THU 28 - 3 - 2024
 
Date: Jun 2, 2011
Source: The Daily Star
Syria opposition say Assad lost all legitimacy

ANTALYA, Turkey: Syrian President Bashar Assad must step down to pave the way for democracy after an uprising against his rule showed he had lost legitimacy, the country’s opposition in exile said Wednesday.
Rights groups say 1,000 civilians have been killed in a military crackdown 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 the 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 Daraa, a poor, agricultural city in the southern Hauran Plain.


“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 armed groups, backed by Islamists and foreign agitators, for the unrest and say more than 120 police and soldiers have been killed.
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 militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah while seeking better ties with the West and peace with Israel.


But Assad’s handling of the protests has triggered U.S. 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 criticize Assad.
The gathering brought together a broad spectrum of opposition figures driven abroad over the last 30 years, from Islamists crushed in the 1980s to Christians escaping repression.
Delegates said an ultra-loyalist army core 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 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.
Assad has issued decrees aimed at appeasing public grievances. The opposition say they would not change the nature of a repressive political system in which arbitrary arrests, beatings and torture of political detainees are common.


Assad announced an amnesty for political prisoners Tuesday, but rights campaigners said the decree had numerous exceptions, specifying reduced sentences for many cases rather than release.
Hundreds of political prisoners were freed Wednesday and the government promised to investigate the death of a 13-year-old boy whose apparent torture and mutilation turned him into a symbol of the uprising.
However the announcements were coupled with a crackdown on two towns in Syria’s center and south that killed at least 33 people, including an 11-year-old girl shot dead by troops during a fierce shelling, activists said.


Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that more than 500 prisoners were freed, including some who took part in the latest demonstrations marking the most serious challenge to the Assad family yet.
The Local Coordination Committees in Syria, which helps organize and document the country’s protests, said 25 people were shot dead Tuesday in the central town of Rastan, which has seen a major military clampdown in recent days.


In the south, Syrian troops shelled the town of Hirak with tanks and artillery, killing at least eight people on Tuesday and Wednesday, including 11-year-old Malak Munir al-Qaddah, human rights activist Mustafa Osso said.
Also Wednesday, state-run news agency, SANA, said Assad issued a presidential decree forming a committee whose job will be to prepare for a national dialogue. It added that Assad told committee members the dialogue was needed to overcome “political and social instability.”


The committee will include Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa, senior members of the ruling Baath Party and the National Progressive Front (NPF, a coalition of parties led by Baath), as well as one author and one teacher.
Assad said the national dialogue committee should set the stage for all sides in Syria to express their views on politics, economics and society in “what expands participation.”
“All parties should contribute to widening participation [in the political process], to the development of an electoral law and to a law on political parties,” Assad said.


Human Rights Watch said Wednesday that the systematic killings and torture by Syrian security forces in Daraa since protests began strongly suggest that these qualify as crimes against humanity.
In a report focusing in Daraa province, the group called for U.N. Security Council sanctions. It said 418 people have been killed in the Daraa province alone since the uprising began.



 
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