Illustrative image. (Syrian Arab News Agency)
The spiritual leader of the Druze religious minority in Syria Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri on May 1 condemned what he called a “genocidal campaign” against his people, after two days of deadly sectarian-fueled clashes with forces of the country’s Islamist-led interim government.
In a statement, Hijri described the violence in Jaramana and Sahnaya, two Druze-majority towns near Damascus, as an “unjustifiable genocidal campaign” and urged immediate intervention by “international forces to maintain peace and prevent the continuation of these crimes.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the clashes claimed the lives of 17 people in Jaramana on April 28 and 22 people in Sahnaya on April 29 and 30.
Separately on April 30, 15 Druze fighters were killed in an ambush near Damascus, according to the London-based monitoring group.
Israel intervened in support of Druze fighters in Sahnaya, citing historic relations with its own Druze community, launching a few strikes. Still, Sahnaya fell into the hands of government forces who amassed near the town and nearby Jaramana after an audio clip of a Druze man insulting the Muslim Prophet Mohamad surfaced online earlier in the week.
The government alleged that an agreement was reached with Druze leaders in Damascus, but reports of mass arrests, beatings and summary executions emerged from Sahnaya.
Hijri said that he no longer trusts “an entity pretending to be a government… because the government does not kill its people through its extremist militias… and then claim they were unruly elements after the massacres”.
“The request for international protection is a legitimate right for people who have been wiped out by massacres. Therefore, we ask the international community, with all its organizations, bodies and institutions, not to continue this disregard and this blackout of all the massacres and horrors that are happening to us and our people. This systematic mass killing is clear, exposed and documented, and does not require committees like those that were formed for the crimes committed in the coast. Rather, it is necessary and immediate for international forces to intervene to maintain peace, to prevent the continuation of these crimes and to stop them immediately,” the Druze leader said, referring to a government crackdown on the coast that claimed the lives of more than 1,600 civilians from the Alawite religious minority last March.
“We launch this urgent appeal to expedite the protection of innocent, defenseless people. We are not comfortable with what happened to our people on the Syrian coast of crimes of genocide that have not received their due from the international community and international justice, and have not been stopped despite the many cries for help from our people. We are living the same experience and we ask for rapid and direct international aid,” he added.
Following the deadly crackdown on the coast, Sheikh Ghazal Ghazal, head of the Supreme Alawite Islamic Council in Syria and Diaspora, called for international protection for all minorities in Syria.
In a statement on April 30, Syria’s foreign ministry vowed to “protect all components” of society, including the Druze, and expressed its rejection of “foreign interference”.
The recent clashes near Damascus have deepened fears among minorities in Syria, who appear to have lost all trust in the government.
While the international community does not appear to be inclined to take any real action against the Syrian government as for now, this could change in the near future if the situation continues to deteriorate in the country. The only solution for the government is to move away from Islamism, and adopt a real inclusive approach as soon as possible.
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does the writer of this article really believe the very last paragraph, once a terrorist always a terrorist.
so they would hire a pedophile to work in a kindergarten? a mass murderer has been released from prison and is now working as a taxi driver, while new dead women lie in garbage cans. you’re like a bishop telling a pedophile priest: “you’re transferred now! and in a week, the altar boys will be naked in the new rectory. do you know the story of the frog and the scorpion?
this actually happened, and thousands of children were raped as a result.
and geir pedersen should be fired for doing nothing to protect religious minorities in syria.
no shit, talk about delusional.
jolani and his genocidal terrorist government want to slaughter all alawites, druze, and kurds. what they’re doing to minority women is called sexual genocide. i hope the idf sends jolani and his mafia to eternal hunting grounds. h ttp s://www .ze rohedge.co m/ge op olitical/global-sile nce-amid-hts-allies-take-ala wite-wom en-sex-slave s-syria
only the milosevic regime came up with something similar. i hope ghassan alian annexes the druze into greater israel.
these people are completely deranged psychopaths and would slaughter their own mother for insulting allah.
jolani is a completely insane psychopath and enjoys killing. if he weren’t insane, baghdadi wouldn’t have made him his underboss.
jolani is a crazy psychopathic madman, something on the level of slobodan milošević.
ako sa zdá tak situácia v sýrii sa začína zamotávať!!! to je dobrá správa pre všetkých čo túžia po miery. svetu mier!!!
druze supported this crminal to take over syria and remove assad and now this same druze are crying for hrlp . its pay back time this crminal isil will not stop and will soon attack suwada.
thanks to russia!
all those groups that were unhappy with assad? where are they now and how do they like their new, inclusive gov? aoun needs to take note, lebanon is next…especially now that they’ve neutered hezbollah, the only ones who kept israel, terrorists and erdo out. once they start on lebanon, will aoun flee to the west and enjoy sunning on the beach in miami…or stand and fight for his country? maybe just become another abbas, a traitor in charge taking shekels.
all those who died in beirut, from pagers and non-stop bombing, all died for nothing now. what a sad turn of events. yes, they suffered mightily, but has that stopped? no, and it isn’t going to. after all the crying about those outposts, they’re still there and going no where. so much for u.s. guarantees, huh? only a fool believes anything from the u.s. now they’ve disarmed and have no protection at all. aoun has destroyed lebanon, they just haven’t realized it yet.
calling for an inclusive approach from islamists would be funny, if it weren’t tragic.
really the only “solution” seems to be balkanization under foreign protection/spheres of influence. without a strongman figure like assad, there’s nothing to hold all those different people together.
israeli “intervention” is bombing an empty place so they don’t hurt any of their erdoganist hts terrorist minions. it is quite tragic how erdoganists and their zionist brethren are dividing and massacring people of the levant.
netanyahu should authorize ghassan alian to bomb and attacking the hts regime at his own discretion.
katz should have given me ghassan alian as head of operations in syria and granted him the right to make independent decisions.