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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Damascus Declaration: Placing All Terrorist Orgs on Terror Lists, Facing Them

2015-07-27

[ALMANAR.LB] A final statement was issued on Saturday, capping two days of activities within the International Media Conference against Terrorism held in Damascus. al-Manure is of course the news outlet of Hezbollah, which once used a truck bomb to murder 299 American and French troops in Beirut. The statement, named “Damascus Declaration”, called for placing all of the terrorist organizations on the UN and international terror lists and considering them “a common enemy” to all countries and people of the world. That wouldn't include PFLP-GC, naturally, which is owned and operated by the Syrian government. It demanded Security Council decisions and resolutions be issued to compel all countries to confront terrorism by all possible means and cut off support and funding support to terrorist organizations, SANA agency reported. So they're giving up on their creatures, like the guys who assassinated Rafiq Hariri in Beirut? The Declaration called for launching a systematic regional and international action with cooperation and coordination among all the countries on the political, security and military levels to organize confronting the terrorist organizations and come to holding to account any country that provides any form of support to them. That'd be hits at Soddy Arabia and the Gulf states, and Israel of course. Setting up an international legal system to prosecute the backers of terrorism That would seem to fall under the heading of the ICC. We can see how well that's working. and taking measures to ban media outlets from promoting the activities of terrorist organizations were focused on in the Declaration. "Banning" such activities from "media outlets" is probably a hopeless proposition. In the U.S., as in lots of other countries, freedom of the press is a rule. Using such outlets to track down and kill (or convict if you're squeamish) would be much preferred. Among other demands was providing support for the countries and governments facing terrorism, mainly Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Afghanistan, Tunisia and Algeria. That's already the case for most of them. Algeria has been handling AQIM and its offshoots pretty well on its own. Egypt is tackling its Sinai problem, though it's too early to tell if they're going to be successful. Drawing up a joint media work plan for spreading awareness of confronting takfiri thinking and refuting the so-called “Islamophobia” was also called for. Islamophobia--the fear that Moslems will act like they usually do--is the natural fallout from their behavior. Individually they can be nice enough fellows, but in large numbers they are violent, offensive to the host country's culture, a danger to adolescent girls, and afflicted with delusions of religious grandeur. The Declaration did not lose sight of the Palestinian Cause, stressing that this issue will remain at the core of the ongoing conflict with Israel, designating the latter as “the most dangerous epitome of state terrorism.” Harboring, aiding, and abetting various violent Paleostinian groups is fine, y'see? It stressed that the axis of the resistance is “the hope of the region’s countries” to get rid of injustice, repression, aggression and takfiri terrorism. "Takfiri terrorism" is Moslems preying on other Moslems. The participants in the conference announced the formation of a committee tasked with following-up on its outcomes as a prelude for launching an international media gathering against terrorism that would be based in Damascus. Or wherever Assad sets up his government in exile. At the end of the conference, the participants addressed a message to President Bashar al-Assad in which they hailed Syria’s “matchless steadfastness” in confronting the terrorist aggression, stressing that Syria, which is leading the war against terrorism, will remain the “haven of freedom-fighters in the world.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. And everybody admires Kim Jong Un's hairstyle. Assad's people rose up in their wrath to topple him and his dynasty. It's the population's misfortune that the Moslem Brotherhood moved in to take advantage of it, and then the takfiri moved in after them.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Syria Opposition Coalition Member's Son Dies in Regime Jail

