THE European Commission has invited representatives of Syria’s Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), currently ruling Syria, to attend an official donor conference despite the group’s ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign against the Alawite minority, which has resulted in the deaths of over 1,500 civilians in recent weeks.
European Commission spokesperson Anitta Hipper announced that an invitation had been extended to HTS Foreign Ministry officials, inviting them to attend the conference titled: Standing with Syria: Meeting the Needs for a Successful Transition, scheduled for 17th March in Brussels.
It will be the first conference organised by the EU since HTS forces overthrew the government of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
‘The conference presents an “opportunity” to engage with Syria’s new rulers,’ Hipper stated, though she noted the EU remains cautious in its dealings with HTS, despite ‘good’ initial signals.
However, human rights organisations and international observers have strongly condemned HTS’s actions, describing them explicitly as ‘ethnic cleansing’ and documenting widespread war crimes against Alawite communities in the provinces of Tartus, Latakia, Hama and Homs.
Since the start of March, HTS forces have systematically targeted Alawite civilians, conducting kidnappings – often in groups of five or ten people daily – as well as extrajudicial executions and humiliating acts of forced degradation, including forcing victims to ‘bark like dogs’.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), violence by HTS forces has resulted in at least 1,540 civilian deaths since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government on 8th December 2024. The vast majority of those abducted, killed, or humiliated were members of the Alawite religious minority.
Despite HTS publicly claiming to focus on Syria’s transition to stability, critics highlight a stark contrast between its stated intentions and its actions. The group has notably ignored threats from extremists, failing to address kidnappings and extra-judicial killings, focusing instead on violently targeting Alawites, including documented incidents of mass abductions and humiliating treatment.
EU spokesperson Hipper defended the decision to invite HTS representatives, arguing that dialogue with the new administration could foster stability, although she stopped short of condemning the massacres.
