The disappearances of Christians under the Assad regime

DARAMSUQ (Damascus) — On Saturday, July 5, 2025, the Greek (Rûm) Orthodox Archdiocese of Daraa will hold a special funeral Mass in honor of the late journalist Joseph Metri Jawabra, who was executed by the Syrian regime in 1982. The liturgy will also commemorate his relatives and companions Hanna Eid and Isa Jawabra, who were executed alongside him—silenced for their words, punished for their defiance. The document of their execution, long buried in regime archives, surfaced earlier this year, validating what many Christians had long feared but could never prove. 

This memorial is more than a solemn religious service. It is a rare act of public remembrance in a country still haunted by the ghosts of its disappeared. 

Since the Assad family’s rise to power in the 1970s, hundreds of Christians—journalists, priests, political figures, and ordinary citizens—have vanished into the regime’s prison system, never to be seen again. Their families were left in the shadows, unable to bury their dead or demand justice. Their churches whispered prayers for the missing behind closed doors. Today, that silence is beginning to crack. 

One of the most prominent Syriac disappearances was that of Saeed Malki, the former deputy-leader of the Syriac Union Party (SUP). Detained at Qamishli Airport on August 12, 2013, Malki was never officially charged or tried. More than a decade later, his whereabouts remain unknown. His case, emblematic of many, is a chilling reminder that not even peaceful political dissent was tolerated by the Assad regime. 

Also, still unaccounted for are Archbishops Youhanna Ibrahim (Syriac Orthodox) and Boulos Yazji (Greek (Rûm) Orthodox), who were abducted near Holeb (Aleppo) on April 22, 2013, in an operation widely believed to have been conducted with the knowledge—or complicity—of state forces. Despite international pressure and repeated appeals by religious institutions, their fate remains shrouded in mystery. 

In 2024, following the collapse of the Assad regime, investigative journalists and human rights groups gained access to intelligence archives once guarded with absolute secrecy. Among the files was a June 2012 memo detailing prisoner’s deaths in custody. The documents confirmed that bodies were routinely transferred to military hospitals and buried without notifying families. Names were redacted, but cross-referencing with witness accounts and hospital records pointed to at least dozens of Christians among the victims. 

According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, an estimated 100,000 Syrians remain forcibly disappeared—including thousands from Christian communities. While the regime often portrayed Christians as “protected minorities,” archival and witness evidence now reveals the truth: that “protection” was conditional, and dissenters—particularly those who spoke out or advocated reform—were treated as enemies of the state. 

In fact, the same network documented that 61 percent of attacks on Christian places of worship since 2011 were carried out by the regime itself, either directly or through allied forces. Churches were shelled, looted, or repurposed for military use, especially in rebellious districts like Hmoth (Homs) and Holeb (Aleppo). 

A 2012 legal decree—paragraph 22—authorized capital punishment for any individual suspected of “collaborating with foreign entities.” In practice, it became a tool to crush free expression. At least 181 journalists, including Syriac and Armenian Christians, are confirmed to have been executed or died under torture since 2011. Many more were detained or disappeared; their fates still unrecorded. 

Among them was Joseph Metri Jawabra, whose critical writings sealed his fate under Hafez al-Assad’s rule. His execution, long denied by official sources, has now been validated by a recovered security document and witness testimony. The revelation has reawakened the grief of an entire generation.

Today, Syriac advocacy organizations—such as the Bethnahrin National Council (Mawtbo Umthoyo d’Bethnahrin, MUB)—are leading the call for accountability. With support from the United Nations’ Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, they have compiled testimonies, exhumed files, and lobbied for reparations and prosecution of those responsible. Their aim is not revenge, but transparency and remembrance. “The first step toward justice,” says one activist involved in the archive project, “is to speak the names of the forgotten.” 

The fall of the Assad regime in December 2024 has opened a narrow but critical window. For the first time, civil society organizations and independent media have access to once-forbidden sites—military prisons, interrogation centers, intelligence archives. Investigators are racing against time to document as much as possible before these openings close, either through chaos or political realignment. 

As Syria embarks on constitutional reform and tentative democratization, the fate of the disappeared must be central to national reckoning. The new government cannot claim legitimacy while thousands remain unacknowledged in mass graves or black files. This includes Joseph Jawabra, Saeed Malki, Archbishops Ibrahim and Yazji, Hanna Eid, and Isa Jawabra—all names that echo through Syria’s forgotten corridors. 

For the Christian community, Saturday’s memorial in Daraa is not just a commemoration of loss. It is an act of defiance against erasure. It is a prayer for the return of justice. It is a public cry that these stories—once buried—will no longer be silenced. Syria, if it is to be reborn, must listen.