2014-02-04

[An Nahar] The son of prominent Syrian activist and opposition National Coalition member Fayez Sara has died after being tortured in a prison in Damascus, his father and the Coalition said Monday. The Coalition's press office announced "the death of Wissam Fayez Sara in prison under torture" in a statement, and his father also confirmed the news on Facebook. "After all the blows we have been dealt, and all the blows that our people have been dealt -- killing, arrests, displacement and destruction -- they told us today that Wissam was tortured to death in the military security branch in Damascus, two months after he was tossed in the slammer Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try! in Damascus," Sara wrote on his Facebook page. He said his son, a 27-year-old father of two, had joined "the deaders of Syria." "Wissam was one of the first among the youth in the revolution to go out, protest and work in activism against the dictatorship," he wrote. He said his son was a "peaceful fighter," and had been arrested for the first time in the spring of 2012 along with his elder brother Bassem, before being released. Wissam was arrested again in December 2013 and "then tortured to death," he wrote. Fayez Sara has been a member of the Coalition's political committee since August 2013. He has been active in opposition, leftist and labor union circles in Syria for decades, and was among the signatories of the Damascus Declaration calling for reform. He has been arrested multiple times and spent two years in prison in the late 1970s for his involvement with leftist groups. He was also held for a month at the beginning of the Syrian uprising in March 2011, and now lives in Turkey.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Leader of Syrian Free Army denies being arrested

2011-10-05

[Al Arabiya] Leader of the so-called Syrian Free Army, Col. Riyadh al-Asaad, denied to Al Arabiya the media reports about his arrest by Syrian government forces. Syrian forces hunted protesters in the central region of Homs as they sought to crush armed resistance that is emerging after six months of protests against President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators. Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor... 's rule, Rooters reported. Monday's crackdown came a day after Syrian opposition groups met in Istanbul and urged international action to stop what they called indiscriminate killings of civilians by the authorities. The United States welcomed the development, saying it was encouraged by the opposition's statements supporting non-violence, and blamed the mounting corpse count on the Syrian authorities. Local activists said a military operation on Monday focused on Talbiseh near Homs, 150 km (94 miles) north of Damascus ...The City of Jasmin is the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti... , after security forces entered the nearby town of Rastan, which lies on the highway between the capital and the northern city of Aleppo ...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins... Meanwhile, ...back at the pound, Zebulon finally found just the friend he'd been looking for... the defected Khalid Ibn al-Walid battalion said that it has withdrawn from Rastan for the sake of protecting civilian lives. Battling protesters and army deserters For about a week, tank- and helicopter-backed troops have battled protesters and army deserters in Rastan, in the most sustained fighting since Syria's uprising began in March. The official Syrian news agency ... and if you can't believe the Official Syrian News Agency who can you believe? said on Saturday government forces had regained control of the town. "Tank fire targeted Talbiseh this morning and communications remain cut. The town was key in supplying Rastan and now it is being punished for that," one activist said. "House to house arrests are continuing in the area for the second day." Armed protesters, mostly in the central Homs region and the northwestern province of Idlib, have been so far outgunned. Activists said dozens of villagers had been locked away in Talbiseh in the past 48 hours and there were deaths and casualties from the raids. Information also was scarce from Rastan, which has been sealed off since tanks moved in at the weekend. Activists said hundreds of people were believed to have been locked away and held in schools and factories in the town. Activists told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named that Syrian troops, going house to house, have jugged more than 3,000 people in the past three days in Rastan, which saw some of the worst fighting of the 6-month-old uprising recently. The activist group Local Coordination Committees said fighting in the town has now stopped after the military operation that left dozens dead. The group and a Rastan-based activist confirmed about 3,000 in the town of 70,000 had been jugged. The activist told AP by telephone that the detainees are being held at a cement factory, as well as some schools and the Sports Club, a massive, four-story compound. "Ten of my relatives have been jugged," said the activist, who asked that he be identified only by his first name Hassan for fear of retaliation. He said he was speaking from hiding in Rastan. Events on the ground are difficult to verify as the authorities have expelled independent journalists from the country or banned them from working, although some foreign news hounds have been allowed to visit. While some Assad opponents have taken up arms, others are still staging demonstrations against his 11-year rule. Night protests erupted on Sunday in several districts of Homs, where a crowd in the Khalidiya district shouted, "Homs is free." Assad, 46, who succeeded his father in 2000, blames the violence on foreign-backed armed gangs. His officials say 700 police and soldiers have died, as well as 700 "mutineers." Surge in sectarian killings A surge in sectarian killings has heightened tensions in the city. The state news agency said. ... and if you can't believe the state news agency who can you believe? "armed terrorist groups" killed five people there on Monday. Residents said two bodies had turned up in the city's Sunni Qarabid neighborhood. Homs has a mixed population, with a few Alawite neighborhoods inhabited by members of Assad's minority sect, alongside others populated by majority Sunni Mohammedans. Underlining the turn towards violence, the authorities said Sariya Hassoun, the son of Mufti Ahmad Hassoun, Syria's state-appointed top holy man, was assassinated in Idlib on Sunday. It was the first attack on the state-backed Sunni clergy who have backed Assad for decades, despite widespread Sunni resentment at Alawite dominance. As Syria's struggle has grown bloodier, claiming at least 2,700 lives so far, according to a U.N. count, demonstrators have begun to demand some form of international protection that stops short of Libya-style Western military intervention. A statement issued in Istanbul on Sunday by a newly formed opposition National Council rejected intervention that "compromises Syria's illusory sovereignty," but said the outside world had a humanitarian obligation to protect the Syrian people. "The Council demands that international governments and organizations meet their responsibility to support the Syrian people, protect them and stop the crimes and gross human rights ...which often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless... violations being committed by the current illegitimate regime." The council said the uprising must remain peaceful but that military assaults, torture and mass arrests were driving Syria "to the edge of civil war and inviting foreign interference." It also said the Moslem Brüderbund, the Damascus Declaration -- which groups established opposition figures -- and grassroots activists had all joined the Council.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Prominent Syrian Opposition Figure Arrested, as Protests Kick Off in Several Areas

