Human Rights Abuses In Sweida

Ongoing sectarian violence in Sweida has led to hundreds of deaths, including many Druze. “The streets are littered with dead bodies. Many of them appear to have been executed and some bodies have been burned”. Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday that 9 days of armed clashes and serious violations in Sweida, have led to a major humanitarian crisis.

DAMASCUS JULY 23: Ongoing sectarian violence in Sweida has led to hundreds of deaths, including many Druze civilians allegedly executed by Syrian government forces, exacerbating fears of human rights violations. Reports describe extrajudicial killings, torture, abductions, and looting—pointing to a broader pattern of targeted abuses against the Druze minority .

Sky News correspondent Alex Crawford describes Sweida as “a city on fire”, without electricity and internet, scarce access to food and water, overcrowded hospitals and thousands of civilians holed up in their homes.

– “The streets are littered with dead bodies. Many of them appear to have been executed and some bodies have been burned”, she says.

Suwayda, also spelled Sweida, is a mainly Druze city located in southern Syria, close to the border with Jordan. The Druze, are an Arab esoteric religious group from West Asia who adhere to the Druze faith, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and syncretic religion whose main tenets assert the unity of God, reincarnation, and the eternity of the soul. Although the Druze faith developed from Isma’ilism, Druze do not identify as Muslims. The population of the city of Sweida mainly belongs to the Druze religious group, which is otherwise a minority in the otherwise predominantly Sunni Muslim Syria.

A tense calm prevails in Sweida after last week’s bloody fighting. Over 1,000 people have been killed so far in clashes between armed Druze, Bedouin and government forces.

– “We have no confidence left in the government. We believe that government forces collaborated with the Bedouins,” says a source close to the Druze leadership in Sweida.

Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday that 9 days of armed clashes and serious violations in Sweida, have led to a major humanitarian crisis.

Syria – Summary Executions