ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The Kurdish-led administration of northeast Syria (Rojava) has handed 30 children of Islamic State (ISIS)-linked parents over to Russian authorities, a senior Rojava official announced on Thursday – marking the fourth repatriation of its kind by Moscow in as many months.
News of the handover of the children aged between 2 and 14 to Russian authorities was made at a press conference by Abdulkarim Omar, co-chair of foreign relations for the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES).
“The children are innocent... we believe the place of these children is not in the camps. They should live somewhere peaceful," Omar said.
If children are left in northeast Syrian detention camps, "a radical and new generation of terrorists will rise, they will be worse than the current ISIS and they will be brainwashed," he added.
In a statement released Friday, the Russian presidency-affiliated Commissioner for the Rights of the Child said that 31 children aged between 2 and 16 had been repatriated.
“We will work until we find the last child in these territories. Only great efforts allow us to find the children who are so awaited by their relatives at home,” commissioner Anna Kuznetsova was quoted as saying in the statement.
Approximately 70,000 people live in the northeast Syrian camps of al-Hol and Roj, most of whom are women and children who either fled or were rounded up as the Islamic State (ISIS) began to lose ground in the country from 2017 onwards. Around 13,000 of those held at the camps are non-Iraqi foreigners.
There are no exact figures on the number of Russian children currently in Iraq and Syria, but Kheda Saratova, a repatriation activist and advisor to Chechen leader Ramazan Kadyrov estimated in February 2019 that there could be as many as 1,400.
Human rights groups have deplored the "filthy and often inhuman and life-threatening conditions" found in the camps. Rojava's authorities have implored governments worldwide to repatriate their nationals, especially children, from al-Hol and Roj, but few countries have heeded the call.
If children are left in the camps, "a radical and new generation of terrorists will rise, they will be worse than the current ISIS and they will be brainwashed," Omar said at Thursday's press conference.
Thursday's handover of Russian children followed a meeting between Syrian First Lady Asma al-Assad and children's rights commissioner Kuznetsova in Damascus earlier on Thursday. Discussion centered on "joint Syrian and Russian efforts to get Russian children out of the al-Hol and Roj camps," Syrian state media reported.
Russia's repatriation of children from Syria ground to a halt when the coronavirus outbreak began to take international hold. They resumed in August, when 26 children were repatriated, according to Russian state media outlet TASS. Fifteen children were repatriated from Syria in September, and 27 more were taken back to Russia in October.
Updated at 8:55 pm on November 13, 2020
