Syria’s interim government has promised to protect all its citizens, not just the majority population of Sunni Muslims. The country’s Justice Minister, Mazhar al-Wais, says there will be public trials for those accused of involvement in large scale sectarian violence earlier this year.<\/p>\n
More than 1,400 people were killed in March when government forces and allied groups were accused of carrying out summary executions, after an attack by Assad loyalists. Most of the victims were Alawite civilians.<\/p>\n
About 2,000 people – combatants and civilians \u2014 were killed in July in another outbreak of sectarian violence. Here too government forces were accused of executions. Most of the dead were from the Druze minority.<\/p>\n
The scale of the recent killings is hard to assess. The attacks are usually isolated and often shrouded in silence. Many families are afraid to talk. <\/p>\n
By cross checking information from local media reports, contacts on the ground and human rights groups, we estimate that at least 40 Alawites were killed in Homs in separate attacks between 5 June and 31 October. The dead included a student, a farmer, a taxi driver, a teacher killed in a grenade attack on a school bus, and another shot dead in front of her class.<\/p>\n
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) says there are escalating incidents of murder and kidnapping in Homs province, with Alawite-majority areas the most affected. Most attacks are acts of revenge, it says, against former members of the regime, or those suspected of collaborating.<\/p>\n
Alawites account for about 10% of Syria’s population, but under Assad \u2013 the father and the son \u2013 they filled many roles in the military, security and intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n
Whether they supported the regime or not – and not all of them did \u2013 Alawites are now at risk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Syria’s interim government has promised to protect all its citizens, not just the majority population of Sunni Muslims.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-254448","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}