2011-08-07

[An Nahar] Security forces on Saturday tossed in the slammer prominent opposition figure and former political prisoner Walid al-Bunni and his two sons, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights chief Rami Abdel Rahman said. The arrests came after Syria vowed on Saturday to hold "free and transparent" elections by the end of 2011 as Arab states in the Gulf joined a chorus of Western pressure over its deadly suppression of anti-regime protests. Meanwhile, ...back at the cheese factory, all the pieces finally fell together in Fluffy's mind... rallies kicked off after the evening Taraweeh prayers in al-Hajar al-Aswad, al-Kiswah and Maadimiyat al-Sham in support of Hama and Deir al-Zour that are under the Syrian army besiege. "The Syrian security services on Saturday evening tossed in the slammer opposition figure and ex-political prisoner Walid al-Bunni" and his sons Moayed and Ayad, the Britannia-based Abdel Rahman told Agence La Belle France Presse in Cyprus by telephone. A doctor by training, the 47-year-old is one of the most high-profile members of the opposition in Damascus ...The City of Jasmin is the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti... In 2000, Bunni was one of the prime movers of the short-lived "Damascus Spring" amid hopes for reform that followed Bashir al-Assad's accession to the presidency after the death of his father Hafez. In May, rights group Amnesia Amnesty International said veteran dissident Bunni was one of several rights activists in Syria "forced into hiding after receiving threats from Syrian authorities." Bunni was one of 12 signatories of the 2005 Damascus Declaration, which called for democratic change in Syria, who were sentenced to 30 months in jail in October 2008 for "damaging the state." He was last released in June 2010. The Syrian government has sought to crush the democracy movement with brutal force, killing around 1,650 civilians and arresting thousands of dissenters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory said around 250 tanks and armored cars were deployed in four districts of Deir al-Zour on Saturday. The tanks were also posted around the airport in Deir al-Zour, many of whose residents started to flee the city from Wednesday, fearing imminent military action. In Homs, "many armored cars and other army vehicles have been posted in the Bab al-Sibaa district," Abdel Rahman said, adding that activists in the city reported gunfire from early morning.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Syrian Army Storms Zabadani, Homs, Readies to Enter al-Bukamal

