Marcus Halaby<\/i><\/p>\n
SYRIAN security forces shot dead over 80 protesters on 22 April. They killed another 12 the next day, as the democracy movement attempted to bury its dead. President Bashar al-Assad has opened a river of blood between his regime and the people.<\/p>\n
The Arab revolution, though slow to spread to Syria, has now proved democracy campaigners are as willing as their cousins in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya or Bahrain to sacrifice their lives for the overthrow of dictatorship.<\/p>\n
The movement began with small protests in support of the Egyptian and Libyan people and against the police brutality with which these were treated. But the regime\u2019s arrest of children for daubing anti-regime graffiti in the poor southern province of Daraa and its lethal response to local demands for their release ensured the spread of the movement across Syria.<\/p>\n
Hoping to exploit people\u2019s fears of communal conflict between Syria\u2019s different religions and sects, presenting itself as the only defender of national unity, the Ba\u2019ath Party regime has tried to paint the protests as sectarian.<\/p>\n
Indeed, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood\u2019s Yusuf al-Qaradawi has linked \u201cregime change\u201d to Sunni sectarian hostility to the Shi\u2019a Alawi minority, of which Assad is a member. So far, however, this has had little effect in splitting the protests.<\/p>\n
The pro-democracy movement embraces all Syria\u2019s communities, including the Alawi minority. Whatever resentments may exist against Alawis on account of the regime\u2019s corruption and favouritism, the protesters understand that sectarian slogans \u2013 in a country where one-third of the population belongs to an ethnic or religious minority \u2013 would hand victory to the regime on a plate.<\/p>\n
In Homs, Syria\u2019s third-largest city, the government even made claims of an \u201carmed Salafist [Islamist] insurrection\u201d when protesters occupied the central Clock Square. However, the protesters asked certain tribal sheikhs to leave the sit-in, when it became clear that they did not support their demands. Later, they chanted: \u201cWe are not Muslim Brotherhood or Salafis \u2013 our only demand is freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n
The revolution has won victories: forcing the government to grant citizenship to 200,000 Kurds in the north-east and to rescind the 1963 emergency law, which banned demonstrations and severely limited freedom of speech.<\/p>\n
While promising reforms, however, the Ba\u2019ath regime continues to kill unarmed protesters, while fabricating stories about \u201carmed gangs\u201d terrorising neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n
In reality, everyone knows that the only \u201carmed gangs\u201d in Syria belong to the regime \u2013 in the form of shadowy militias and security forces. Rumours have even circulated that soldiers in Homs have cooperated with civilians in looking for gunmen, resembling the way in which the Egyptian army\u2019s lower ranks began to fraternise with protesters in Tahrir Square.<\/p>\n
While the army may not have split yet, this is a sign of growing mass sympathy for the movement \u2013 which can only continue to infect the state\u2019s repressive institutions, as the people become more united and insistent in their demands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marcus Halaby SYRIAN security forces shot dead over 80 protesters on 22 April. They killed another 12 the next day, as the democracy movement attempted to bury its dead. President Bashar al-Assad has opened a river of blood between his regime and the people. The Arab revolution, though slow to spread to Syria, has now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7724,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130,1],"tags":[104,221],"class_list":["post-3169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle-east","category-uncategorized","tag-archive","tag-syria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7724"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7108,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3169\/revisions\/7108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}