“It’s Beyond a Humanitarian Crisis, It As An Extermination”

I am redacting names because I do not wish to put these good people in any further danger:

My name is Dr. XXXXXX,

I am a physician from Lattakia. I write to you with a desperate and urgent plea. What is happening in Western Syria right now is beyond a humanitarian crisis, it is an extermination of the Alawite people and other minority groups including Christians. The situation is rapidly escalating and while I write this email, another innocent life is being taken. The killing is STILL ongoing, they are not “unfortunate collateral damage”. IT IS A GENOCIDE.

As a human being, I feel the obligation to raise the voice, especially that many of the survivors are poor, innocent people who cannot put together an email in English. I have seen horrendous sightings and heard first-witness, on-ground testimonies from tenths and tenths of Alawites, Christians and Sunnis. People I grew up with, went to school with, medically trained with. They are my classmates, my neighbours and my childhood friends. They are unarmed civilians who were mascaraed in their own homes with their families, children and, mothers, wives, and elderly parents just because they were born to a certain sect (Alawites).

What is even more unsettling, appalling and upsetting is that there is a distortion of facts. To justify the mass killing in front of the international community and avoid accountability, the affiliate media to the current regime are labelling those innocent civilians as “armed rebels”, “remnants” and “ex-regime loyalists”. Is a 6 months-years-old a rebel? Is an entire family of 12 remnants? Is elderly 76-year-old man an armed threat?

1) Systematic Deception

• Today, the official forces are the ones who led the UN delegation to the affected areas accompanying the convey where routes to the villages were taken deliberately to avoid the affected Alawite areas after manipulating and covering up heinous crimes, ensuring that the truth does not reach the international community prior to the anticipated United Nations Security Council session on Syria today. The same tactics the ex-regime used.

• Survivors are being threatened into silence or to giving false statements to international media and UN that they want the protection of the current official forces/regime whereas every single survivor is asking for the UN forces to intervene as they have received direct threats that they will be mascaraed just like the other 2,000 ones killed, mostly their families, friends, relatives and neighbours.

• Communities in different villages both in Tartus and Lattakia have repeatedly asked the official forces for a list of names of those whom are armed loyalists so they can help bring them forth to the government but they never received one name. Why? Is it because they keep wanting to raid houses and steal and kill and terrorize whenever they want under this justification?

(2) Undeniable War Crimes of Ethnic Cleansing

• What is unfolding in Western Syria right now is nothing less than genocide. I beg you to understand the gravity of the following: Foreign fighters, speaking unidentified languages such as Uzbek and Chechen have been referenced by some of the survivors and in videos taken by the killers themselves executing civilians in the most brutal manner imaginable. These individuals are not simply killing—they are mutilating the bodies of innocent people, sending a message of terror to all who remain.

• A close friend of mine, whose brother and father were executed, shared that in her village “Al-Mokhtariya” and other villages like “Al-Shiir” in Latakia (where hundreds of Alawites were slaughtered in mass executions), the regime forces have since obscured the evidence of the massacre by undressing victims—whose bodies have been deliberately left unburied for 48 hours, because they are deemed “infidels” by Islamic extremists—and redressing them in military uniforms to falsely label them as “armed outlaws” and “loyalists” who have been rightfully killed by official forces whereas they are poor, unarmed villagers. This very fact has been confirmed by Rami Abdulrahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR); this is the video evidence to his interview today.).

The UN convoy was brought into villages only after the regime forces had removed bodies from the streets, threatening and terrorizing the remaining survivors into submission. The statements given by civilians were made under the heavy watch of official forces—do you really believe these people, who are under the immediate threat of death, had the freedom to speak the truth?

This is not just a crisis. It is a deliberate, systematic genocide of innocent people. The history books will record what was done—or not done—in this moment.

Do not allow yourselves to be silent. Take action before it is too late.

I am sure you received many emails with evidence but here is a link to a video from today showing the only survivors left in a village, women. Mothers, sisters and wives appear crying the hearts out and mourning their beloved ones, trying to identify their bodies. 

Be our voice. PLEASE.

• Documentation Source (1): https://t.me/syriajusticearchive

• Documentation Source (2): http://t.me/Alomhoar

Thank you,

Dr. XXXXXX