2011-07-18

[An Nahar] The Syrian army on Sunday set its sights on the town of Zabadani near the Leb border as it pressed ahead in its campaign to overcome an anti-regime revolt, a human rights ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... activist said. In the east, on the frontier with Iraq, security forces were also reported to be preparing to intervene in al-Bukamal after one man was reported killed there on Saturday. "Security forces today penetrated Zabadani," 50 kilometers northwest of Damascus ...The City of Jasmin is the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti... , said Abdul Karim Rihawi, who heads the Syrian League for the Defense of Human Rights. "They searched houses and locked away more than 50 people." Zabadani has seen several protests since demonstrations against the regime of President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators. Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor... erupted in mid-March. Rihawi said soldiers also entered the central city of Homs, 160 kilometers north of the capital. "Four tanks and a troop transport took up position in Dawar al-Khalidiya" in the city, he said. "Residents organized a huge demonstration to protest against their presence." On Saturday, Homs was the scene of festivities between regime supporters and the opposition. Official media on Sunday reported an "explosive" situation in the eastern border town of al-Bukamal. "The situation in al-Bukamal is explosive, so the army is preparing to intervene," said the pro-government daily Al-Watan. "The authorities fear an armed revolt in this border town where (insurgents) can easily find logistical and political support." One civilian was killed in the area on Saturday when security forces opened fire to break up an anti-regime demonstration, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. However, women are made to be loved, not understood... the official SANA news agency spoke of "armed terrorist gangs who stormed a government building and seized the weapons stored there," adding that three security personnel were killed and two kidnapped in the attack. Since the anti-regime protests began, Damascus has consistently blamed the violence on foreign interference and "gangs" seeking to "sow chaos." Activists say the protesters are peaceful and that the fierce government crackdown has left more than 1,400 civilians dead and thousands of others behind bars. Al-Watan said the "situation was back to normal" in the central city of Hama, the epicenter of anti-government protests earlier this month. "The efforts the new governor of Hama has made with civic leaders have borne fruit. The state of civil disobedience which lasted 13 days is over," according to Al-Watan. "With the help of residents, officials have started to remove the roadblocks erected on major thoroughfares." Hama residents had raised barricades to prevent a military operation against the city, where memories of a 1982 crackdown against Islamists that left 20,000 people dead remain fresh. Activists say security forces have killed least 25 civilians in the flashpoint city since July 5, when Damascus sent in tanks in response to an anti-regime demonstration that drew half a million people. Meanwhile, ...back at the barn, Bossy had come up with a new idea... security forces on Sunday relocked away Ali Abdullah, a key opposition figure who had been freed under a general amnesty in May, the Syrian League for the Defense of Human Rights said. Abdullah was picked up during a "vast campaign of arrests" focused on Qatana, a town just west of Damascus. One of the 12 signatories of the 2005 "Damascus Declaration" which called for Syria to move towards democracy, Abdullah had been released under a general amnesty Assad declared in May. The 61-year-old author, who had served a sentence of two and a half years from December 2007 for "undermining the image of the state" and "spreading false news," had originally been set to be released in June 2010. But he remained in jug to face a new trial over comments he had made while in prison on Syrian-Lebanese relations, and on alleged electoral fraud in Iran's 2009 election. Meanwhile, ...back at the Senate, Odius Sepulcher called for war against the Visigoths... Damascus was set later on Sunday for a music festival marking the 11th anniversary of Assad taking the oath of office as president. He succeeded his father, Hafez, who died on June 10, 2000, after ruling the country with an iron grip for three decades.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Syrian forces shell town kill 41

