DAMASCUS (KAAB TV) – Early one evening in late January, 12 masked men stormed the Damascus home of Um Hassan’s family, pointed AK-47 assault rifles in their faces and ordered them to leave.
When they presented ownership documents, the men arrested Um Hassan’s oldest brother and said they could only have him back once they had moved out. The family surrendered the house 24 hours later and picked him up, battered and bruised, from the local General Security Service headquarters, said Um Hassan, giving only her nickname for fear of reprisals.
Her family is part of Syria’s minority Alawite community, an offshoot of the Shi’ite faith and the sect of former strongman Bashar al-Assad. Their story is not unique.
Since Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa seized power in December, hundreds of Alawites have been forced from their private homes in Damascus by the security forces, according to Syrian officials, Alawite leaders, human rights groups and 12 people with similar accounts who spoke to Reuters.
“We’re definitely not talking about independent incidents. We are talking about hundreds, if not thousands, of cases of evictions,” said Bassam Alahmad, executive director of human rights group Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ).
The mass evictions of Alawites from privately owned homes have not been previously reported.
For more than 50 years, Assad and his father before him crushed any opposition from Syria’s Sunni Muslims, who make up more than 70% of the population. Alawites took many of the top positions in government and the military and ran big businesses.
They now accuse supporters of Sharaa, who once ran an al Qaeda affiliate, of systematically abusing them as payback.
In March, hundreds of Alawites were killed in Syria’s western coastal region and sectarian violence spread to Damascus in apparent retribution for a deadly ambush on Syria’s new security forces by armed Assad loyalists.
Two government officials said thousands of people had been kicked out of homes in Damascus since Assad was toppled by Sharaa’s rebel force, with the majority being Alawites.
The officials said most resided in government housing associated with their jobs in state institutions and, since they were no longer employed, they had lost their right to stay.
But hundreds more, like Um Hassan, were evicted from their privately owned homes simply because they are Alawites, Reuters interviews with multiple officials and victims show.
The interior ministry, which oversees the GSS, and Sharaa’s office did not respond to requests for comment.