Syrian patriarchs beg government to stop massacres

Church primates in Syria condemned “massacres targeting innocent civilians” and prayed for peace after violent unrest in coastal towns last week.

In a statement released on 8 March, three Patriarchs of Antioch appealed for an end to the attacks, urging political leaders to end the violence and “preserve national unity”. They called for “the swift creation of conditions conducive to achieving national reconciliation among the Syrian people”.

The statement was signed by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch John X, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Youssef I Absi and the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Mar Ignatius Aphrem II.

They emphasised national reconciliation following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December, urging that the transitional government should establish “the foundation for a society based on equal citizenship and genuine partnership, free from the logic of vengeance and exclusion”.

In a homily the next day, Patriarch John appealed to Syria’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa to put a stop to the massacres, warning that the victims of the retaliatory attacks were innocent civilians, including women and children.

“The targeted areas have primarily been those inhabited by Alawites and Christians, and many innocent Christian civilians have also lost their lives,” he emphasised. Alawites, a Shia Muslim sect to which the Assad family belonged, make up 10 per cent of the Syrian population.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based human rights organisation, reported that more than 800 civilians have been killed in retaliation since 6 March, reportedly by the new regime’s security forces, in the coastal towns of western Syria and the Latakian mountains. This followed an attack by forces loyal to Assad on government personnel, who had themselves been accused of fomenting violence in recent weeks.

In his Angelus address published on Sunday, Pope Francis expressed his concerns about the violence in Syria, urging “full respect for all ethnic and religious components of society, especially civilians”.

Bishop Hanna Jallouf OFM, the apostolic vicar of Aleppo and head of the Latin Church in Syria, sent a statement to Aid to the Church in Need on 9 March appealing to the authorities “quickly to put an end to these attacks, which are inconsistent with all human, moral and religious values”. He emphasised the need “to hold all those involved accountable without hesitation”.

An ACN source reported that civilian casualties included young people, women, university doctors and pharmacists. “Some families with their children were killed in cold blood,” he said. Christians were among the deceased, including “a father and son from an Evangelical church in Latakia who were stopped in their car and killed, as well as the father of a priest in Baniyas”.

Speaking on Sunday, Sharaa said his regime would punish anyone involved in harming civilians. “Today, as we stand at this critical moment, we find ourselves facing a new danger – attempts by remnants of the former regime and their foreign backers to incite new strife and drag our country into a civil war, aiming to divide it and destroy its unity and stability,” he said.

Christians of all denominations in Syria have faced uncertainty since the fall of the Assad regime, which was widely perceived as their protector against the Sunni Muslim majority. Sharaa led a rebel coalition that included Islamist groups, though he has publicly renounced extremism.

Patriarch John has faced pressure to resign since December amid accusations of collaborating with the Assad regime and with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who often emphasised his country’s role as a guardian of Christian communities in the Middle East, particularly in Syria.

Since the start of the civil war in 2011, the number of Christians in Syria has fallen from approximately 1 million to 300,000. The seven-member committee appointed by Sharaa to prepare a national dialogue conference as part of the drafting of a new constitution includes Hind Kabawat, a Catholic academic, but she is its only representative of any minority.

Following the conference at the end of February, she said it had shown “that Syria is not a single thing: Christians, Muslims, every ethnic group must be part of the process”.

“I think the government is trying to do its best in a very difficult situation,” she told Asia News. “Syria is for all Syrians. Of course, those who have blood on their hands and committed crimes must not be involved in political life or the reconstruction process. They cannot be part of the new administration.”

She said any future constitution “must establish the principle of equality” for all religions and ethnicities, and for women. “We must not think about whether we are a secular state or a country that is inspired by elements of religion, the important thing is that it is a civil state with equality among its various constituents.”

However, in a letter published by Asia News following last week’s violence, the parish priest of Aleppo said “no concrete actions have been taken” to establish a representative transitional government, which had been promised by 1 March.

Fr Bahjat Karakach OFM said Syrians “are waiting for a clear word from their authorities, a word that explains what they have in mind”.

“Once again, Syrians are on the brink of civil war,” he said, warning that the new regime’s failure “to guarantee public and fair trials for war criminals” had “given free rein to those who want to take justice into their own hands”, driving the violence that culminated in last week’s massacres.