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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