http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/world/middleeast/23syria.html
April 22, 2011
Security Forces Kill Dozens in Uprisings Around Syria
By ANTHONY SHADID
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Security forces in Syria met thousands of demonstrators with fusillades of live ammunition after noon prayers on Friday, killing at least 81 people in the bloodiest day of the five-week-old Syrian uprising, according to protesters, witnesses and accounts on social networking sites.
From the Mediterranean coast and Kurdish east to the steppe of the Houran in southern Syria, protesters gathered in at least 20 cities and towns, including in the outskirts of the capital, Damascus. Cries for vengeance intersected with calls for the government's fall, marking a potentially dangerous new dynamic in the revolt.
"We want revenge, and we want blood," said Abu Mohamed, a protester in Azra, a southern town that had the highest death toll Friday. "Blood for blood."
The breadth of the protests -- and people's willingness to defy security forces who were deployed en masse -- painted a picture of turmoil in one of the Arab world's most authoritarian countries. In scenes unprecedented only weeks ago, protesters tore down pictures of President Bashar al-Assad and toppled statues of his father, Hafez, in two towns on the capital's outskirts, according to witnesses and video footage.
But despite the bloodshed, which promised to unleash another day of unrest as the dead are buried Saturday, the scale of the protests, so far, seemed to fall short of the popular upheaval of revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. Organizers said the movement was still in its infancy, and the government, building on 40 years of institutional inertia, still commanded the loyalty of the military, economic elite and sizable minorities of Christian and heterodox Muslim sects who fear the state's collapse.
Coming a day after Mr. Assad endorsed the lifting of draconian emergency rule, the killings represented another chapter in the government's strategy of alternating promises of concessions with a grim crackdown that has left it staggering but still entrenched.
"There are indications the regime is scared, and this is adding to the momentum, but this is still the beginning," said Wissam Tarif, the executive director of Insan, a Syrian human rights group. "Definitely, we haven't seen the millions we saw in Egypt or Tunisia. The numbers are still humble, and it's a reality we have to acknowledge."
The images of carnage marked one of the deadliest days of the so-called Arab Spring, and the coming days may be replete with its lessons. In other places in the Middle East, violence has led to funerals where many more are often killed. The government's belated attempts at reform, meanwhile, have often simply escalated protesters' demands.
In that, the government faces perhaps its greatest challenge: to maintain its bastions of support with promises for the future and threats that its collapse means chaos, against the momentum that the vivid symbols of martyrdom have so often encouraged.
"We are not scared anymore," said Abu Nadim, a protester in Douma, a town on the outskirts of Damascus. "We are sad and we are disappointed at this regime and at the president. Protests, demonstrations and death are now part of the daily routine."
In a sharply worded statement, President Obama said the "outrageous use of violence to quell protests must come to an end now." The statement also said President Assad was seeking Iranian help in repressing his people, but did not provide details.
In the capital, a city that underlines the very authority of the Assad family's decades of rule, hundreds gathered after Friday Prayer at the al-Hassan Mosque. Some of them chanted, "The people want the fall of the government," a slogan made famous in both Egypt and Tunisia. But security forces quickly dispersed the protests with tear gas, witnesses said. Syria's second-largest city, Aleppo, appeared to remain relatively quiet.
The government's determination to keep larger cities somewhat subdued may have led to some of the highest death tolls. Protesters in some towns on Damascus's outskirts said security forces fired at them to prevent them from marching toward the capital. And in Azra, protesters said, government forces were intent on keeping them from Dara'a, a poor town 20 miles away that helped unleash the revolt in March.
A protester in Azra who gave his name as Abu Ahmad said he brought three of those killed to the mosque -- one shot in the head, one in the chest and one in the back -- the oldest of whom was 20 years old. Video that was posted on social networking sites showed a man carrying the bloodied corpse of a young boy, apparently shot by the police.
Taken together, most of the victims died in protests in the towns around Damascus, where demonstrators have sought to occupy a city landmark in a replay of Cairo's Tahrir Square. Both sides seemed to understand the significance of the capital: Mass protests there would serve as a devastating blow to the government's prestige.
Mr. Nadim, the protester in Douma, said plainclothes security forces carrying machine guns were omnipresent in the town. He said snipers were also stationed on top of two hospital buildings. Protesters left the mosque after noon prayers, their numbers growing to 5,000, he said. They met a force of 3,000 security men, he said.
"The minute they saw us they started shooting at us," he said.
Protesters retreated, then surged again. "Peaceful! Peaceful!" he said they shouted as the gunfire continued.
Organizers said at least some dissent was reported in every province, and the protesters' calls were far more sweeping than in the uprising's earliest days, when demonstrators were seeking democratic changes rather than regime change.
In Baniyas, a coastal city, a banner denounced Mr. Assad and his ruling Baath Party: "No Baath, No Assad, we want to free the country." Another banner, referring to Mr. Assad's medical training abroad, read, "A doctor in London, a butcher in Syria."
Razan Zeitouneh, an activist with the Syrian Human Rights Information Link in Damascus, basing her account on witnesses, said 88 people had been killed -- 20 in Azra; 1 in Dara'a; 22 near Homs; 39 in the suburbs of Damascus; 1 in Latakia; 3 in Hama and 2 elsewhere. Mr. Tarif's group, Insan, said 81 people were killed.
In Homs, where major protests erupted this week, activists said security forces and plainclothes police officers flooded the city, setting up checkpoints and preventing all but a few dozen people from gathering. By afternoon, one resident said the streets were deserted, the silence punctuated every 15 minutes or so by gunfire.
