April 14, 2011 12:00 AM

Women and students took to the streets in Syria Wednesday, lending their voices to a month-long uprising that President Bashar Assad insists is the work of foreign conspirators.
The protest movement is posing an increasing threat to Assad’s rule as it attracts an ever-wider following, with tens of thousands of people demanding political freedoms and an end to the decades-old emergency laws.

“We will not be humiliated!” shouted some 2,000 women and children who blocked a main coastal road in northeastern Syria, where security forces and pro-government gunmen have cracked down on dissent in recent days. The protesters were demanding the release of hundreds of men who have been rounded up in the villages of Bayda and Beit Jnad.

“Yesterday they raided our home in Bayda and took away my father,” said one of the protesters, a 21-year-old woman. “I’m not leaving here until they return him to us.”
In an apparent attempt to calm the women’s demonstration, authorities released about 100 of the detainees and paraded them in front of the protesters, prompting cheers and cries of triumph, a witness said. Some of the men were bruised, witnesses said.

Residents and activists said hundreds of men, young and old, were arrested Tuesday when security forces and pro-government gunmen cracked down on the villages in northeastern Syria in a move to crush growing dissent there.
Also Wednesday, about 500 students gathered at Damascus University in the capital and in Aleppo University in the north as young people joined the protests in increasing numbers. The protests ended peacefully – unlike a demonstration at Damascus University Monday.

In the capital, some 50 students protested at the Damascus University law faculty demanding greater freedoms, Abdel-Karim Rihawi of the Syrian League for the Defense of Human Rights said. “Security forces used batons to disperse the students and some students were arrested,” said Rihawi.

Another protest was reported Wednesday outside the state-run news agency’s offices in the capital.
Details coming out of Syria are sketchy because the government has placed severe restrictions on the media, limited access to trouble spots and expelled reporters.

Syria’s state-run news agency acknowledged the student protests for the first time, but said only about 50 students staged protests at Damascus University and in the Aleppo campus. It said other students chanted national slogans that reject chaos and attempts to destabilize Syria.

Assad has made overtures to try to ease growing outrage – including dismissing his Cabinet, firing local officials and granting nationality to thousands of Kurds, a long-ostracized minority. A new Cabinet will be announced Thursday, a semi-official newspaper said, to replace the government which resigned last month.

But the gestures have failed to satisfy protesters. “With this approach, Assad may succeed in stopping or decreasing the protests for a while, but this will only delay another explosion,” said Ayman Abdul-Nour, a pro-reform former member of Assad’s ruling Baath Party who now lives in exile.
The government has also taken pains to counter accounts by witnesses and human rights activists, saying thugs rather than security forces were responsible for the violence.

The Syrian government denied a Human Rights Watch charge that forces prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded Friday – the single bloodiest day of the uprising – in the southern town of Daraa and in Harasta, near Damascus. Thirty-seven people were killed nationwide Friday.
An Interior Ministry statement said unidentified gunmen shot at people and prevented ambulances from transporting the wounded to hospitals.

Montaha al-Atrash, board member of the Syrian human rights group Sawasieh, said the authorities “dream up more fantasy armed-gang scenarios as soon as another region rises up to demand freedom and democracy.”