2011-06-03

[Dawn] Syrian forces killed 41 civilians in an effort to crush pro-democracy protests, a human rights ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... lawyer said on Wednesday, as opposition leaders met in Turkey to plot the downfall of Syrian President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad. One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators. Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor... Lawyer Razan Zaitouna told Rooters by telephone from Damascus ...The City of Jasmin is the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti... the 41 dead in Rastan included a four-year-old girl killed as government forces shelled the central town on Tuesday.Five of them were buried in Rastan on Wednesday, she said. Syrian forces also killed nine civilians on Tuesday in the town of Hirak, rights campaigner Ammar Qurabi said on Wednesday. The nine, among them three doctors, one dentist and an 11-year-old girl, were killed by snipers and during the storming of houses in Hirak, where tanks had deployed this week, Qurabi, who heads the Syrian Human Rights Organisation, told Rooters. Rights groups say 1,000 civilians have been killed as Assad seeks to crush a revolt which has turned into the gravest challenge to his 11-year rule. The severity of the crackdown has provoked international condemnation and sanctions. "The revolution inside Syria has declared 'the people want the overthrow of the regime'. We echo it. The price of the blood being shed can only be freedom," Abdelrazzaq Eid, a senior figure in the Damascus Declaration umbrella opposition group, told a conference in the Turkish coastal city of Antalya. The gathering is the first official meeting of activists and opposition figures in exile since protests erupted 10 weeks ago in Deraa, a poor, agricultural city in southern Syria. "The dictatorship has presented nothing to show a modicum of good intentions. It has lost any legitimacy by firing at and killing its own people," Eid said, to the applause of delegates. Syrian authorities blame gangs, backed by Islamists and foreign agitators, for the unrest and say more than 120 police and soldiers have been killed. The meeting in Turkey brought together a broad spectrum of opposition figures driven abroad over the last 30 years, from Islamists crushed in the 1980s, to fleeing Christians. A regional Middle East player, Assad has sought since succeeding his father in 2000 to maintain Syria as an ally of Iran and supporter of myrmidon groups Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, and Hezbullies while seeking better ties with the West and peace with Israel. But Assad's handling of the protests has triggered US and EU sanctions on members of the ruling hierarchy, including himself, after four years of detente with the West. Syria's backer Turkey has also begun to criticise Assad. "Sacrifices" Delegates in Turkey said an ultra-loyalist army controlled by Assad's brother Maher, and a security apparatus which has suppressed dissent for decades, were preventing Damascus and Syria's biggest city Aleppo ...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins... from joining the demonstrations. But they said international pressure and a series of gruesome killings have turned Syrian public opinion against the 45-year-old leader, pointing to a slow but steady expansion of demonstrations, despite an intensified military crackdown. "I am afraid there will be more sacrifices before Assad goes, but this is the nature of revolutions," said Naim al-Salamat, a researcher who lives in Ireland. Thirteen-year-old Hamza al-Khatib has become a potent symbol to protesters after video of his bloodied corpse was posted on the Internet. Activists say he was tortured and killed by security forces. Syrian authorities deny he was tortured and say he was killed when armed gangs shot at government forces. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ... sometimes described as the Smartest Woman in the World and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another Timothy Pickering ... said she was "very concerned" about Khatib's case. "I think what that symbolises for many Syrians is the total collapse of any effort by the Syrian government to work with and listen to their own people," Clinton told a news conference. "I can only hope that this child did not die in vain." Assad has issued decrees aimed at appeasing public grievances. Opposition leaders say they would not change the nature of a repressive political system in which arbitrary arrests, beatings and torture of political detainees are common. State news agency SANA said on Wednesday Assad ordered the formation of a committee tasked with setting the framework for a national dialogue. On Tuesday he announced an amnesty for political prisoners, but rights campaigners said the decree had numerous exceptions, specifying reduced sentences for many cases rather than release. La Belle France said the amnesty had come too late. "The Syrian authorities' change of direction will have to be much clearer and more ambitious than a simple amnesty," La Belle France's Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told La Belle France Culture radio.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Syria opposition to meet in Turkey

2011-05-25

NICOSIA — Syrian opposition leaders are to hold a conference in Turkey next week in support of two-month-old protests against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, one of the organisers told AFP on Tuesday. “The Syrian opposition will organise a conference in Antalya from May 31 to June 2 in support of the revolt in Syria and claims of the Syrian people,” Ammar Qurabi, president of the Egypt-based National Organisation of Human Rights, told AFP. The conference will be open to all supporters of the opposition, independent personalities and representatives of all faiths, he said, referring to a group of reformers who called for democratic changes in 2005 under a statement known as the Damascus Declaration. Since the outbreak of anti-government protests in mid-March, at least 1,062 people have been killed by Syrian security forces, according to Qurabi. He said 10,000 people were arrested during the protests against the autocratic regime of Assad, who succeeded his father Hafez in 2000.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Thousands attend Syria protesters' funerals

