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Syria Ends Celebration of 6 October and Other Holidays

October 6, 2025
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By Nadine Tag

Journalist

mm

By Nadine Tag

Journalist

As Egypt on Sunday celebrated its annual October 6 Victory Day, commemorating the 1973 Arab-Israeli war known in Israel as the Yom Kippur War, neighboring Syria drew attention across Arab media for a strikingly different move. President Ahmad al-Sharaa has issued a decree reshaping the country’s official calendar and abolishing several long-standing national holidays.

The new order, announced in Damascus, eliminates four commemorations that had been observed under former President Bashar al-Assad. Among them are March 8 Revolution Day, Teachers’ Day, Martyrs’ Day, and 6 October’s Liberation War.

The decision has drawn criticism from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which expressed “astonishment and deep regret” over the removal of 6 May, Martyrs’ Day, and 6 October, both of which, it said, hold “considerable national significance” as symbols of sacrifice and unity in modern Syrian history.

In a statement, the Britain-based monitoring group warned that erasing these observances risks severing Syrians from a shared past that transcends politics. The legacy of the 1973 war with Israel, the group stated, does not belong to any one ruler or administration, but to all Syrians, from every region, community, and generation, who took part in defending their homeland and preserving its honor.

The Observatory cautioned that “tampering with national memory” for political ends threatens Syria’s collective identity and the values that once united its people against occupation and repression. The group described honoring the country’s fallen as a moral obligation, one that no official decree or bureaucratic decision can erase or redefine.

The statement concluded that honoring Syria’s martyrs is, in itself, an act of honoring the nation, a testament to true patriotism that cannot be defined or claimed by any regime or political party.

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