The contagion of Arab revolts has reached the countries of the Near East. After strongly shaken Yemen, it is Syria’s turn to come and join the list of Arab peoples that rumble.
Uncompromising diet held by an iron fist by Bashar al-Assad, Syria, and more precisely the south of Syria, has lived for a few days under the rhythm of the balls and arrests. However, the country is considered a strategic point to the near East both by its role in the peace process in this region and by its policy of neither yes nor no which ensures in Bashar al-Assad a kind of privileged place of masked dictator in heroes.
At the head of the Baas party which has settled in power for more than 50 years, and a state of emergency maintained since 1963, the note of Bashar al-Assad has further increased. Recall that he is suspected of involvement in the assassination of Rafic Hariri (father of the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri), conspiracies with Iran to maintain chaos in the Middle East. The Syrian people aware of this and taking advantage of the winding wind from different Arab countries decided to change things.
But that is without counting on the policy of unlimited repression of the president, since Bashar al-Assad decided to follow the track of other Arab dictators by repressing the first demonstrations which took place on March 15, with more than 800 arrests, according to the figures announced. The Syrian president would have authorized his guards to shoot the demonstrators while denying the facts through press conferences and communicated.
Deraa, the current stronghold of the revolt and tribal city 120 km south of Damascus, paid a heavy price, to take the tweets of a young Syrian blogger whose pseudo is Arabzy illustrate the massacre which takes place there.
We are talking about hundreds of deaths and the balance sheet keeps getting worse. The demonstrators chant slogans for more freedoms, in particular that of the media but also the end of the corruption of the regime, some of which have been enriched as well as the relatives of the president in particular his Germain cousin, Rami Makhlouf. Improving the standard of living and wages is also the priority of the demonstrators.
Despite the concessions made by Bashar al-Assad through his speech on Thursday, March 24, the spirits did not calm down. The announcement of the creation of a commission in order to remove a state of emergency, the promise of legislation on media freedom and political parties with the release of all the activists arrested during demonstrations were not enough, even an immediate increase in the wages of public functions was also decreed.
Calls to demonstrations continue. Facebook pages such as that of the Shaam Information Network call on the Syrians to descend in the streets for the “Friday of anger” in order to bury the martyrs and regain the fight for free Syria. Several clandestine sites (kafasamtan.org) are trying to give minute information per minute of what is really going on and acts of repression under the demonstrators.
