Hama massacre
As the massacre of Hama ( Arabic مجزرة حماة Majzarat Hama , DMG maǧzarat Ḥamāh ; in Syria with Ahdath Hama /أحداث حماة / aḥdāṯ Ḥamāh / 'the events of Hama') describes the attack by the Syrian armed forces under the command of Defense Minister Mustafa Tlas on the central Syrian city of Hama in 1982. It was a reaction to the uprising of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria , in which numerous Attacks were carried out by the anti-government Muslim Brotherhood .
Beginning on February 2 of that year, the city with a population of 350,000 was shelled by Syrian special forces led by President Rifaat al-Assad after the Syrian air force systematically destroyed the arteries. 20,000 to 30,000 people were killed during the attack, depending on the estimates, and many others fled the city. Large parts of the city, especially the historic old town, were destroyed. In the course of the clashes there were extensive, sometimes arbitrary, arrests. Affected were not only suspected members of the anti-government Muslim Brotherhood, but also representatives of other groups of the population who were unpopular for various reasons. Some of the detainees were released in November 2000 as part of Bashar al-Assad's amnesty .
Like smaller towns in predominantly Sunni Syria, Hama was a center of the Muslim Brotherhood, who opposed the Ba'ath party of Hafiz al-Assad and who are said to have wanted to overthrow the government and establish a fundamentalist regime. The Hama massacre was the culmination of years of repression by the Syrian government in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which made membership of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria subject to the death penalty. The attack was successful in the interests of the government, because the Muslim Brotherhood then ceased their activities in Syria.
The massacre became known internationally, but the exact circumstances remained unclear as Syria made great efforts not to let any information about it get abroad. In contrast, it served as a deterrent and intimidation to its own population. To this day, the massacre is a taboo subject among the Syrian public . In the West German press, the news of the massacre led to harsh condemnations of the Assad system in Syria, known as the “Moscow-friendly military regime”.
literature
- Patrick Seale: Asad of Syria. The Struggle for the Middle East. Tauris, London 1988; ISBN 0-520-06976-5 ; Pp. 332-334.
- Jack Donnelly: Human Rights at the United Nations 1955-1985: The Question of Bias , International Studies Quarterly 32, No. 3, September 1988; Pp. 275-303.
- Robert Fisk : Pity the Nation . Touchstone, London 1990; ISBN 0-671-74770-3 ; Pp. 181-187.
- Thomas Friedman : From Beirut to Jerusalem . HarperCollins Publishers, London 1998; ISBN 0-00-653070-2 .
- Summary of the January 10, 2002, Roundtable on Militant Islamic Fundamentalism in the Twenty-First Century. American Foreign Policy Interests 24, No. 3, June 1, 2002, pp. 187-205.
- Kathrin Nina Wiedl: The Hama Massacre - reasons, supporters of the rebellion, consequences ; Munich 2007; ISBN 978-3-638-71034-3 .
- Amnesty International : Amnesty International Report 1983 (PDF; 12.3 MB), chapter on Syria in the annual report for 1982, Amnesty International Publications, London 1983, ISBN 0-86210-057-7 , pp. 330–331.
- Peter Scholl-Latour : Arabia's moment of truth: revolt on the threshold of Europe. Propylaea, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-549-07366-7 , chapter “The 'Pink Panthers' rage in Hama”, pp. 344-350.
Web links
- Report of the Syrian Human Rights Committee (SHRC) on the massacre of Hama (English) ( Memento of November 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- Report in Die Zeit about the massacre, accessed on July 26, 2012
- Article on the 30th anniversary of the massacre in the taz (February 29, 2012)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kristin Helberg : The dead of Hama. Syria and the Assad system. Deutschlandfunk, broadcast: Background, February 2, 2012.