WarSclerotic

ASSAD’S FORCES OPEN FIRE ON UNARMED PROTESTERS AFTER PRAYERS.

Al Arabiya

ASSAD’S FORCES OPEN FIRE ON UNARMED PROTESTERS AFTER PRAYERS

Friday, 17 June 2011

Syrian solderis drive through Jisr al-Shughur. (GETTY photo)

Syrian forces opened fire on protesters in the western city of Banias Friday, causing casualties, a rights activist said, adding that demonstrations were being staged in several places across the country after the weekly Muslim main prayers.

Elsewhere in Syria, thousands of people took to the streets again after the opposition called for a day of massive demonstrations, pressing on with their three-month-old campaign to topple authoritarian President Bashar Al Assad.

Troops in large numbers poured into Maaret al-Numan, 45 kilometers (28 miles) from the Turkish border, said Syria-based rights activist Mustafa Osso. He said other forces were now massing around Khan Sheikhon, to the south, where gunmen attacked army forces earlier this month.

Omar Idilbi of the Local Coordination Committees, which is documenting the protests, said government forces had taken full control of Maaret al-Numan, a town of 100,000 on the highway linking Damascus with Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo. Many of its residents had fled as troops swept through Idlib province in recent days.

Meanwhile, France wants the European Union to impose tougher sanctions on President Assad’s regime in response to his harsh crackdown protesters, the French foreign ministry said on Friday.

France was reacting after EU officials confirmed they are planning to add more firms and a dozen people to a list of targeted asset freezes and travel bans that already includes Assad and key allies.

“France supports an expansion of the European sanctions against Syria to economic entities,” spokesman Bernard Valero told reporters in Paris, adding that Syrian banks and private firms linked to regime figures could be hit.

He said discussions were under way with fellow EU states ahead of a meeting on Monday of the bloc’s foreign affairs committee.

Since the protests erupted in mid-March, Mr. Assad has unleashed the military in region after region to crush street demonstrations. Human rights activists say more than 1,400 Syrians have been killed and 10,000 detained. Some 9,600 others from the northwest have sought refuge in camps in neighboring Turkey.

One of those refugees, asking to be identified only as Mohamed, said he fled with his family as the military besieged Jisr al-Shughour, a rebellious town it recaptured last Sunday.

“I saw people who were beheaded with machine-gun fire from helicopters,” and man tortured to death when security forces “poured acid on to his body,” he told The Associated Press.

He said a sugar factory in the city was turned into a jail where they “hold quick trials and execute anyone who they believe participated in protests.”

It’s impossible to independently confirm many accounts coming out of Syria. Foreign journalists have been expelled from the country and local reporters face tight controls.

In the northeast, meanwhile, about 2,000 protesters marched in the towns of Amouda and Qamishli shortly after Friday prayers ended, chanting for the regime’s downfall, the Local Coordination Committees said.

Friday has become the main day for protests in the Arab world, and Syrians have turned out every week in large numbers nationwide, inspired by democratic revolutions in autocrat-ruled Tunisia and Egypt.

The opposition has attached a name to each Friday’s campaign, naming this one “The Day of Saleh al-Ali,” an Alawite leader who led an uprising against French colonial rule in the 20th century.

Using an Alawite figure’s name was meant to show that President Assad’s opponents were not rising up over secular concerns. The Assad regime is dominated by the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, but the country is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim.

Alawite dominance has bred resentment, which Assad has worked to tamp down by pushing a strictly secular identity in Syria. But the president now appears to be relying heavily on his Alawite power base, beginning with highly placed Assad relatives, to crush the resistance.

The government blames a foreign conspiracy for the unrest, saying religious extremists are behind it – not true reformers. Military chiefs said the northwestern sweep was needed to rid the area of “armed terrorists.”

But refugees like Mohamed said they only want freedom. “What is our guilt? We just demanded freedom and democracy nothing else.”

(Mustapha Ajbaili, a senior editor at Al Arabiya English, can be reached at Mustapha.ajbaili@mbc.net)

Demonstrations ripple across Syria despite… JPost – Middle East.

  AMMAN – Protests against President Bashar Assad re-erupted across Syria on Friday despite a military crackdown and a pledge that Assad’s tycoon cousin, an object of hatred for demonstrators, would renounce his business empire.

Activists said tens of thousands of people rallied in the southern province of Deraa, cradle of the three-month revolt against Assad’s rule, the Kurdish east, the cities of Homs and Hama north of Damascus, and suburbs of the capital itself.

Friday Muslim prayers have been a platform for the biggest protests leading to the most bloodshed, in the uprising inspired by Arab revolts which overthrew the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia and have challenged autocrats across the Middle East. Residents said two northern towns remained encircled by army units, five days after the military retook the rebellious town of Jisr al-Shughour and sent thousands of refugees streaming across the nearby border into Turkey.

Syrian rights groups say 1,300 civilians and more than 300 soldiers and police have been killed since the protests broke out in March against 41 years of rule by the Assad family, and 10,000 people have been detained.

Assad has responded to the unrest with a mix of military repression and political gestures aimed at addressing protesters’ grievances.

On Thursday state media said his billionaire cousin Rami Makhlouf, a symbol of elite corruption and unaccountability for the protesters, was quitting business and handing proceeds to charity.

Makhlouf controls a string of businesses including Syria’s largest mobile phone operator, duty free shops, an oil concession, airline company and hotel and construction concerns, and shares in at least one bank.

He has been subject to U.S. sanctions since 2007 for what Washington calls public corruption, as well as EU sanctions imposed in May, but repeatedly maintained that he was a legitimate businessman whose firms employ thousands of Syrians.

Activists said Makhlouf’s step by itself would not curb the momentum of protests. They said Assad, who has only spoken twice in public since the uprising started, was expected to address the country soon and might unveil further measures.

France, Germany call for tougher sanctions on Syria

Assad faces international condemnation over the violence, as well as the first signs of cracks in his security forces after a clash in Jisr al-Shughour earlier this month in which the government said 120 security personnel were killed.

There have been no mass desertions from the military, but analysts say it is unclear how long the loyalty of rank and file Sunni Muslim conscripts would last if the crackdown on mainly Sunni protesters by Alawite-commanded military forces continues.

Assad’s family is Alawite.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he had spoken to Assad and urged him to halt the violence.

“I again strongly urge President Assad to stop killing people and engage in inclusive dialogue and take bold measures before it’s too late,” Ban told reporters in Brazil.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Friday that France and Germany agreed to lobby for stronger sanctions against Syria, which already faces targeted US and European Union sanctions against its leadership.

“France, hand-in-hand with Germany, calls for tougher sanctions against Syrian authorities who are conducting intolerable and unacceptable actions and repression against the (Syrian) population,” he said after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

France has so far been unable to rally sufficient support at the UN Security Council for a resolution condemning Assad’s crackdown, in part because of reluctance from veto-holding council members China and Russia.

A witness in the Damascus suburb of Irbin said protesters burned a Russian flag on Friday in protest at Moscow’s stance.

Syrian forces have surrounded two nearby towns on the main north-south road linking Damascus with the second city of Aleppo. Villagers have been streaming out of the towns, fearful of an assault similar to the one witnessed in Jisr al-Shughour.

The state news agency has said army units deployed near Khan Sheikhoun and Maarat al-Numaan to ensure the highway’s safety.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu held talks with a Syrian envoy on Thursday in which he called on Damascus to end the violent crackdown and pass democratic reforms.

Turkish officials said the number of refugees who had crossed over from Syria had reached 9,600, and another 10,000 were sheltering by the border just inside Syria.