Speaking to Rudaw on Tuesday, Katrin Langensiepen from Germany’s Green Party urged European leaders to speak out against alleged human rights abuses under Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa after attacks by the Syrian military and allied armed groups against Kurdish forces in Aleppo.
“The silence regarding this unelected leader, Jolani, or Sharaa as he calls himself, is shameful. We are now repeating the same mistakes we previously made with Assad,” Langensiepen said.
Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the nom de guerre of Sharaa, who led the extremist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militia that overthrew Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024. Assad’s rule was marked by widespread and systematic human rights violations and war crimes. The US and EU lifted their terrorist designation on HTS after it came to power.
Under Sharaa, clashes in Druze-majority Suwayda province killed nearly hundreds of people, while violence in Alawite-majority coastal regions left even more dead last year, with Syrian government and allied forces blamed for many civilian deaths.
Langensiepen’s remarks came after heavy clashes last week between the Syrian Arab Army, backed by armed factions, and the Kurdish Internal Security Forces (Asayish) in Aleppo’s Kurdish-majority neighborhoods that killed dozens of civilians and displaced around 150,000 people.
While an internationally-mediated ceasefire ended fighting on Sunday, Kurdish forces in recent days have come under attack as the Syrian military expands operations to eastern Aleppo.
Videos circulated online showed Damascus-affiliated militants arresting and harassing Kurdish residents, while social media users shared images of missing relatives and alleged abuse of Kurds, including children.
Langensiepen said Europe has failed to adequately respond to attacks on minorities in Syria.
“We saw the attacks on Christians, Alawites, and Druze in July, and now the Kurds,” she said.
New funding for Damascus amid attacks
She condemned the provision of “more than 600 million euros to this current government without any criticism during these massacres,” and described European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s silence as “shameful.”
As the Syrian Arab Army clashed with Kurdish forces in Aleppo, von der Leyen met with Sharaa in Damascus and announced 620 million euros through 2027 to support humanitarian aid and rebuild state institutions.
Langensiepen warned against normalizing relations with Damascus.
“It must be clear that this new leader is unelected,” she said. “We do not have a parliamentary system [in Syria], and we do not have a trustworthy relationship with Syria,” she said in reference to reports Sharaa will visit Berlin later this month to discuss Syrian refugees returning to the country.
Germany hosts 1 million Syrian refugees. Many are minorities who fled violence and repression by extremist groups and Assad’s regime.
EU and German officials have said that assistance is conditional on Syria protecting ethnic and religious groups, preventing violence and ensuring minorities are represented in a democratic political system.
On Friday, Germany’s Left Party co-chair Jan van Aken also claimed Berlin and the EU are failing to clearly condemn attacks by Damascus-affiliated forces in Aleppo.
They instead “act as if the new Syrian government is great and there is peace in Syria,” in order to “deport many people,” he said.
To hold talks about returning refugees to Syria, “We need to negotiate with a murderous terrorist,” Langensiepen said in reference to Jolani, claiming “is not an EU partner.”
She called for full transparency over EU funds sent to Damascus.
German-based Kurdish activist Duzen Tekkal, founder of the Hawar Help human rights organization, echoed the criticism, saying that “Today someone like Jolani uses the same methods as [Islamic State] ISIS against Kurds and the world is silent about this - truly this is unforgivable.”
Another German-based human rights activist, Dani Elasepehri, highlighted what she described as a broader pattern of repression.
“The international community almost never looks at the minorities,” she said, including “massacres against the Alawite community in Syria, the Druze community in Syria and attacks, brutal attacks on the Kurdish community in Syria.”
Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN secretary-general, told Rudaw on Tuesday that the United Nations is deeply concerned over the desecration of the body of a Kurdish female fighter by Damascus-affiliated forces in Aleppo.
He called for accountability for the incident and urged Damascus and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to return to negotiations as the Syrian military expanded its operations against the SDF on Tuesday.
Alla Shally contributed to this article from Germany.