THU 28 - 3 - 2024
 
Date: Apr 12, 2011
Source: The Daily Star
Pressure mounts on Assad

Syrian students rallied in Damascus Monday to express solidarity with protesters killed over the weekend, as the army sealed the coastal town of Banias and international pressure mounted on President Bashar Assad to make good on his reform pledges.


One activist said he received text messages saying security forces had killed one student and surrounded the campus of Damascus University’s science college. A pro-government Facebook page said security forces “took control of the security breach,” adding that there were no casualties.


Syria’s universities are controlled through branches of the ruling Baath Party. A video on YouTube showed a crowd of students coming out of Damascus University building while chanting “God, Syria, freedom.” A witness said Assad loyalists shouted “U.S. agents” at them.
Footage showed what appears to be plainclothes security forces beating protesters and forcefully pulling others away as they marched inside the campus of Damascus University.


“The Syrian people are one!” the students shouted in the video.The reports that a student was killed could not be confirmed by the Associated Press due to severe restrictions Syria has placed on journalists. Ammar Qurabi, head of Syria’s National Organization for Human Rights, said the student was shot. But Ausama Monajed, a London-based political activist, said the student was beaten to death. Both activists cited eyewitnesses at the scene.
The U.S., France, Germany and Britain demanded an immediate end to the bloodshed. “Reform and repression are incompatible,” the French Foreign Ministry said.


The strong criticism marks a turning point because many major powers have so far held back on condemning Assad outright, instead casting him as a reformer who has been constrained by members of his late father’s old guard. But with the mounting casualties, the criticism has grown.


“We’re aware of continuing protests on a massive scale or a large scale,” U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Monday. He called on the government to lift media restrictions and “refrain from any further violence.”
Protests erupted in Syria more than three weeks ago and have been growing steadily, with tens of thousands of people calling for sweeping reforms.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has personally called Assad to say he was “greatly disturbed” by the reports of violence.


The criticism from France was particularly significant, because French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been seen generally supportive of Assad in the past few years. He visited Syria twice in 2008 and 2009 and hosted Assad in Paris, helping ease Assad’s international isolation in recent years. He also led an effort to restart stalled peace talks between Syria and Israel and tried to woo Syria away from Iran.
A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the use of force against peaceful demonstrators “dismaying and outrageous.”


British Foreign Secretary William Hague called the violence “unacceptable,” and said “political reform … is the only legitimate response to demands from the Syrian people.”
Also Monday, some 2,000 mourners chanting “Death is better than humiliation!” turned out in the port city of Banias for a funeral for four people killed there Sunday, an eyewitness said. Activists and protesters said roads to Banias were blocked.


“Electricity has been cut since yesterday. People are very afraid,” Anas al-Shughri, a protest leader, told Reuters from Banias. “The army has deployed in Banias with infantry and they have set up checkpoints in and around the city.”


Nine soldiers were also killed and several wounded when their patrol was ambushed outside the town Sunday, the official SANA news agency said Monday.
Abdul-Karim Rihawi, who heads the Syrian Human Rights League, said there were several arrests in Banias overnight, including associates of former vice president Abdel-Halim Khaddam, a dissident living in exile in Paris since 2006.


Meanwhile, Syrian rights organizations demanded an investigation into the Banias clashes, calling for a “neutral, transparent and independent investigative committee” to “sanction the perpetrators of the violence.”
But the National Progressive Front, a coalition of parties headed by the ruling Baath party, blamed the violence on foreign plotters.


Syria “confronts dangerous challenges stemming from the hatching of conspiracies and external pressures exerted upon it,” SANA quoted a front statement as saying. “To achieve political, economic and democratic reforms, peace and stability must prevail,” it said.


Rihawi said a wave of arrests was continuing. He said Fayez Sara, a well known writer and journalist, was detained from his home Monday, while several other activists have been picked up in the past few days.



 
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