2011-04-19

[Al Jazeera] Tens of thousands of Syrians have attended the funerals for protesters killed in the central city of Homs, chanting slogans demanding the overthrow of Bashir al-Assad, the country's president. Rights activists say security forces killed at least 25 pro-democracy protesters in Homs on Sunday night as anti-government demonstrations flared across the country, claiming up to 30 lives. Witnesses said mourners chanted "From alleyway to alleyway, from house to house, we want to overthrow you, Bashar," and "Either freedom or death, the people want to topple this regime". The protest was the largest to hit the strategically important city, Syria's third largest, since protests in the country began one month ago. A protester told Al Jizz that the first killing took place after evening prayers on Sunday when a group of around 40 demonstrators gathered outside the Bab al-Sibaa mosque chanting "freedom". The protester, who gave his name as Abu Haider, said seven cars pulled up to the protesters and men in civilian clothes jumped out and opened fire on the crowd without warning. "First we were calling for reforms, now we're calling for regime change," he said. "No one will accept the death of the deaders." More festivities feared Al Jizz's correspondent Rula Amin, in Damascus ...The City of Jasmin is the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti... , reported that the situation in Homs was very tense on Monday. "People are complaining that many of the maimed are not going to the hospital, they fear that the security forces will pick them up from their hospital bed," she said. "There is also a shortage of blood according to the people we have been talking to. "People are concerned that festivities might erupt following the [funeral] processions." She said there was also tension in the nearby town of Talbiseh, where five of the deaths occurred. "The government says that gunnies had been going near the highway blocking the road. "When security forces went to control the situation, they were attacked by the gunnies. One policeman was killed and another one injured, and three gunnies were killed." The government and the opposition were trading blame over the heightened tensions and deadly festivities. "The [accounts of] the government and the protesters vary. It is very hard to get information from there because there are no journalists there to verify what is happening," our correspondent said. The latest festivities came two days after Assad said Syria's decades-long emergency laws would be lifted within a week and also promised a number of other reforms. Despite the apparent concessions, activists had called for protests across nationwide on Sunday, which was Syria's Independence Day, commemorating the departure of the last French soldier 65 years ago. The Damascus Declaration, an opposition umbrella group, called for peaceful protests in all cities and abroad to "bolster Syria's popular uprising and ensure its continuity". In a statement posted on its website, the Damascus Declaration said the government was responsible for killing and wounding hundreds of Syrians who have been exercising their legitimate rights in the past month. "The regime alone stands fully responsible for the blood of deaders and all that will happen next in the country,'' the statement said.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Syrian students mount protests in Aleppo, capital

2011-04-15

[Asharq al-Aswat] Syrian forces clamped down at universities after students marched for the first time in the second biggest city Aleppo during unprecedented protests against Baathist rule, activists said on Thursday. Around 150 students marched on Wednesday in a protest demanding political freedoms on the campus of Aleppo University, rights defenders who were in contact with them said. Baath Party irregulars quickly dispersed the students who chanted "We sacrifice our blood and our soul for you, Deraa." The slogan was to show solidarity with the southern city of Deraa where demonstrations against the authoritarian rule of President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators. Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor... and his party started three and a half weeks ago. They have since spread to the suburbs of Damascus ...The City of Jasmin is the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti... , the northeast, the Mediterranean coast and areas in between. "The thugs quickly organised a pro-Assad demonstration, and sure enough, Syrian television came to film it," one of the activists said, adding that several protesters were beaten and three students were nabbed. "The regime is aware that it cannot let campuses breath. They have seen what an emboldened student movement can do elsewhere," the activist added. With heavy secret police presence, preachers on the state payroll giving pro-Assad sermons and the Sunni merchant class staying on the sidelines, major protests have not spread to Damascus proper or to Aleppo. This has denied protesters the critical mass seen in the uprisings which swept Tunisia and Egypt and toppled governments there. In the capital, several hundred students marched in a pro-democracy protest at Damascus University for a second day. Activists said secret police assembled at a restaurant in front of the main gate and mounted periodic forays into the campus to arrest people. Earlier on Wednesday, hundreds of women from a Syrian town that has witnessed mass arrests of its male residents marched along Syria's main coastal highway to demand their release. Security forces, including secret police, stormed Baida on Tuesday, going into houses and arresting men up to the age of 60, lawyers said. The arrests came after townsfolk joined protests challenging the Baath Party, which has ruled Syria with an iron fist since 1963. Women from Baida marched on the main highway leading to Turkey chanting slogans demanding the release of some 350 men, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Assad, who has positioned Syria as self-declared champion of "resistance" to Israel while seeking peace with the Jewish state and accepting offers for rehabilitation in the West, has responded to the protests with a blend of deadly force and vague promises of reform. The Damascus Declaration, Syria's main rights group, has said the corpse count from the protests had reached 200.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Syrian opposition says 200 killed in protests

