BREITBART| Published December 25, 2024
Hundreds of Christians marched through the streets of Damascus on Tuesday to protest the burning of a Christmas tree in a village in central Syria.
Christians have been highly skeptical of promises to protect all religious minorities made by the Islamist rebel leaders who overthrew dictator Bashar Assad.
The protests were sparked by a social media video of hooded men setting fire to a Christmas tree in the Christian town of Suqaylabiyah, located near Hama in central Syria.
The Islamist group that led the drive to overthrow dictator Bashar Assad earlier this month, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), told Suquaylabiyah residents the fighters who burned the Christmas tree were “not Syrians.”
HTS representatives said the vandals would be caught and punished, and the Christmas tree would be restored. The BBC cited reports that the HTS emissary held up a cross to demonstrate respect for residents of the Christian town.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported the vandals were indeed foreigners, members of a minor Islamist rebel group called Ansar al-Tawhid. The group was formed in 2018 from the remnants of an ISIS-aligned group called Jund al-Aqsa that fought with HTS, itself the rebranded Syrian franchise of the Islamic State’s rivals in al-Qaeda.
HTS ultimately defeated and absorbed Ansar al-Tawhid into its ranks. During its brief years as an independent entity, the ideology of Ansar al-Tawhid leaned toward al-Qaeda, and the group was often accused of being an al-Qaeda proxy.
Local Syrian media claimed the hooded men who set fire to the Christmas tree were Uzbek militants recruited into Ansar al-Tawhid’s ranks.
Syrian Christians did not trust the reassurances from HTS, so they marched in Damascus early Tuesday to demand protection and equal rights from the new regime.
“If we’re not allowed to live our Christian faith in our country, as we used to, then we don’t belong here anymore,” one of the demonstrators told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
READ FULL ARTICLE
SOURCE: www.breitbart.com
RELATED: Hundreds of Syrian Christians protest burning of Christmas tree
Video clips posted on social media of a public Christmas tree being burned in a Christian majority town near Hama in central Syria sparked a protest in Damascus early Tuesday. Syria’s victorious Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group said the tree was burned by foreign fighters from another group and promised to restore the decoration.
FRANCE24 | Published December 25, 2024
Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets in Christian areas of Damascus early Tuesday to protest the burning of a Christmas tree near Hama in central Syria, AFP journalists witnessed.
“We demand the rights of Christians,” protesters chanted as they marched through the Syrian capital towards the headquarters of the Orthodox Patriarchate in the Bab Sharqi neighbourhood.
The protests come a little more than two weeks after an armed coalition led by Islamists toppled the government of Bashar al-Assad, who had cast himself as a protector of minorities in the Sunni-majority country.
A demonstrator who gave his name as Georges told AFP he was protesting “injustice against Christians”.
“If we’re not allowed to live our Christian faith in our country, as we used to, then we don’t belong here anymore,” he said.
The protests erupted after a video spread on social media showing hooded fighters setting fire to a Christmas tree in the Christian-majority town of Suqaylabiyah, near Hama.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the fighters were foreigners from the Islamist group Ansar al-Tawhid.
READ FULL ARTICLE
SOURCE: www.france24.com
Be the first to comment