In a Facebook post, the state secretary at Hungary's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade responsible for programs to help persecuted Christians said that a picture taken yesterday in Al-Suqaylabiyah, Syria, shows Islamist extremists trying to deter local indigenous Christians by burning the village's Christmas tree.
The Christmas tree was restored today by the town's well-meaning Christian and non-Christian residents, providing a glimmer of hope in the despair, he added.
Hundreds of Syrian Christians protested in Damascus on Tuesday against the burning of a Christmas tree in a public square near the central Syrian city of Ham, the French news agency AFP reported.
We demand that they ensure the rights of Christians,
the protesters chanted as they marched through the streets of Damascus.
More than two weeks after the overthrow of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad by the armed militants led by the Islamist group Hajat Tahrir as-Sham (HTS), people from different neighborhoods spontaneously gathered to express their discontent and fears.
The ousted president had presented himself as a defender of minorities in the predominantly Sunni country.
Some of the protesters carried wooden crosses, while others raised the three-star Syrian flag of independence adopted by the new authorities.
The protests erupted after a video of hooded fighters setting fire to a Christmas tree in a predominantly Orthodox Christian settlement near Hama was posted on social media.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the fighters were foreign members of the jihadist group Ansar al-Tauvid.
In another video that went viral on social media, a local HTS leader can be seen addressing area residents, claiming that the perpetrators of the attack were not Syrian and promising to punish them.
Unifying a country divided by years of bloody war, with many factions of different faiths and many religious minorities, is a major challenge for the HTS.
Cover photo: Christmas tree set on fire in Syria (Source: Tristan Azbej/Facebook)
