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العربية
For the first time since it was committed, the anniversary of the Al-Joura and Al-Qusour massacre in Deir Ezzor is being commemorated today, following the fall of the regime that carried it out. Thirteen years have passed, yet the pain still dwells in hearts, the blood still cries out against the silence, and justice remains non exisistung.
On this day known as Black Tuesday the Fourth Division and members of the Republican Guard, backed by foreign militias whose fighters spoke with a Persian accent, stormed the streets of the Joura and the Qusour neighborhoods, committing one of the most horrific sectarian massacres in Syria.
The campaign was orchestrated by the criminals Issam Zahreddine and Ali Khuzam, both known for their brutality and bloodshed, until they themselves later were killed in ways that eerily mirrored their crimes.
Homes were transformed into graves. Corpses filled the streets. Entire families were executed —children, women, and the elderly, shot, slaughtered with knives, or burned alive. These are scenes that can never be erased from the memories of those who survived, standing as a lasting testament to a savagery unlike anything in the city’s History.
Thirteen years on, the stench of death still chokes the alleys of Deir Ezzor. The tears of mothers still burn in the chests of the grieving. Hundreds of missing persons remain unaccounted for, their voices silenced, heard only in the faint echo of justice that has yet to come.
But today, the wounds of the past are reopened to declare that blood of the innocent was not spilled in vain, and that commemorating the massacre after the fall of the regime is not merely an act of mourning, but a promise of accountability, a pledge that the truth will not be buried, and the martyrs will not be forgotten.
The souls of those unjustly taken demand not just mercy, but full justice: accountability for everyone who ordered, participated in, or carried out the massacre. From the graves of Al-Joura and Al-Qusour rise cries for trials as fair and severe as the crime itself.
Today, we remember not only from a place of sorrow, but also from a place of hope, that massacres will never be repeated, and that memory will remain alive until Syria is rebuilt from the ashes of tyranny, into a state where no ruler kills his people, and no dignity is violated in the name of power.