2011-04-13

[Asharq al-Aswat] Syria's main human rights ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... movement said the corpse count from pro-democracy protests against President Bashar al-Assad had reached 200 and urged the Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... to impose sanctions on the ruling hierarchy. Syria, the latest Arab country shaken by mass uprisings against authoritarian rulers, has witnessed unprecedented protests across the tightly-controlled country for the last three weeks. Assad has responded with force -- witnesses say security forces have opened fire on protesters -- vague pledges of reform and attempts at appeasing minority Kurds. Protests have shown no sign of abating but have not yet reached the levels seen in Tunisia and Egypt where leaders were ultimately tossed. "Syria's uprising is screaming with 200 deaders, hundreds of injured and a similar number of arrests," the Damascus ...The City of Jasmin is the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti... Declaration group said in a letter sent on Monday to the secretary general of the vaporous Arab League. The Damascus Declaration is named after a document signed in 2005 by prominent civic, Islamist and liberal leaders calling for the end of 41 years of Assad family rule and its replacement with a democratic system. "The regime unleashes its forces to besiege cities and terrorise civilians, while protesters across Syria thunder with the same chant 'peaceful peaceful'," it added. "We ask you to... impose political, diplomatic and economic sanctions on the Syrian regime, which continues to be the faithful guardian of Hafez al-Assad's legacy," the letter said, referring to the iron-fisted rule of President Hafez al-Assad, who died in 2000 after 30 years in power. "RESPONDING WITH REPRESSION" The protests, which erupted in the southern city of Deraa last month before spreading, have demanded freedom of expression and assembly and an end to corruption. The authorities blame "gangs" and "infiltrators" for the violence, in which they said soldiers and police have also been killed. On Tuesday, state news agency SANA named six security service personnel it said had been killed and 168 maimed in Deraa, suburbs of Damascus, Homs and Latakia. "President Assad has been only giving promises for the last 11 years. Instead of solutions he talks, as the regime usually does, about an outside conspiracy," the letter said. Last Friday was one of the deadliest since the uprising began in Deraa, an agricultural city near the border with Jordan where many Sunni Mohammedan tribes resent the wealth and power amassed by minority Alawites, the sect to which Assad belongs. Human Rights Watch, which said 27 people were killed in Deraa, condemned Syria's security forces for preventing maimed protesters reaching hospitals and stopping medical teams from treating them in two towns. "The Syrian authorities are responding to protests against repression with more repression: killings, mass arbitrary arrests, beatings and torture," HRW's Sarah Leah Whitson said. HRW said protesters told the rights group that demonstrators seized weapons from an abandoned army checkpoint and shot at security forces, killing at least a dozen of them and setting on fire two cars belonging to the army and security services. "SLOW-MOTION REVOLUTION" Western governments who have been trying to coax Syria out of its anti-Israeli alliance with Iran as well as to give up its support for bad boy groups Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, and Hezbullies, have denounced the violence against the protesters and urged Assad to take more vigorous steps towards reforms such as lifting emergency law. "Time is running out as every new casualty makes the clock tick faster," said the International Crisis Group's Peter Harling on the Foreign Policy blog. "To open the space required for a radical reform agenda to take hold, the regime's top priority must be to ensure a period of relative calm. Prospects will look grim were the country to witness yet another bloody Friday," he said, describing Syria as a "slow-motion revolution". Assad has said the protests are part of a foreign conspiracy to sow sectarian strife. His father used similar language when he crushed leftist and Islamist challenges to his rule in the 1980s, killing thousands. Syrian security forces sealed off the coastal city of Banias on Monday following pro-democracy protests and killings by irregulars loyal to Assad, residents said. Since the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, authorities have intensified a campaign of arrests against dissidents and civic activists. Authorities generally embark on a round of arrests after protests, according to activists and witnesses, before later releasing some. Fayez Sara, a journalist who was placed in durance vile for two-and-a-half years along with 11 Damascus Declaration members and released in 2010, was nabbed again on Sunday, rights activists said. "The secret police have been rounding up every outspoken figure they can get their hands on. They either call them in for 'interrogation' and keep them, pick them up from the street or break into their homes," one of the rights defenders said. Most of the Damascus Declaration members have spent long periods as political prisoners, including leading opposition figure Raid al-Turk, who spent more than 17 years in solitary confinement under Hafez al-Assad.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Big OIC confab in Damascus starts Saturday

