The voice rising from the walls of Tadmur

On my latest return from Syria, what stayed in my ears were the terrifying accounts of the tortures that Dr. Rania's father, Muhammad Eid Abbasi, endured for 13 years in Tadmur prison, which he entered in 1980. The Saydnaya atrocity that spilled out immediately after Syria's liberation from the 60-year Baath regime on 8 December 2024 laid bare how the regime had made massacres, torture and every kind of human rights violation systematic.

However, the lights trained on Saydnaya may have created the impression that this cruelty was committed only or chiefly there, which would be very wrong. All over Syria there were systematic mechanisms of torture, abduction and extermination no less than Saydnaya's.

Tadmur prison was one of them. If you listened to what Abbasi himself recounts of what he lived through, sleep might not come to your eyes for days. They say there were occasional transfers from Tadmur prison to Saydnaya. Of those transferred it was said, "they got comfortable, they were saved." In other words, Tadmur prison is a veritable legend of the Baath regime's mercilessness.

Two days ago, on the occasion of the anniversary of a massacre carried out in this prison in 1980, the Tadmor Prison Survivors Association (Tedmur Hapishanesinde Hayata Kalanlar Derneği) issued a statement. The statement expresses the hope that, in the new situation after 8 December, the prospect of justice is now stronger, but it also asks that this event be remembered as a lesson, within the scope of crimes against humanity not subject to statutes of limitation.

In the early hours of 27 June 1980, soldiers under the command of Rifaat al-Assad entered the prison, went through the wards one by one, opened fire with machine guns on the detainees inside, threw hand grenades into some wards, and killed those who survived the attack wounded. As a result of the operation, completed within a few hours, the prison was turned into virtually a mass grave. No reason was sought for the massacre, but the pretext of that day was an assassination attempt said to have been made on Assad. It is estimated that about 1,000 detainees died in the massacre.

The significance of the Tadmur Massacre does not stem only from the number of its victims. First of all, the event has gone down in history as one of the most striking examples of extrajudicial execution, of a massacre carried out by the state itself against unarmed, defenseless people held in state custody. The prisoners were killed without any court ruling, without being granted the right of defense, and without any legal process being carried out. For this reason it is explicitly regarded by international human rights organizations as falling within mass execution and crimes against humanity.

The massacre also led to Tadmur Prison becoming a symbol of the repressive regime in Syria. The prison, already notorious for years for systematic torture, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances and degrading practices targeting human dignity, turned after 27 June 1980 into the most visible symbol of the Baath regime's politics of fear. In the collective memory of Syrians, Tadmur is no longer merely a prison; it has become the name of state-organized oppression and absolute domination.

The following sentence appears in the Tadmor Prison Survivors Association's statement:

"A state based on the rule of law and equal citizenship cannot be built upon silence. Without confronting the crimes committed, without clarifying the fate of the forcibly disappeared, and without delivering justice for the victims and their families, it is not possible to establish a genuine and lasting social reconciliation."

In fact, this sentence summarizes not only what happened in Tadmur but also the greatest test before the new Syria today.

Tadmur was no ordinary prison. It was one of the most visible symbols of the regime of fear that ruled in Syria for over half a century. It was a place where not only people's bodies but their memories, their dignity and their hopes for the future were punished. What happened there were not merely crimes committed against particular persons but a threat meant to be delivered to an entire society. Between the walls of Tadmur the aim was not only to imprison people but to condemn society to silence.

Today, after the fall of the regime, Syria has entered a new period. But every revolution comes face to face with the question of how it will reckon with its own past. Neither trying to forget the past entirely nor reproducing it with a sense of revenge is the solution. The lasting solution is the uncovering of the truth and the establishment of justice.

That is why what stands out especially in the statement of those who survived Tadmur is that they demand justice, not revenge. The statement says:

"Our starting point is not a feeling of revenge but our unshakable belief that justice is the basic condition of lasting peace."

This expression is vital for the building of the new Syria. Because a country can build a common future only to the extent that it can hear the voice of the victims, investigate the fate of the missing, and hold the perpetrators to account. Otherwise suppressed suffering continues to be a source of new conflicts and new fractures in the future.

One of the things that has caught the attention of everyone who has visited Syria recently is that the people have begun to feel a sense of belonging to their state again. People who lived for years with a state that did not represent them and on the contrary inspired fear in them feel for the first time that the state can belong to them. But for a state to truly be a "homeland" for all its citizens does not depend only on roads being built, institutions functioning or the economy recovering. It also depends on the recognition of the wrongs suffered in the past and on satisfying the victims' sense of justice.

That is why the voice rising from Tadmur is, beyond being an elegy for the past, a warning about the future.

Syria today has a historic opportunity before it. This opportunity is not only to clear away the ruins left by the old regime but also to build a new political community on the basis of citizenship. The way to it is not forgetting but remembering; not covering up but bringing to light; not revenge but seeking justice.