in the darkness and between the mountains, also if they are arrested, they will be beaten hard, which results in serious fractures and injuries, and also if the smuggler is detected, he will be exposed to harder punishment, which sometimes results in permanent disabilities, and all of the group will be sent back to the Syrian territory through border ports, and all of the killing processes  are carried out on the border line, and persons are rarely killed inside Turkey as a result of infiltrating into the Turkish territory by smuggling.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has documented since the Syrian revolution started in March 2011, and until today the 31st of October 2017, the death of 324 at least, including 59 child and 31 citizen women, the number of the casualties documented by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights since the start of the Syrian revolution until the 12th of September 2017, all of them were killed in the continued targeting by the Turkish border guards for the Syrian citizens who escaped from the military operation in their areas towards places in which they can find a safe haven that keeps them away of the death that is following them in their country Syria, in order for their children to have a better life and their fate doesn’t end up to be like the fate of more than 18500 children killed since the start of the Syrian revolution, or the fate of tens of thousands of other children who had permanent disabilities, or the fate of thousands of children who were dragged into the military operation and turned into fighters and bombers, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights published at the end of July 2017, that The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights received in the past month and weeks several videos shows the victims of the Turkish border guards, of who were killed while they were trying to find a safe haven in Turkey, while a lot of the videos showed the Turkish border guards assaulting Syrian citizens after being arrested during their attempts to cross the border line, where members of the Turkish border guards beat and insult them, the last video SOHR has received was on Sunday the 30th of July 2017, and the video showed assault by hands and by a whip on several arrested young men, the video showed the young men being beaten brutally and insulted intentionally while being asked: “what do you have in Turkey to come to it? And are you smugglers?! Are you going to come to Turkey again?!”, then one of the members called his friend and commanded him to beat one of the arrested young men, and told the member who was recording the video: send me the video so I can publish it on WhatsApp, then he threatened them in case they returned to Turkey, saying: “If you are afraid of beaten why did you come to Turkey, do you want us to treat you good?!”