This year marks the fourteenth anniversary of the Hour Sit-in, the first time Syrians have been freed from the Assad regime.
The Hour Sit-in in Homs on April 18, 2011, remains a crucial turning point in the Syrian revolution, as the regime blatantly bared its teeth to crush any peaceful movement that might lead to its premature end.
From this, we can understand the brutal method employed by the regime to disperse the sit-in, a scene reminiscent of the most famous dictatorships across history and geography, from the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing (1989) to the Santa Maria massacre in Chile (1907).
The testimonies of witnesses who participated in the sit-in and soldiers who took part in its dispersal intersected regarding the organized method used by Assad's forces to crush the first peaceful movement of its kind in the Syrian revolution.
According to testimonies, the regime, through its most senior officials, made no secret of its intention to end the sit-in by all means. It sought to disperse it through negotiations with dignitaries from Homs, including one of the city's sheikhs, who conveyed the "leadership's" message. The regime was forced to disperse the sit-in, fearing that a massacre would be imminent.
Human rights activist Omar Idlebi, one of the participants, spoke about the mechanism for dispersing the sit-in, which was attended by various segments of Homs society following the funerals of the martyrs of the Bab al-Sabaa massacre.
In testimony consistent with that of dozens of witnesses, he confirmed that regime forces opened heavy and direct fire on the protesters, resulting in a large number of deaths and injuries.
At a time when phone communications were virtually cut off in the city during the attack, Omar, a founder of the Local Coordination Committees in Syria, was one of the most prominent voices documenting this massacre.
He later wrote about some attempts to cast doubt on the massacre, emphasizing the need to document these crimes and not forget them.
The number of victims remains unknown, given the lack of information available. Other than the testimonies of defected soldiers and firefighters, who reported what they said were the bodies of victims being loaded into pickup trucks with bulldozers before being cleared at dawn that day to erase the traces of a crime, many of the details of which remain unknown. The people of Homs woke up as if nothing had happened!
Human Rights Watch quotes a defected soldier who participated in the dispersal of the sit-in, who said: "The protesters sat in the square. We were told to disperse them using violence if necessary. We were there with the Air Force Security Branch, the army, and the shabiha. At around 3:30 a.m., we received an order from Colonel (Abdul Hamid Ibrahim) of Air Force Security to fire on the protesters."
He added, "We opened fire for about half an hour. There were dozens and dozens of dead and wounded. After that, bulldozers and fire trucks arrived.
The bulldozers lifted the bodies and put them on the back of a truck. I don't know where they took them. The injured were taken to the military hospital in Homs. The fire trucks began cleaning up the square."
Another soldier reported that the intruders had received instructions to use excessive force to disperse the sit-in at all costs. This confirms the regime's goal of sending a clear message to protesters in Homs and other rebellious cities and regions that it will strike with an iron fist anyone who thinks of participating in peaceful civil activities. This has been repeated in all the rebellious regions against it.
Zaman al-Wasl
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