Preparing your experience
This campaign has been escalating openly across social media platforms and through religious and media figures associated with the de facto authorities in Damascus, while no meaningful measures have been taken to stop such activities or hold those responsible accountable
PUBLISHED
June 2, 2026
READ TIME
3 min read
SOURCE
Sarah Abbas
Western Syria Alliance Warns of Incitement and Boycott Campaign Against Alawites in Syria
The Western Syria Alliance (WSA) strongly condemns the ongoing campaign of incitement and boycott targeting Alawites in Syria. This campaign has been escalating openly across social media platforms and through religious and media figures associated with the de facto authorities in Damascus, while no meaningful measures have been taken to stop such activities or hold those responsible accountable.
This campaign has gone far beyond traditional sectarian rhetoric and has evolved into organized calls for the social and economic boycott of Alawites. These calls include refusing to buy from, sell to, interact with, marry, or communicate with Alawites, as well as explicit demands that they leave their communities and homeland under slogans such as, “Leave—you are not a tree.”
These practices evoke troubling historical precedents that preceded the persecution of other religious and ethnic groups, most notably Jews in Europe during the 1930s. At that time, campaigns began with hate speech, incitement, and economic and social boycotts, accompanied by efforts to isolate Jews from society and strip them of their humanity and fundamental rights, before ultimately developing into one of the most horrific humanitarian catastrophes in modern history.
The purpose of invoking this comparison is not to equate different historical events or circumstances, but rather to warn that the underlying mechanisms remain strikingly similar. The pattern often begins with incitement, followed by social exclusion, then the erosion of rights, and ultimately the justification of violence against the targeted community.
Today, following the massacres and violations that have affected Alawite areas in recent months, and amid the continued reports of killings, kidnappings, enforced disappearances, and systematic discrimination, allowing boycott and hate campaigns against Alawites to continue unchecked is a deeply alarming indicator of the growing normalization of sectarian exclusion rather than the construction of a state founded on citizenship, equality, and the rule of law.
The silence of the de facto authorities in the face of these calls, and their failure to take clear action against those promoting them, raises serious questions regarding their political and moral responsibility for fostering an environment in which hatred against an entire segment of Syrian society can spread solely because of its religious identity.
Members of the Alawite community are increasingly asking: if public calls for our boycott, isolation, and displacement can be disseminated openly without consequence, what is to prevent future waves of violence and massacres? What genuine guarantees can the de facto authorities provide for the protection of minorities in Syria?
Accordingly, the Western Syria Alliance calls upon the United States, the European Union, Canada, the United Kingdom, and all democratic nations to reassess their policies toward the de facto authorities in Damascus and to exert meaningful pressure to ensure immediate action against hate speech and sectarian incitement. We further call for effective protection of religious and ethnic minorities and for accountability for anyone advocating discrimination, boycott, exclusion, or displacement on the basis of religious identity.
History teaches us that atrocities do not begin with mass violence; they begin with words, stigmatization, exclusion, and the normalization of hatred. When incitement is allowed to spread unchecked, innocent people ultimately pay the price.
Issued by the Western Syria Alliance (WSA)
