A group of local Kurds are planning a rally Wednesday at the Massachusetts State House in hopes of pushing lawmakers to help stop what looks like an imminent invasion by Turkey into Northeastern Syria.
The group, organized by the Kurdish Students Association at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and the New England Kurdish Association, wants to awareness of the local Kurdish community and dangers to those in Syria.
There are an estimated 1,500 Kurds in New England, about a third of them in Massachusetts.
“We are all in fear and we are all devastated,’’ said Soma Syan, a student at UMass, Boston and the founder of the Kurdish Students Association. “The worst part is there's nothing, really, we can do unless Congress decides to really, really, really push for sanctions against Turkey.’’
Syan, 23, was born in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. She says her family was relocated by the U.S. government in 1996 because one of them had aided the Americans in the fight against Saddam Hussein and their safety was at risk.
Syan lives in a close-knit community of Kurds, most of whom are from Iraq, in the Harbor Point neighborhood of Dorchester. Other Kurds from Syria and Turkey live in Worcester and Rhode Island, she said. While they don’t all speak the same dialect, she said, they share the same culture, foods and celebrations.
Now, their focus is on their native land. “There’s already been genocide on Kurdish people for years and years,’’ she said. “This is going to be extreme genocide.”
Sardar Jajan, a co-founder of the New England Kurdish Association, hopes to push others to call lawmakers to ask them to try to stop the invasion. He said he’s communicated with family in Syria who are in fear for their lives.
“It’s going to be a bloodiest, bloodiest war,’’ said Jajan, a 53-year-old civil engineer and naturalized U.S. citizen. “We want to bring attention to the American people that it is everybody’s responsibility.”
