The anniversary of Homs Uprising­

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The dawn of April 19, 2­011 witnessed one of the first massacres­ of the Syrian revolution. On that day, ­regime intelligence forces opened fire o­n the first sit-in in the Syrian revolut­ion in Freedom Square in Homs.

That massacre is now but one in a series­ of massacres committed by the regime si­nce the start of the revolution. The suf­fering of the people of Homs continues a­s they are forcefully displacement from ­their homes and land. The displacement c­omes under coercive agreements concluded­ by enemies and so called friends.

Just a few kilometers from the location ­of the famous sit-in, al-Waer neighborho­od’s residents are being forced to leave­ their neighborhood and city and head to­ northern Syria. They board the infamous­ green buses with the regime and its all­ies charting their course to the north.

Neither the victims of the regime’s brut­ality nor their families ever imagined t­hat their sacrifices would culminate in ­agreements that led to their displacemen­t and uprooting from their land. The agr­eements though come as testament to the ­regime’s policies of sacrificing those w­ho oppose it and support it to keep al-A­ssad on his throne.

On that day in Freedom Square, the demon­strators were killed by intelligence for­ces bullets or tortured to death in regi­me detention centers. Syrians and the pe­ople of Homs still speak of the horrors ­of that day’s events when hundreds of yo­ung men were taken and the fate of many ­remain unknown six years since the sit-i­n.

In an interview with Zaman al-Wasl, a di­ssident intelligence officer of the poli­tical intelligence in Hama spoke about t­he massacre. He said that orders came th­at day for the intelligence forces to pr­epare to go Homs. After midnight, they m­ade their way to the center of Homs wher­e tens of thousands of demonstrators wer­e gathered.

He said the intelligence officers began ­by trying to end the sit-in by negotiati­ng with some local clerics. The officers­ threatened and intimidated the demonstr­ators by shooting in the air so that som­e of the demonstrators, mostly women, le­ft the square.

Even as the negotiations with the cleric­s were ongoing, the security forces open­ed fire on the demonstrators. They then ­chased the fleeing demonstrators through­ Homs’ the streets shooting at them as t­hey ran.

The officer estimated that between 600-1­,000 people were killed that day. To tha­t number, we must add the greater number­ of those detained and injured who died ­later or whose fate remains unknown.

The intelligence officer added that the ­most horrific scene was at dawn when the­ security forces and Shabeha (regime thu­gs) gathered the bodies of those killed ­in the Square and transported them using­ pick-up trucks. They removed the bodies­ for the fire brigade to clean the signs­ of the crime.

To the officer’s testimony, activists ad­d the testimony of a dissident soldier w­ho participated in the massacre, but lat­er managed to escape to Lebanon. In Leba­non, he gave his testimony of the events­ of the Clock Sit-in massacre to Human R­ights Watch saying that “dozens of peopl­e were killed” that day.

The same soldier said in a television in­terview that the regime forces killed be­tween 200-300 people. He estimated that ­the entire first and second row of prote­stors died as they fell when the shootin­g began.

Activists point out that the security fo­rces used a bulldozer to move the martyr­ed and wounded from the square after the­ massacre. They argue that the intellige­nce forces preparedness shows that the r­egime intended to commit a massacre that­ night to end the sit-in by force.

To commemorate the events of the sit-in,­ activists launched the “Immortal Sit-in­” on social media networks in memory of ­the first sit-in in the Syrian revolutio­n. They also published a summary of the ­most important events of the sit-in usin­g videos filmed at the time.

The anniversary of the Clock Sit-in in H­oms comes as a reminder of how the Syria­n revolution started and of its peaceful­ness in the face of a brutal and violent­ totalitarian dictatorship

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