Alarm over Syria killings
Greece is distancing itself from the new regime in Syria following reports of violence against and murders of members of the country’s Christian and Alawite communities in the country’s north.
Greece had “from the first moment expressed its reservations to those who rushed to recognize the current regime in Damascus as a force that had renounced its past,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Monday. “Greece had always harbored doubts about whether such a change was possible,” he added.
Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of Syria’s Provisional Government, had been a leader of the Al-Qaida-affiliated Al-Nusra Front and had fought with the jihadists in Iraq following the US invasion.
The Provisional Government claims they are confronting remnants of the al-Assad regime that was overthrown last December.
The Alawite community, a religiously moderate Shiite sect representing about 10-13% of the population, was the mainstay of the regime of the Assads, father and son, that ruled the country with an iron fist from 1970 until last year.
Christians account for another 2.5% in the majority Sunni country.
Syrians, Orthodox and Muslim, talked to Kathimerini and challenged the regime’s narrative. One of them, an Orthodox, said the current rulers had dropped their kaftans and wore suits as a ruse.
Another Syrian from the Alawite stronghold of Latakia, who now lives in Greece, said that the worst atrocities are taking place in remote villages in the area.
