Attack on Displaced Kurdish Families While Attempting to Return to Tal Abyad, North of Raqqa Around 100 Kurdish families, who were forcibly displaced from the city of Tal Abyad, north of Raqqa, following the Turkish invasion in 2019, were attacked by armed men while attempting to return to their city, homes, and properties. The attack took place in the presence of the Internal Security Forces affiliated with the Sharaa authority, without them intervening to prevent the attack or protect the displaced families. The attack resulted in the destruction and burning of a number of vehicles belonging to the displaced families, in addition to the burning and destruction of property belonging to the displaced Kurdish families. The attack comes amid the continued denial of thousands of displaced people of their right to return to their areas, raising serious questions about the protection of displaced people’s rights and property, as well as the role of the security forces responsible for protecting civilians in Tal Abyad, north of Raqqa. @UN @EUinArabic @USAbilAraby

ISIS remnants are burning the property of displaced Kurds in Tal Abyad / Girê Spî. This is the mindset of treating land and property as spoils, seeking to turn occupation into a fait accompli, displacement into a means of seizure, and intimidation into a tool to silence the rightful owners of the land. But land is not spoils of war, and the property of displaced people is not a reward for those who seized it behind the tanks of the occupying forces. The forced absence of its rightful owners grants no one the right to confiscate or dispose of their property. These attacks are not separate from the occupation of Tal Abyad and Sere Kaniye in 2019 and the displacement of their Kurdish inhabitants. Rather, they represent a continuation of a course of action aimed at entrenching a reality imposed by terrorism and occupation at the expense of the rightful owners of the land and their rights. Responsibility does not rest solely with those carrying out these acts of intimidation; it also requires holding accountable the parties that support or turn a blind eye to them, and investigating the role of everyone contributing to the entrenchment of this reality.