DAMASCUS, 17 August 2005 — Syrian police arrested about 35 Syrian Kurds in a northern town near Aleppo after they assaulted policemen dispersing members of a banned separatist faction, a rights activist said yesterday. Ammar Qurabi of the Arab Organization of Human Rights in Syria (AOHRS) said a crowd rioted on Monday after police prevented them from holding a celebration to mark the 25th anniversary of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

“About 35 people were arrested after hurling stones at the police and damaging property and vehicles in Ain Al-Arab,” Qurabi told Reuters. “The police did not use firearms, but they used tear gas after the violence started.” Qurabi said the violence subsided after the arrests. “AOHRS condemns the use of violence by any entity ... emphasizes the importance of national unity and urges self-restraint,” his rights group said in a statement.

In June, Syria sentenced three members of the PKK to jail after convicting them of seeking secession. Damascus banned the PKK after a standoff with Turkey over the group’s activities in 1998. Syria and Turkey came to the brink of military confrontation before Damascus met a Turkish request to expel PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. Ankara had repeatedly complained that Syria was backing PKK rebels fighting in southeast Turkey.

The two neighbors have improved ties in recent years. Both worry that Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq could strengthen separatist aspirations among their own Kurdish minorities. Several banned Kurdish political groups in Syria, which has an estimated two million Kurds, demand the right to teach their language and citizenship for about 200,000 stateless Kurds.

Meanwhile, Lebanon’s Parliament lifted a 3-year ban on an anti-Syrian television station yesterday, in the latest reversal of decisions taken during Syria’s tutelage over its smaller neighbor. An overwhelming majority of the 128-member assembly voted to amend a law to allow the Christian-owned MTV and its sister Mount Lebanon radio station back on the air.

“MTV’s comeback is part of Lebanon’s return to freedom,” Gabriel Murr, the station’s owner, told Lebanon’s LBC television. Security forces shut down MTV in 2002 after a court ruled it had broken broadcast laws with its coverage of an election seen at the time as a referendum on Syria’s domination of Lebanon.

But mass protests in Beirut after the Feb. 14 killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri forced Damascus to bow to world pressure and eventually withdraw its 14,000 troops about two months later.

General elections in May and June swept an anti-Syrian majority into Parliament for the first time since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war. That assembly has since pardoned a Christian warlord jailed since 1994 and freed Islamists suspected of involvement in an uprising in 2000.

MTV, which broadcasts a mixture of programs, was also charged in August 2002 with slandering pro-Syrian Lebanese President Emile Lahoud and the Lebanese army.

Its closure provoked an outcry in a country widely considered as a bastion of press freedom in the Arab world. Murr said it could take up to several months to bring the MTV back on air, but that the radio station would resume its broadcast within weeks.

The Sept. 5, 2002, closure of MTV and its sister radio station was widely condemned as a violation of freedom of opinion in the country.

It was closed for violating an election law prohibiting propaganda during a fiercely contested by-election that became a showdown between the pro-Syrian government and the anti-Syrian opposition.