2009-05-22

The three-day session is titled "Towards Bolstering Islamic Solidarity" and will be keynoted by Bashar al-Assad Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Al-Miqdad highlighted on Thursday the importance of the 36th session of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Ministerial Council, due to start here on Saturday. The three-day session, titled "Towards Bolstering Islamic Solidarity," gains additional significance as it coincides with delicate conditions in the Muslim world, the senior diplomat said in an interview with the Syrian TV station. President Bashar al-Assad will delivers a keynote speech at the opening session of the conference, he noted. The conference will provide an opportunity for the foreign ministers of 57 Islamic countries and representatives of some observer countries to discuss a wide-range of political, economic and social issues of common interest for the Muslim nation, Al-Miqdad pointed out. On top of the agenda of the event are the Arab-Israeli conflict, the continuous Israeli violations in Jerusalem, the current situation of the peace process in the Middle East, and the situations in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and the Palestinian territories. The ministers will also discuss the situations in Iraq, Somalia and Sudan, the UN reforms, and the future role of the OIC in peacemaking and resolving the disputes among its member countries, he revealed. In addition, the conferees will review the issues of Islamophobia and discrimination against Muslims in foreign countries, the OIC-conceived ten-year development program and the Damascus Declaration and explore the ways to enhance economic cooperation among their countries.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

US condemns jailing of Syrian dissidents

2008-11-01

WASHINGTON- The United States on Thursday condemned the sentencing of 12 leading Syrian dissidents sent to jail for advocating for freedom of expression and a democratic constitution in Syria. A Syrian court sentenced 11 men and a woman to 2-1/2 years each in prison on Wednesday for political crimes. "The United States condemns the sentencing of 12 members of the Damascus Declaration National Council to two and a half years in prison," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said in a statement. The dissidents were arrested last year in a case that drew international condemnation, with the United States and European nations repeatedly calling for their release. Syrian-U.S. are already strained after a deadly American raid on eastern Syria this week. "This judgment once again underscores the Syrian regime's contempt for the fundamental rights and freedoms of their people," Perino said. "The Syrian regime cannot expect to be treated as a respected member of the international community when it engages in such systematic repression of its own citizens." The United States called for the immediate release of the 12 Damascus Declaration members, as well as all other political prisoners in Syria. The 12, who are among Syria's leading intellectuals and opposition figures, have been in jail since their arrest. Most of them are former political prisoners who had already spent long years in Syrian jails. The National Organization for Human Rights in Syria said those convicted had only exercised their rights and quoted an article in the Syrian constitution saying freedom was a "sacred right guaranteed by the state to its citizens". But Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had said that the 12 were arrested because they had violated the constitution and some of them had associated themselves with what he described as anti-Assad Syrian elements.

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