A faction claiming participation in the hactivist collective Anonymous has struck the web pages of the Syrian Ministry of Defense (currently offline) and defaced them with a message about the massacres occurring in that country. According to The Hacker News, the Anonymous logo and a note can be seen on the homepage. In the wake of the five month-log Arab Spring protests this adds to numerous avenues of pressure against the Syrian government for their part in contributing to over 17,000 civilian deaths.

The message from Anonymous reads:

To the Syrian people: The world stands with you against the brutal regime of Bashar Al-Assad. Know that time and history are on your side – tyrants use violence because they have nothing else, and the more violent they are, the more fragile they become. We salute your determination to be non-violent in the face of the regime’s brutality, and admire your willingness to pursue justice, not mere revenge. All tyrants will fall, and thanks to your bravery Bashar Al-Assad is next.

To the Syrian military: You are responsible for protecting the Syrian people, and anyone who orders you to kill women, children, and the elderly deserves to be tried for treason. No outside enemy could do as much damage toSyriaas Bashar Al-Assad has done. Defend your country – rise up against the regime! – Anonymous.

The AP reports that the crackdown against the uprising comes at a time when Syria’s President Bashar Assad has removed the country’s defense minister and replaced him with the army’s chief of staff. Not only has this Anonymous defacing come at a fitting time, according to an NPR rundown of events, but numerous other neighboring countries and other political powers have put pressure onSyria to stop this gruesome bloodshed.

The number of 1,7000 civilians being killed have been since the start of the uprising that began mid-March; but according to theBBC, over 300 have been killed in the past week alone. Due to extreme limits put on international journalism inside ofSyria, it’s difficult to ascertain exactly what is going on.

The intervention of Anonymous, acting to subvertSyria’s public face through their Ministry of Defense, adds yet another layer to the world-reaction to their activities.

As of this writing of this article, it may be the case that the Syrian government took the web pages offline while they attempt to fix the defacement. While Anonymous had subjected government targets to DDoS attacks in the past, it seems unlikely that any part of the collective would want to suppress their own message of encouragement and ire.

Perhaps the next stage might be to bolster the journalistic knowledge of events within the country via the LulzSec method of jacking and dumping data from vulnerable Syrian servers—seen used by Anonymous and the AntiSec movement against Turkey over censorship doctrines.