play videoplay video
A massacre occurred in February 1982 in the Syrian city of Hama, and lasted 27 days. It was carried out by several divisions and brigades of the Syrian army, led by the Defense Brigades, with the aim of eliminating the opposition in the city. According to several accounts, it led to the killing of about 40,000 people and more than 17,000 are missing, while the Syrian Network for Human Rights documented the killing of approximately 10,000 of them, and also documented the names of 4,000 missing persons.
Before the massacre
The events of 1982 were not separated from the last two decades that preceded the massacre and what happened during them in Syria in general and the city of Hama in particular, as that period was filled with clashes, confrontations, killings, and arrests that included opposition parties and militants, which began after the Baath Party’s coup d’état and its assumption of power.
The most prominent of these confrontations were the events of 1964, or what is known in Hama as the “Sultan Mosque Incidents,” when a popular uprising occurred in the city of Hama and several other Syrian cities in opposition to Baath rule. The regime confronted it with military intervention, besieging the mosque, and bombing its minaret, causing the deaths of dozens of civilians in the area. Hama, according to the testimony of the Syrian President at the time, Amin Hafez, in the “Witness to the Age” program on Al Jazeera.
Events continued with Hafez al-Assad's coup d'état and the start of a campaign of arrests among opponents, and then his adoption of a new constitution in 1973, in which he granted himself broad powers and placed the executive, judicial and legislative authority in his hands. Demonstrations and protests took place in the city known as the "Constitution Events", which led to Many arrests were made among the opposition, especially since some of them called for jihad against the Baath Party.
After several years, as a result of the killing and assassination of a number of people in the city, the policy of an armed opposition group known as the “Fighting Vanguard” began to turn to assassinating figures holding positions in the state, and this led to an increase in arrests, prosecutions, and assassinations, and on June 16, 1979, that armed group attacked Artillery School in Aleppo and killed dozens of Alawite officers, so the state held the Muslim Brotherhood responsible for what happened.
The operation was followed by a failed attempt to assassinate then-Syrian President Hafez al-Assad on June 26, 1980. He also accused the Muslim Brotherhood of this, and responded by taking revenge on the prisoners in Tadmur Prison. The Defense Brigades, led by Rifaat al-Assad, carried out a massacre in the prison and killed more than a thousand prisoners, most of them From the Islamists.
Several days later, specifically on July 7, Legislative Decree No. 49 of 1980 was issued prohibiting membership in the Muslim Brotherhood, which stated: “Any person affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood organization is considered a criminal and shall be punished with death.” Thus, it was permissible to commit massacres under the pretext of eliminating the Muslim Brotherhood organization. .
Hama at that time included a large number of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, in addition to being a city that had revolted several times in rejection of the rule of the Baath and Assad. In mid-1981, the “Fighting Vanguard” and the Muslim Brotherhood, in coordination with the “Free Officers,” planned a coup against the government, but This did not happen, and the matter reached Hafez al-Assad, and he decided in a meeting with his leaders to invade the city.
Former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad (right) and his brother, Defense Brigades Commander Rifaat al-Assad (French)
Prepare for massacre
Security and army forces besieged the city of Hama at the end of January 1982. Some forces were stationed in areas inside the city and participated in the massacre:
The Defense Brigades forces, a 12,000-strong military group led by Rifaat al-Assad, were stationed in several areas of the city, while the largest number of them gathered around the city to besiege it.
Special units forces participated with heavy weapons, tanks and artillery, and also contributed to encircling the city.
Party brigades, which consist of civilians trained to carry weapons, most of whom are affiliated with the Baath Party and are stationed in and around the city.
Forces of the Military Security Branch in Hama.
State security forces.
Political security forces were stationed on the Aleppo road.
The 47th Tank Brigade forces were reinforced with additional forces before the massacre.
The Conflict Brigades, which participated with 4,500 members, and their role was focused on participating in storming and bombing operations.
The 21st Mechanized Brigade and the 3rd Armored Division were under the command of the defense companies.
The beginning of the massacre
The participating forces tightened the siege of the city, cut off water, electricity, and communications, and imposed a curfew with the aim of isolating the city and preventing movement in it. Then the military operation began.
On February 2, 1982, according to the testimonies of those who lived through the massacre, Assad’s forces attempted to storm the city, but clashes occurred with gunmen that extended for several hours in several neighborhoods, prompting the storming forces to withdraw outside the city and begin random and heavy bombardment with cannons, machine guns, and aircraft.
The bombing hit all neighborhoods of the city without distinction between civilians, militants, homes, and places of worship, and in less than two days, it led to the complete or partial destruction of dozens of mosques, clinics, and residential neighborhoods, in addition to large numbers of dead and wounded.