"We closed the windows and the curtains and hid at home," one woman said via Skype. "The gunfire was so loud and close." She added, "God save us."
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Katherine Zoepf from New York, and employees of The New York Times from Beirut and Damascus, Syria.
In Syria, Protesters and Government Mobilize for Friday
By ANTHONY SHADID
April 22, 2011
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Syria deployed police officers, soldiers and military vehicles in two of the country's three largest cities on Friday ahead of a call for nationwide protests that will test the popular reception of reforms decreed by President Bashar al-Assad as well as the momentum that organizers have sought to bring to the five-week uprising.
Residents described a mobilization in the capital, Damascus, and, in more pronounced fashion, in the restive city of Homs, where a government crackdown this week dispersed one of the largest gatherings since demonstrations began last month. For days, organizers have looked to Friday as a potential show of strength for a movement that has yet to build the critical mass reached in Egypt and Tunisia.
"Together toward freedom," read a Facebook page that has served as a pulpit of the uprising, the words posed over symbols of Christianity and Islam. "One heart, one hand, one goal."
The aim of both sides is the same: to prove they have the upper hand in the biggest challenge yet to the 40-year rule of the Assad family. While organizers were reluctant to call Friday a decisive moment, they acknowledged that it would signal their degree of support in a country that remained divided, with the government still claiming bastions of support among minorities, loyalists of the Baath Party and wealthier segments of the population.
"People are still hesitant," said Wissam Tarif, the executive director of Insan, a human rights group. But he added, "If it's not this Friday, it will be the coming Friday."
Residents of Damascus said police officers were seen heading Thursday from a headquarters on the outskirts in Zabadani toward the capital, where military security officers had reportedly turned out in greater numbers. In the restive city of Dara'a, security forces set up checkpoints on Friday, and other deployments were reported in suburbs of the capital like Duma, Maidamiah and Dariah.
The security presence seemed most pronounced in Homs, residents said, as scores of military vehicles loaded with soldiers and equipment were seen on the highway from Damascus. By morning, thousands of police and soldiers had taken up positions around mosques in the city, bracing for the protests that are expected to follow noon prayers, and at the New Clock Square, where protesters had tried to stage an Egyptian-style sit-in on Monday night. Some of the police were in plain clothes and others were armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, residents said.
Cellphones were hard to reach in Homs, and some land lines had been cut.
An organizer, Abu Kamel al-Dimashki, said the city was "like a ghost town and we are still mourning our martyrs, so everything is closed." He said, "Things are a little scary."
In a sign of the anxiety, some protesters were already predicting violence.
"We know if we're asking for freedom, we will lose people," said Salem Abu al-Saud, a protester who fled Homs this week but has remained in contact with people there. "At least in Homs, people are more determined than ever to participate, without fear."
On Friday, instructions were delivered to protesters from the main Facebook page, urging them to paint revolutionary graffiti, document the protests with pictures and videos, stay peaceful and chant slogans.
The government has maintained that the uprising is led by militant Islamists, and organizers acknowledge that religious forces like the banned Muslim Brotherhood have taken part. The government has also accused foreign countries of supporting the protests. And, indeed, some of the largest have occurred in cities near Syria's borders: Dara'a, a poor town in southwestern Syria near Jordan, and Homs, the country's third largest city and an industrial center near conservative northern Lebanon.
But so far, the government has sought to hew to a policy of crackdown and compromise. On Thursday, Mr. Assad signed decrees that repealed harsh emergency rule, in place since 1963, abolished draconian security courts and granted citizens the right to protest peacefully, though they still need government permission to gather. The orders had already been handed down to his government on Tuesday, making his endorsement a formality; its timing seemed aimed in part at blunting Friday's protests.
He also appointed a new governor in Homs. Two weeks ago, the previous governor, Mohammed Iyad Ghazzal, was dismissed. He had been in power since 2004 and was widely despised.
"Homs wasn't happy with the old governor, but a new one isn't the urgent issue," said a government employee who gave his name as Khalid. "We want to change the mentality of how the country is run, not change a governor or his administration."
Sporadic protests erupted again Thursday, though their numbers were not as large as in past demonstrations, and they seemed confined to Kurdish areas.
Organizers said about 300 people protested at a university in Hasakah, a city near the Turkish and Iraqi borders, and a larger demonstration occurred in Ayn al-Arab, east of Aleppo. Between 5,000 and 8,000 people marched there, though Mr. Tarif said it seemed more spontaneous than organized. He said the Kurdish leadership in the region had yet to endorse bigger turnouts, debating whether they could instead extract more concessions from a government that has already granted citizenship to as many as 300,000 stateless Kurds.
The debate is a microcosm of a larger one taking place in Syria, where many fear the prospect of chaos or score-settling in the event of the government's collapse. Many activists said the reforms so far were too little and too late; in the words of Haitham Maleh, an oft-imprisoned activist and former judge, "The mentality of the regime has to change."
But some worry about the combustibility of a society that is shadowed by sectarian resentments fostered by the government. And many identify that government almost entirely with the Alawite minority, a heterodox Muslim sect that accounts for 10 percent of Syria's population.
"Let's be realistic, let's not destroy the country," said Camille Otrakji, a Damascus-born political blogger in Montreal. "Why do you think there aren't millions in the street demonstrating against Bashar? It's not because they're afraid of the security forces. It's because they're afraid of what would replace Assad."
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Katherine Zoepf from New York, and employees of The New York Times from Beirut and Damascus, Syria.