Frontline: On 30th Anniversary of Hama Massacre, Syrian Troops Lock Down City
Thirty years ago today, then-Syrian President Hafez al-Assad launched what’s known as one of the bloodiest chapters of modern Arab history: the Hama Massacre.
Back then, the city of Hama was the stronghold of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and the center of an anti-regime uprising that had been targeting government buildings and minority Alawite military officers for years.
“In 1982, the regime basically said, ‘That’s it. That’s enough. We have to deal with this once and for all. We have to show that we’re in control,’” Syria expert David Lesch told FRONTLINE for our November film, The Regime, an excerpt of which is embedded above. Estimates vary, but between 10,000 to 30,000 people are believed to have been killed or disappeared in the massacre that also left parts of the city in shambles. “It looked like a war zone,” remembered Syrian scholar Amr Al Azm.
Thirty years later, Hafez’s son, President Bashar al-Assad, faces a similar issue in Syria’s fourth-largest city, where resentment runs deep. Hama has seen some of the country’s biggest protests, and some of its worst violence since a new uprising began nearly 11 months ago. Last summer the Syrian opposition gained control of the city for six weeks, until the government sent troops into the city in August for a brutal assault that killed more than 100 civilians within its first 24 hours alone.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/foreign-affairs-defense/syria-undercover/on-30th-anniversary-of-hama-massacre-syrian-troops-lock-down-city/
Chilling.