During the bombings and clashes, civilians tried to flee the city by running, and a small number of them, estimated at hundreds, succeeded in escaping towards the villages and surrounding areas. Eyewitnesses reported that they crossed dozens of bodies thrown in the streets of the city during the exit process, while the city’s residents took refuge in the basements.
Ground intrusion
On the morning of February 4, 1982, the ground assault phase began, carried out by the tanks of the 47th Brigade. They were distributed between tanks at fixed points and others moving in the streets of the city, and all of them bombed civilian neighborhoods and their homes. The forces that invaded the city also installed rocket launchers and mortar launchers on some buildings. To bomb different neighborhoods.
During the first ten days of the curfew, residential neighborhoods in the market area were searched three times. The first and second times, the civilian men hid for fear of arrest, because before the events, men had been arrested at checkpoints without any reason. However, the search was peaceful and did not He attacked civilians, but it was under the pretext of searching for wanted persons and asking about family members in general.
The third time, according to eyewitnesses, the civilian men did not hide because they felt reassured after the first and second searches, but the third search was barbaric, as all the men were arrested in the homes that were searched, and incidents of rape, killing, looting, and vandalism of homes occurred.
Individual and collective field executions were carried out of hundreds of civilian men and children in the city’s neighborhoods, as the officers would gather the men of the neighborhood at a certain point, then execute them by firing squad, leaving the men dead or wounded. At that time, the people were unable to aid the wounded due to the curfew and siege that surrounded the neighborhoods. Not only did the soldiers kill civilians, but they also caused a number of wounded people, according to eyewitnesses, and entire families were killed during that period because one or several of them belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood.
One of the nurses narrated that security personnel entered the hospital rooms and killed the patients there. This was accompanied by acts of abuse, the use of cold weapons, slaughter, and the cutting of pregnant women’s stomachs. The hospital was besieged and every wounded person transported to it was killed, and the medical team was forced to treat only the wounded of the regime forces.
An archive photo of a number of those killed in the 1982 Hama massacre (Al Jazeera)
After controlling the first half of the city, or the so-called “market” area, the bombing focused on the second half of the city, which is the Al-Hader area. The security forces continued storming and combing neighborhoods in all areas, and executed entire families, including their women and children, such as the families of Al-Dabbagh, Al-Amin, Musa, Al-Azm, Al-Shaqqi, and others.
However, the clash continued in some neighborhoods of the city until February 23, 1982, and the regime forces pursued a scorched earth policy with these neighborhoods, completely destroying them on the heads of their residents, and almost no one survived, such as the neighborhoods of Al-Baroudiyah, Al-Kilaniyya, Al-Hamidiyah, and others.
During the period of the massacre, house searches and attacks on their residents continued, and a large number of residents were arrested randomly, in addition to the arrests that affected specific families, and some places in the city were turned into detention and torture centers, before the detainees were transferred to prisons, and the city’s people lived in... Horror, fear, and expectation of murder and arrest throughout that period. Women were also subjected to various attacks, rape, arrest, and others.
On February 28, 1982, some military groups began to leave Hama and return to the barracks, while military checkpoints remained in all neighborhoods of the city, and killings and persecution operations continued until mid-March of the same year.
Assad's forces lifted the curfew on the market area on February 28, and on the Al-Hader area on March 1, 1982, and residents were allowed to move, while military checkpoints remained inside the city.
An archive photo of a school for the blind in Hama that was a target during the 1982 massacre (Al Jazeera)
witnesses
One of the workers at the National Hospital reported that she met a newly born woman who told them that when the security forces raided her house, they took her newborn child, grabbed him between his legs, then pulled him forcefully and killed him by tearing off his organs as a result of the pulling. In addition, she talked about tearing open pregnant women’s stomachs, cases of rape of girls and women, and even Old women, according to her testimony.
She narrates that she saw with her own eyes when two doctors left the hospital to interview President Hafez al-Assad. Among the delegation were the orthopedist Abdul Qadir Kandakji and the ophthalmologist Omar al-Shishakli. They brought them back dead. The orthopedic doctor broke all his bones and killed him, and the ophthalmologist was killed by two bullets in his eyes.
She also mentioned that security personnel in the Al-Amiriyah neighborhood took the young men out of the homes, asked them to lie on the ground, and then made the tank drive over them.
Member of the People’s Assembly and former governor of Hama, Asaad Mustafa, mentions that there was resistance and violent clashes in the Hamidiya neighborhood near the old National Hospital, and the army was unable to invade the place, so they asked for help from the Defense Brigades, so Rifaat al-Assad sent a regiment led by Ali Deeb, and asked them to intervene, so they asked about the location of the hospital. So they went to the new hospital, not the old one, which is an area that was not involved in events and no confrontations, according to his testimony, and they invaded the neighborhood and killed everyone in it.
