In early March, alarming reports surfaced of the killing of Christians in Syria. As a shocking outbreak of violence claimed the lives of over 1,000 people within just two days, including 745 civilians, many outlets were quick to claim that the country’s Christian community had been the target.
GB News led with ‘Christians massacred as Syrian jihadist launches killing spree just weeks after toppling Assad’; a writer for the Times of Israel lamented what he identified as the media’s ‘predictable’ disdain for Syrian Christians; the Christian outlet Relevant Magazine claimed that ‘hundreds of Christians’ were among those killed, and countless posts on social media amplified claims of Christians being deliberately targeted and murdered in large numbers.
Such reporting appeared to confirm the worst fears that many have harboured since December 2024, when President Bashir al-Assad was ousted by a coalition of rebel groups led by the Islamist military organisation Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an organisation sanctioned by the US government. In the immediate aftermath of the takeover, many predominantly – though not exclusively – Christian outlets expressed understandable concern over impending threats to the country’s Christian community, with some warning of potential ‘ethnic cleansing’, ‘persecution’ and ‘genocide’.
But in reality, this has not come to fruition under the HTS, and the depiction of recent attacks as having specifically targeted Christians is both misleading and dangerous.
An overlooked reality
The recent violence erupted on 6 March, when fighters loyal to the deposed Assad regime ambushed and killed 13 Syrian security officers in Latakia Governorate in the northwest of the country. The authorities’ response was swift, with thousands of pro-government fighters descending on the region in response to calls for a ‘general mobilisation’.
Latakia, along with the neighbouring Tartus Governorate to the south, is one of the few governorates in Syria that has an Alawite majority, to which the country’s former president belonged. Though most Alawites were not affiliated with the former regime, the community has nonetheless been viewed with hostility and suspicion in the wake of the HTS takeover, and was the specific target of the recent outbreak of violence.
In response to the widespread misleading coverage of the attacks, a group of pastors from Latakia released a statement denying any systematic targeting of Christians. CSW sources on the ground and other organisations subsequently confirmed that only four of those killed were known to be Christians, and that they did not appear to have been targeted because of their faith.
Meanwhile, Deutsche Welle (DW) News fact-checked multiple posts, images and videos that had been widely shared online, finding that reports of the crucifixion and beheading of Christians, the parading of naked women among the dead, and the use of barrel bombs were all unfounded, and that several people had been falsely identified as victims.
The truth often takes time
Facts are important. They are foundational to the way in which we navigate and speak on behalf of those who are facing some of the worst brutalities. That work starts with an unbiased investigation of what has happened, who was involved, where it occurred and who has the authority to either prevent the violation, or to take steps to convict perpetrators and compensate victims.
These investigations take time, which is not always appreciated by those who care deeply about the atrocities they may be seeing on their timelines, especially if they fear that nothing is being done to intervene. The temptation can be to share stories, images and videos quickly, without taking due care to ensure that what is being shared has occurred in the way it has been described or depicted.
Sensationalising stories and manipulating facts to enhance a specific narrative exacerbates the frustrations and fears of entire communities who experience or anticipate threats to their existence. As violence in the region continues there are valid reasons to be concerned for the safety of Christians and other minority religious communities across the country. But sharing and amplifying unverified and exaggerated claims is not helpful to them.
There is also a risk that doing so might be perceived as ‘crying wolf’, ultimately undermining genuine calls for intervention and justice both for communities that are being directly affected in the moment – such as the Alawites – and communities that could potentially be targeted in the future.
Similarly, news emerged in February from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) of the massacre and beheadings of over 70 Christians by an IS affiliate, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). The reports sparked outrage among prominent voices, who decried the lack of international concern at the brutal murder of Christians whose bodies were reportedly discovered in a church.
But while there is no denying the ADF targets Christian schools, churches and villages in both the DRC and Uganda, this particular report remains unverified and has been denied by local security and church sources. Unfortunately, given the report’s virality, future efforts to highlight egregious violations and request effective interventions to protect civilians may meet with a degree of hesitancy on the part of international media or officials who would usually be of assistance.
When the facts don’t matter
Sadly, it is not controversial to suggest that the importance of factual accuracy, and indeed the very concept of ‘truth’, is under significant and accelerating threat in 2025.
In January, Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company was ending the use of independent fact-checkers on Facebook, Instagram and Threads – platforms which currently boast over three billion, two billion and 320 million monthly active users respectively – casually acknowledging that this would mean they would ‘catch less bad stuff’ in the process.
Zuckerberg indicated that Meta would adopt a mechanism similar to that of X (formerly Twitter)’s community notes system, despite the fact that researchers have found X’s system still relies heavily on professional fact-checkers, and, concerningly, that close to 85% of community notes remain invisible to X users.
X’s owner Elon Musk, meanwhile, has been found to have promoted multiple false claims and conspiracy theories, and has been accused by world leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer of interfering in democratic processes and spreading misinformation.
[Editor’s Note: Misinformation differs from disinformation in that involves the spread of inaccurate information without malicious intent, whereas disinformation is shared with the deliberate intention of deceiving people. Influential voices are spreading both.]
In February, the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – which was created by US President Donald Trump – published a list on X in which it claimed that the US Agency for International Development (USAid) had distributed a $21 million grant to help voter turnout in India. Despite fact-checkers at the Indian Express finding that no such funds had ever been distributed, President Trump himself was quick to amplify the claim, which was in turn seized upon by members of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who have used it to lend legitimacy to an ongoing crackdown on human rights under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Since taking power in 2014, the BJP has presided over a significant deterioration in human rights, promoting a Hindu nationalist agenda and accusing international civil society and human rights groups of trying to undermine India. The government routinely arrests human rights defenders and anyone that it perceives as a critic, and has imposed strict controls on foreign funding for non-governmental organisations under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Amendment Act 2020 (FCRA). As of February 2025, the Ministry of Home Affairs had cancelled over 20,000 FCRA licences, including those of many organisations working on human rights.
The BJP, and its ideological arm the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has also systematically propagated misinformation and suspicion surrounding religious minorities, claiming, for instance, that Christian missionaries involved in religious conversions are ‘anti-national’.
Meanwhile, Muslims have been portrayed as interlopers who are trying to capture India from the Hindus. Given labels that derogate their identity, targeted attacks on Muslims have risen sharply since the BJP came to power. While the party claims to support secularism, inflammatory speech, hate crimes and support – either explicit or tacit – by officials from the BJP and the RSS are routine occurrences.
It was therefore unsurprising that multiple BJP officials, including India’s vice-president and foreign minister, were quick to express shock and concern at DOGE’s so-called findings; however, none appear to have walked back their comments since they were found to be untrue. It is enough for their purposes that the information was lent legitimacy by being shared on a social media account run by the richest man in the world, and repeated by the President of the United States.
Truth is not the only casualty
In the battle for information and engagement, social media has become an important space to ‘win’. Without fact-checkers, these spaces are ceded to those who shout the loudest, those who can capture the minds and hearts of the many. This makes the job of verifying facts and determining an appropriate response to events much harder.
When truth is a casualty, real people are affected, particularly the victims of human rights violations. Political support is slowed down for fear of getting things wrong, testimonies of real suffering are not immediately believed, and those who care about these individuals and communities find it increasingly challenging to build coalitions, campaign for action and effect positive, lasting change.
By CSW’s CEO Scot Bower
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