Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets in Christian areas of Damascus early Tuesday to protest the burning of a Christmas tree near central Hama. of SyriaAgence France-Presse has testified.
“We expose the rights of Christians,” protesters chanted as they marched through the Syrian capital to the headquarters of the Orthodox Patriarchate in the Bab Sharqi neighborhood.
The protests come a little more than two weeks after an armed coalition led by Islamists bring down the government of Bashar al-Assadwho had cast himself as the protector of the minors in the Sunni major.
A demonstrator who gave his name as Georges told AFP they were protesting “injustice against Christians”.
“If it is not allowed to live the Christian faith in our country, as we used to, we are not here anymore,” he said.
The protests arose after it was published 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 foreign fighters were from the Islamist group Ansar al-Tawhid.
In another video posted to social media, a religious leader from the victorious Syrian Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) addressed locals, stating that those who cut down the tree were “not Syrian” and promising to punish them. And tomorrow morning, he said, the tree will be restored and lit.
The Islamist HTS movement, rooted in al-Qaida and backed by Turkey, has vowed to protect minorities as its lightning strikes hit Assad this month after years of stalemate.
Turkey’s interior minister said on Tuesday that more than 25,000 Syrians have returned home from Turkey since Assad was ousted. Turkey is home to nearly 3 million refugees who fled the civil war that broke out in 2011, and whose presence has become a question for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government.
“The number of people returning to Syria in the last 15 days has exceeded 25,000,” Ali Yerlikaya told the official Anadolu news agency. Ankara is close with the new Syrian leaders and is focused on the voluntary return of Syrian refugees in the hope that a change of regime in Damascus will allow many of them to return home.
The US military said on Monday it had carried out a strike in Syria that killed two Islamic State operatives and wounded one. IS operatives were moving an armored vehicle in the province of Dayr az Zawr, an area formerly controlled by the Syrian government and the Russians, with air strikes, the US Central Command said in a statement on the 10th.