Thn 1982, pemerintah Syria ngebantai 10-40 ribu di Hama. Tp, hehehe... orang2 
Islam akan diam aja atas pembantaian thd orang Islam ini, krn yg ngebantai 
adalah orang Islam jg.

Islam itu emang laknatan lil alamin
 
 
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/02/20122232155715210.html
 
Breaking the silence over Hama atrocities
Witnesses of the bloody events in the Syrian city in 1982 speak as protests 
force open the veil of fear and secrecy.
Basma Atassi Last Modified: 02 Feb 2012 14:30
 
Khaled al-Khani was just seven when he lost his father in the city of Hama 
during what residents say was the worst massacre in Syria's modern history.

Today, as the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad grips the country, men 
like Khaled are finally starting to discuss the grisly events of 1982, as 
protests slowly force open the veil of fear and secrecy which surrounded the 
killings.

"The fact that Syrians will commemorate the killings of their loved ones for 
the first time in 30 years evokes in me strange feelings. It is not a 
celebration, but it cannot be mourned like a funeral," Khani, who is now a 
celebrated Syrian artist, told Al Jazeera.

Activists are planning countrywide demonstrations to commemorate the 
atrocities. Khani, who now resides in France, will be speaking at a 
commemoration event in Paris. Similar events planned by Syrian expatriates are 
set to take place in Washington DC, London, Riyadh, and other cities.

It was February 2, 1982, when troops, ordered by the late President Hafez 
al-Assad, Bashar’s father, seized the city, and bombed its centre with fighter 
jets, according to an Amnesty International report, enabling tanks to roll 
through Hama’s narrow streets, crushing an armed rebellion by an estimated 200 
to 500 fighters from the Muslim Brotherhood’s military wing.

The subsequent 27-day military campaign left somewhere between 10,000 to 40,000 
people killed and almost two thirds of the city destroyed, according to human 
rights organisations and foreign journalists who were in Syria but were not 
allowed to enter the city.

Almost every family in Hama, which at the time had about 250,000 inhabitants, 
lost a member.

"The Taleea [the Muslim Brotherhood’s military wing] had tried to resist and 
clashed with the government forces but was crushed in few days. The Baroudiyeh 
neighbourhood, where the Taleea was based, was overtaken by the army just hours 
after the military campaign was launched," said Abou Tamim, a member of the 
Muslim Brotherhood, who fled to Saudi Arabia amid the 1982 crackdown.

"But the campaign continued for days and most of the dead were civilians who 
had nothing to do with the Brotherhood," he told Al Jazeera.

'Punishing Hama'

Khani’s father was one of them. An eye doctor educated in France, he was taken 
by security forces to a porcelain factory where his eyes were torn out of his 
face. He was left to die in pain, Khani said. Tens of others in the 
factory-turned-detention centre were killed in various ways.

Khani says if he had publicly accused the government of killing his father in 
the years since his death, he could have faced the same fate. He and many other 
residents were forced to say that Muslim Brotherhood fighters had killed their 
loved ones.

"Assad wanted to punish the whole of Hama. Through us, he wanted to teach all 
Syrians that challenging the regime would lead to this. And it worked. It 
worked for 30 years."

The fear of Hama’s residents to even mention the massacre began to falter when 
anti-government protests erupted across the country last March.

The first protest in Hama in 2011 came out from the Omar Bin Khattab Mosque 
near Hama’s castle. People chanted for freedom and the fall of the regime, the 
first serious challenge to the Assad dynasty in decades.

That same mosque is where, Khani recalls, he and his mother and siblings took 
refuge, along with other families, during the first few days of the military 
campaign in 1982.

The mosque turned into a detention centre. Women and children were separated 
from their fathers, husbands and brothers. A day and a half later, a soldier 
shouted from behind the mosque’s gate: "Do not expect to see your men when you 
are out." He was right.

'It's not over'

Khani said he and what is left of his family later managed to flee to a nearby 
village where he finished his first semester at a school.

"When I went back to my old school in the second semester, I remember that all 
my classmates had also lost their fathers. There were two or three exceptions," 
Khani said.

Abou Tamim said some neighbourhoods were completely destroyed and at least 80 
mosques were demolished.

When the military campaign was over, Hafez al-Assad declared that "what has 
happened in Hama has happened, and it is all over."

But Khani said it was anything but over.

"Taking people to the notorious Tadmour prison and executing them there 
continued until 1986. The mukhabarat [members of the security intelligence] 
continued to come to our house for many years later," Khani said. "Regular 
security check-ups and investigations of young men by the Mukhabarat continued 
well into the 1990s."

Wild dogs

One of the ugliest phenomenons that haunted the city afterwards were the packs 
of wild dogs roaming the streets, he said.

"Because many dead bodies were left on the streets for many days before the 
families could leave homes to bury them, dogs had eaten some of the dead bodies.

"The dogs would come at night to attack people, just like in movies. The 
municipality of Hama struggled for two years to rid the city of these dogs."

Khani said the regime intentionally wanted people to suffer after the events of 
Hama. He said the disappearance of more than 20,000 people whose fate remains 
unknown was documented.

"The regime wanted to keep people in a constant waiting mode. They wouldn’t 
tell families if their loved ones they took were dead or alive."

One woman who is still waiting to hear what happened to her family is 
40-year-old Umm Baraa, residing in Hama.

She says her two brothers, 17-year-old and 22-year-old students, were dragged 
out of their home by security forces for allegedly being Muslim Brotherhood 
sympathisers.

They still have not returned home and she has not heard any news about them 
since they disappeared.

"We asked former prisoners if they have seen them but to no avail," Umm Baraa 
told Al Jazeera.

Residents say officials capitalised on the eagerness of residents to be 
reunited with their loved ones or even just receive information about their 
whereabouts.

"Yehya Zeidan, the head of the military intelligence branch in Hama, was one of 
the most loathed officials in the city," Rami, a 50-year-old Hama resident, who 
didn’t want to give her/his last name, told Al Jazeera.

"He asked for fortunes simply to reveal the fate of a detained person or to 
grant people a few minute prison visitation.

"And sometimes people gave him money but did not get anything in return."

Healing the pain

Umm Baraa is one of them. She and her 75 year-old mother still hope their 
children will return one day.

Her 24 year-old newphew, Manhal, who sits next to his aunt as she wipes her 
tears, says he feels that he has a responsibility to rid his country of the 
Assad regime.
 
He is a prominent activist in Hama who organises protests and documents human 
rights violations in his city.

The crackdown on anti-government protests that erupted in Hama recently has 
reportedly led to the deaths of at least 513 people there.

"Throughout these past 30 years, nothing healed some of our pain more than the 
protests we saw in the streets in this uprising," Khani said.

"When all of Syria’s residents went out to the streets and chanted against the 
regime, Hama began healing because it was no longer alone."

But the wound will never vanish, he says.

"I will only reconcile with the regime who extracted my father’s eyes when they 
give me back his eyes so I can bury them with my dad’s body."

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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