Since reports of violence against Syria’s Alawite and Christian minorities emerged earlier this week, scores of Syrians have been taking to social media to downplay and even completely deny the atrocities.
This initially led to confusion amongst non-Syrians, before hundreds of videos of field executions began circulating online and confirmed that these massacres by militants belonging to Syria’s new Islamist government were indeed taking place.
While there is currently no uncertainty that these massacres occurred – with an investigation by London Insider on Saturday revealing that at least 2,400 civilians had been executed at point-blank range – it remains important to reveal why some Syrians were desperately trying to downplay the violence against Alawites and Christians.
The answer is centred around the fact that Syria’s new government, headed by former ISIS and al-Qaeda leader President Ahmed al-Sharaa, is currently in the process of whitewashing its terrorist past as it seeks to build ties with the West and is lobbying for the removal of economic sanctions.
The horrific massacres that took place in Syria’s coast recently served as a stark reminder of President al-Sharaa’s terrorist past, and of the fact that the Islamist forces which toppled Bashar al-Assad were formerly part of the al-Qaeda network.
In fact, in the last three days, hundreds of videos have been posted by Sunni Syrians (including numerous Syrian refugees living in Europe) calling on HTS and other Islamist militants to continue murdering Alawite and Christian civilians, while demanding that they stop recording their crimes and sharing them online to prevent international outrage.
In another instance, a Syrian refugee living in the UK called Feras Alsafadi hailed the executions on social media before deleting his posts after facing backlash.
Furthermore, in numerous videos posted by HTS over the last few days, the cameraman can be heard being told to stop recording the atrocities.
This explains why, at the same time, some Sunni Syrians were desperately denying that these massacres were taking place or were justifying the atrocities by insisting that the executed civilians were former members of Bashar al-Assad’s army, despite countless women and children being among the dead.
It should be noted that thousands of Syrians, across all of the country’s various religious sects, have taken to social media to demand justice for the videos while calling for an end to the sectarian violence.