Members of the Australian Alawite community are receiving harrowing messages from their families and friends in Syria.

Some have made the dangerous border crossing to Lebanon with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Others have fled to other areas in Syria, sheltering with relatives and friends. Still others are trapped in their homes, waiting in fear for a knock on the door.

The knock on the door from members of Hayat Tarir al-Sham and its affiliates is usually how it begins. They say they’re coming to perform a search. There’s nothing left to search. After 8 December 2024, soldiers from the former Syrian Arab Army surrendered their weapons and uniforms as requested. They also provided their full details at “reconciliation” centres. Many who didn’t surrender were hunted down and summarily executed.

HTS and its affiliates first rob the families of jewellery, phones, and sometimes the title to their home. Entire families have been killed, from the elderly to infants. Some are tied up and their homes set alight, while others — the men, teenage boys, and pre-pubescent boys — are taken outside and executed. Some bodies are found with their organs missing.

For me, waking up in suburban Melbourne to horrific news from Syria has become the norm, but it doesn’t get easier. When I heard of the murder of 15-year-old Ibrahim Chahine, killed in Baniyas while buying breakfast for his family during Eid, I thought of my own 13-year-old son and his walks to our local shops to buy milk.

In the last few days, I have watched the video of a father relating how his son was slaughtered and his heart removed by the takfiri perpetrators of the massacres. And of a grandfather speaking to camera about the brutal killings of his three young grandchildren, their mother and maternal grandmother and a 10-year-old friend who happened to be visiting the family.

Our families and friends in Syria implore us to share their voices with the wider community in Australia. They are begging us to help. We’re sending money to our relatives for basic items like food and medicine, but even this comes with the risk of extortion when they go to pick up the money in cash. Sending money to our relatives is becoming increasingly difficult logistically. We feel helpless.

The motivation of HTS and its affiliates is the outright genocide of Alawites. Calls for the extermination of Alawites ring out from mosques controlled by the new regime. There are numerous videos documenting the incitement of an Alawite genocide; some also call for the driving out of Christians and Shia from Syria.

The courage of Sunnis and Christians who shelter Alawites is extraordinary. Those who speak out against the ethnic cleansing risk their lives. For example, in early March, a prominent Sunni sheikh in Damascus, Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al Dalaa, who spoke out against the pogroms, was tortured and killed in his home by HTS or takfiris acting at their behest.

Today I met a friend, an Australian legal professional with Syrian relatives. Her cousins had sent photos of their passports, pleading for help to leave Syria. As my friend was showing me the photos, I began crying. There were passport photos of beautiful young women, toddlers, babies. My mind raced as I thought of their likely fate.

Protection visas issued by the Australian Government are scarce. It takes three to four years for applications from Syrians to be reviewed, and applicants must leave Syria, which is dangerous due to HTS targeting those crossing the border.

All Australian Alawites have family and friends in Syria. Many are grieving for those of our loved ones who have been brutally killed, abducted, left homeless or forced to flee for their lives. We’re in despair when we think of the fate of hundreds of girls and women who’ve been kidnapped for use as sex slaves by HTS and its affiliates.

During the cost-of-living crisis in Australia, we’re working hard to support family and friends in Syria and those who have crossed into Lebanon. I feel particular despair for those Alawites who don’t have relatives in the diaspora to help.

Australian Alawites are also living in fear. Australian media reporting on the genocide encourages sectarianism by whitewashing HTS and its pogroms, which have been misleadingly described as “clashes” and “revenge attacks” on “Assad loyalists”. And so the killings of thousands of innocent civilians by those who adhere to a dangerous, exclusivist ideology hardly registers here.

Since 9/11, the radicalisation of Australian Sunni Muslims has been insidious, with even some ABC journalists appearing to support HTS. This begs the question: if Alawite Muslims are labelled heretics who deserve extermination, what does this mean for our diverse Australian society, where there are potentially millions of “heretics”, not just the thousands of Alawite Syrian Australians?

The fear is very real for a good friend’s nephew, who attends high school in Melbourne. He’s been bullied at school by a Sunni boy who is known to have carried a knife to school.

My friend’s nephew is being targeted simply because he is Alawite, and he can’t change his identity. But, in some sense, the bully is a victim, too. The sectarian hatred he expresses has been deliberately incited over the past 14 years – since the so-called Syrian war erupted. It is not healthy; it’s not normal for a schoolboy in Melbourne. It has been instilled in him by adults oblivious to the consequences of their ignorance and bigotry.

As a woman with young children, I keep my Alawite heritage secret. One of the first questions a person of Lebanese or Syrian descent is asked by others from the diaspora is “what is your family name?” or “which area are you from back home?”

These questions are asked to determine which sect you belong to. I often lie about where I’m from for fear of violence being directed towards my children or myself.

When I speak about this to my Anglo-Australian friends, they’re shocked. But Australia has its own dark history, both of genocide and of sectarian divisions and hatred – a past to reference in today’s increasingly fraught times.

We need to learn from history as soon as possible.