The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights

9th anniversary of “ethnic genocide” | 325 killed including 58 children and 65 females in Al-Bayda and Baniyas

SOHR renews its call to bring murderers and all those who abetted the killing of Syrian civilians to justice

Today, the Syrians mark the 9th anniversary of one of the most heinous massacres in modern history that took place on May 2 and May 3 in 2013 by allies of the Syrian regime against civilians in the coastal city of Baniyas in Tartus province. On Thursday, May 2, a frenzied sectarian assault was carried out by Alawite troops against the Sunni locals of the village of Al-Bayda, south of Baniyas in the west of Syria. The attackers murdered children, women and elderly people, burnt their  bodies, arrested and displaced other residents of the city.

 

Moreover, the regime-backed Alawite militiamen repeated a similar massacre in the night of May 2 and the morning of May 3 in Ras Al-Nabaa, a highly populated Sunni area in the southern neighbourhood in the south of Baniyas, killing old people, females, and children, burning houses and displacing residents of the neighbourhood and nearby neighbourhoods in the southern part of Baniyas city.

 

According to SOHR statistics, 325 people, including 32 little boys, 26 little girls and 65 women, were killed in the two massacres, while tens others went missing, most probably arrested by regime security services.

 

The ethnic genocide in the city of Baniyas and the village of Al-Bayda that left hundreds dead and wounded and resulted in the displacement of thousands others was an undeniable and completed war crime. However, no action has been taken so far.

After the massacre occurred, Bashar Al-Assad regime-backed media displayed videos showing arrested members of the victims’ families who lost their sons in the city of Baniyas while confessing fabricated crimes, where they were forced to say that they were the perpetrators of the massacre. However, the massacre was committed by lieutenant Aly Wagih Shadod, a commander in the National Defense Forces in Baniyas, whose subordinated members, who had been recruited in Tartus and Latakia, were all Alevis . Shadod was later killed in clashes with the rebel and Islamic brigades by late November in 2013.

 

On the 9th anniversary of the “ethnic genocide” in Baniyas, we, at the Syrian Observatory, renew our calls upon the international community to take an action and bring all war criminals, perpetrators of violations and all those who aided and abetted crimes against humanity to justice, mainly the regime of Bashar Al-Assad and cronies close to ruling class.

 

SOHR has documented at least 19 testimonies of survivors of the two massacres in Al-Bayda and Ras Al-Nabaa.