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Relatives take part in a protest demanding the whereabouts of four activists who disappeared during the war between opposition groups and former President Bashar Assad's forces, in Douma, Syria, January 1, 2025
HUMAN rights campaigners in Syria held a sit-in protest on Wednesday demanding justice for four activists who were forcibly disappeared in 2013 — and whose fate remains one of the most haunting mysteries of the 13-year civil war.
On December 9 2013, gunmen stormed the Violation Documentation Centre in Douma, north-east of Damascus, and took Razan Zaitouneh, her husband Wael Hamadeh, Samira Khalil and Nazem Hammadi.
Outspoken and defiantly secular, Ms Zaitouneh was one of Syria’s best known human rights activists. She chanted in protests against then president Bashar al-Assad but was also unflinching in documenting abuses by rebels fighting to oust him.
VIJAY PRASHAD details how US support for Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa allowed him to break the resistance of the autonomous Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)
VIJAY PRASHAD looks at the web of militias and drug-trafficking gangs that emerged in the Sweida region through the Syrian civil war, and how they relate to recent clashes and Israel’s intervention