While other eyewitnesses confirm that the reason for going to the new hospital area is the regime’s policy of taking revenge on the people and preventing resistance in other neighborhoods.
Pictures of a number of those killed in the city of Hama 1982 (French)
Eyewitnesses report that in the last week of the massacre, before the last Friday of that month, the number of checkpoints in the city was reduced, and simple movement between neighborhoods was allowed, so people began to check on each other, and after several days, specifically on a Friday, a major search and raid took place in some neighborhoods, and everyone was arrested. Young men and men were taken to an unknown location, led by the Mufti of the city, his son, and all the imams of the mosques. Some witnesses state that the number of people arrested that day ranged between 5,000 and 7,000.
As for the former governor of Hama, Asaad Mustafa, he confirmed the incident, and called it “the Friday incident.” However, he explained that the number of those arrested reached 10,500 men from the age of 15 to 50 years, and nothing has been known about them since then, and the accounts of some survivors indicate that The arrests included children between the ages of 12 and 17 years, as well as elderly people over the ages of 60 and 70 years.
An eyewitness narrated that security personnel gathered approximately 30 civilians, placed them in shops in one of the city’s markets, then burned the shops with those inside them, including Sheikh Abdullah Hallaq, one of the sheikhs of the city and one of the teachers of the Sharia Secondary School for Boys.
Eyewitnesses say that women and children who wanted to leave the city were not allowed to do so, and they remained waiting at the checkpoints, and at night the girls were being kidnapped and raped.
Heba Dabbagh, a former detainee, mentions in her book “Just Five Minutes... Nine Years in Syrian Prisons” that all members of her family were executed by firing squad in their home, including her child siblings.
Similar testimonies from survivors of the massacre confirm incidents of mass murder, the killing of families in their homes, random arrests, name arrests, and massacres committed in various ways. Testimonies also confirm cases of murder, slaughter with knives, dismemberment, and abuse of the wounded, in addition to cases of rape and various assaults.
Results of the massacre
The Hama massacre, which lasted 27 days, left about 30 to 40 thousand civilians dead, data for 7,984 of whom were documented, according to the report issued by the Syrian Network for Human Rights on the 40th anniversary of the massacre, which indicated that the number of missing persons was estimated at 17,000 people, data for only 3,762 of whom were documented. , with a complete absence of the number of deaths among the ranks of the armed opposition, or among the ranks of the regime’s members.
The report stated that the destruction affected the city in different proportions, as the neighborhoods of Al-Kilaniyah, Al-Asida Al-Shamaliyya, Al-Zanbaqi, and Bin Al-Hirain were completely destroyed and razed to the ground, while the neighborhoods of Al-Baroudiyah, Al-Bashouriyah, Al-Hamidiyah, Al-Amiriyah, and Al-Manakh were destroyed by 80%, and the destruction in the rest of the city’s parts ranged from a quarter to half of them.
79 mosques were completely or partially destroyed as a result of bombing and bombing, and 3 churches were completely or partially destroyed, 40 medical clinics, and historical and archaeological areas of the city, according to what was stated in the report.
The reason for the inability to verify the numbers is the absence of media coverage, the regime’s control over the three authorities, and the long period of time from the massacre to the documentation attempts.
While eyewitnesses confirm that the reason for the silence and lack of writing is the fear that harm would affect relatives of those who left the city or those who lived through the massacre and then fled from it, as the regime was punishing entire families because of one of their members, and it did not differentiate between a woman and a man in killing and arrest.
After the massacre
Fear and terror gripped the people of the city, especially in the first months after the massacre, as everyone expected him to be summoned to one of the police stations or to have his house raided and arrested at any moment.
The regime planted large numbers of its loyalists in the city by placing them in homes whose owners had left. The role of its loyalists was to relay news of the neighborhoods in which they lived, and to report anything they suspected.
Many of the city's stories remained secret as a result of fear and the scenes that people experienced during the massacre, and part of what happened after the Syrian revolution was revealed, as some survivors began to talk about what happened without fear.
Rifaat al-Assad's response to the massacre
Rifaat al-Assad denied his role in the Hama massacre, and said at a conference held in Paris in November 2011 that he had not been to Hama and did not know it. When he was asked about the Palmyra massacre, he stated that the president issued a decree after the attempt on his life to execute everyone who belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood.
This contradicts the order of events, as the assassination attempt on Hafez al-Assad occurred on June 26, 1980, the Palmyra massacre occurred on June 27, 1980, and the legislative decree banning the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria was issued on July 7, 1980.
Source: Al Jazeera + websites