Syrian human rights activists planning to demonstrate against long-standing emergency laws scrapped their protest on Thursday when hundreds of government supporters showed up earlier near a Damascus courthouse. Witnesses said crowds of young men and a few women with Syrian flags and pictures of President Bashar Assad gathered before the rights activists could begin their protest. "They hijacked the event ... I didn't see any arrests or violence," said one diplomat who was at the scene.Hassan Abdel-Azim, speaking for the group behind the rights protest, accused the government of using "totalitarian" tactics to foil the demonstration with the help of a student militia. "We did not respond to the provocation and avoided confrontation and pulled out peacefully," he told reporters. The protest was intended to call for an end to a 42-year-old emergency law and the abolition of special courts.
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