Onrust in Syrië #5 - Waar vrijheid als muziek in de oren klinkt.

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Op zaterdag 14 mei 2011 18:55 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:
Weet iemand hoeveel mensen er nu precies protesteren in Syrië? Ik heb wat cijfers van een paar steden maar hoeveel protesteren er nu in het hele land? 20 000? 50 000 of 300 000? Ik zou het niet weten, alvast bedankt

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Op zaterdag 14 mei 2011 19:13 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

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Iemand?

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Op zaterdag 14 mei 2011 19:31 schreef Triggershot het volgende:
Mouaz al-Khatib die gast was mijn docent.

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Op zaterdag 14 mei 2011 19:33 schreef Triggershot het volgende:

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Omdat hij mij heeft opgeleid?

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Op zaterdag 14 mei 2011 19:31 schreef Triggershot het volgende:
Mouaz al-Khatib die gast was mijn docent.

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Syrië beschiet vluchtelingen in Libanon


De Syrische strijdkrachten hebben vandaag schoten afgevuurd op mensen die naar het buurland Libanon waren gevlucht. Zeker een persoon kwam om het leven, vijf anderen raakten gewond. Dat maakten bronnen binnen het Libanese veiligheidsapparaat bekend.

De vluchtelingen zijn afkomstig uit de plaats Tall Kalakh, die circa 160 kilometer ten noorden van de Syrische hoofdstad Damascus ligt. Sinds eind april zijn al circa vijfduizend mensen uit Tall Kalakh gevlucht, waar het veiligheidsapparaat van de autoritaire president Bashar al-Assad keihard optreedt tegen betogers die het vertrek eisen van het staatshoofd.

De protesten tegen Assad braken ongeveer twee maanden geleden uit. Het regime probeert de onrust met harde hand de kop in te drukken. De Verenigde Naties schatten het dodental op zeker zevenhonderd en mogelijk 850.

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Op zondag 15 mei 2011 12:58 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Op zondag 15 mei 2011 13:12 schreef remlof het volgende:

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Ik las het ja. Moeten ze eens aan de Turkse grens doen. Dan kon meteen NAVO Artikel 5 in werking worden gesteld.

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Op zondag 15 mei 2011 13:24 schreef Monidique het volgende:

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Nou ja, aangezien Libanon niet is aangevallen, zou Turkije ook niet zijn aangevallen. Verder kán dat worden gedaan, maar dat hoeft niet en niemand, zeker Turkije niet, zit te wachten op nóg een onzinnige oorlog, eentje met Syrië.

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Syria bloodshed spills over into Lebanon
(AFP) – 3 hours ago

DAMASCUS — The deadly unrest in Syria spilled over into Lebanon where a woman was killed at a border crossing as protests against President Bashar al-Assad's regime entered a third month on Sunday.

Gunfire from Syria raked a crowd at Al-Boqayah crossing near the town of Wadi Khaled, killing the Syrian woman and wounding five people including a Lebanese soldier, a Lebanese security official and an AFP correspondent said.

The shooting came as hundreds of Syrians fled violence in their homeland on foot into Lebanon.
At one point, an armed man in plainclothes waded towards Al-Boqayah across the river which marks the border but was turned back by Lebanese civilians and fled firing shots into the air.

The area around Al-Boqayah was later deserted apart from Lebanese soldiers, a Red Cross team and several reporters, an AFP correspondent at the scene said.

The latest incidents came as Pope Benedict XVI called for an end to the bloodshed in Syria and urged authorities and citizens to strive for a "future of peace and stability."

"I ask God that there be no further bloodshed in (Syria), this country of great religions and civilisations," the pope said after his weekly Angelus prayer in Rome's St Peter's Square.
Since Saturday, residents of the western Syrian town of Tall Kalakh, which is encircled by the Syrian army, have fled in their hundreds into nearby northern Lebanon.

According to a witness and a hospital worker in Tall Kalakh, security forces shot dead at least four people and wounded several others Saturday as thousands held a second day of anti-regime protests.

A witness in Tall Kalakh told AFP that residents had been treating the wounded in a small clinic rather than the town hospital to prevent the casualties from being arrested or "finished off."
Security forces on Saturday fired at a funeral convoy at an entrance to the town, killing the mother and wounding three family members of a victim of the clashes, according to the Tall Kalakh resident.

Al-Watan newspaper, which is close to the regime, said on Sunday that armed men had fled the cities of Banias and Homs and sought refuge in Tall Kalakh, while "fighters" from Lebanon had entered Syria.

Tall Kalakh was the scene of "heavy fighting" on Saturday night between the Syrian army and armed groups, the daily said.

The mayor of the Lebanese town of Moqaibleh, Rami Khazaal, estimated that almost 1,000 refugees had fled across the border into northern Lebanon on Saturday.
At least five were hospitalised with gunshot wounds, one of whom died, said a source at Qobbayyateh hospital said.

The latest bloodshed cast a pall over the government's pledges to forge ahead with reforms in Syria, where the first pro-reform protests broke out on March 15, and have triggered fresh condemnation from Western governments.

At least five people were killed in protests on Friday in the central city of Homs and a Damascus suburb, activists said, despite an order from Assad for security forces not to open fire.
Information Minister Adnan Mahmud announced later the same day that a "national dialogue" would be launched as soldiers withdrew from flashpoint cities and towns such as Banias on the Mediterranean coast and Daraa in southern Syria.

An activist in Banias, meanwhile, said tanks had been withdrawn from the town centre but security forces were still deployed on Sunday.

Up to 850 people have been killed and at least 8,000 arrested since the protests started in mid-March, human rights groups say. The regime has blamed the deadly violence on "armed terrorist gangs" and kept out the foreign media.

An editorial headlined "Game Over" in the government newspaper Tishrin commented on Sunday that it was clear the revolt was losing steam.

"The game is over and those betting on destroying Syria from within have failed without finding a way to sow discord," it said, dismissing the protesters as "suicidal" and "unconscious".

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Op zondag 15 mei 2011 13:40 schreef BeSimple het volgende:

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Ik denk dat dit vergelijkbaar is met Tunesie. Alleen het Tunesische leger schoot waarschijnlijk terug.

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Op zondag 15 mei 2011 13:56 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Als je niet uitkijkt krijgen we Libië v 2.0.

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Op zondag 15 mei 2011 14:01 schreef BeSimple het volgende:

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No shit sherlock!

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Syrië veroordeelt Israëlische beschietingen

De Syrische autoriteiten veroordelen de Israëlische beschietingen van betogers bij de grens bij de Golanhoogvlakte, de Palestijnse gebieden en bij de grens met Libanon.

In een verklaring van het Syrische ministerie worden de beschietingen bestempeld als “criminele activiteiten”, meldt persbureau Reuters. Volgens het Syrisch staatspersbureau SANA houdt het ministerie de internationale gemeenschap verantwoordelijk voor de incidenten en noemt dit de bloedigste confrontatie in jaren.

Het Israëlische leger voerde onder andere een aanval uit op een groep Syriërs die de grens bij de Golanhoogvlakte wilde oversteken. Volgens een televisiezender werden hierbij zeker vier mensen gedood en raakten zeker zestig mensen aan beide kanten van de grens gewond. Het Israëlische leger zei eerder dat er alleen waarschuwingsschoten zijn gelost.

Israël ziet Iraanse invloed bij incidenten

Het Israëlische leger verdenkt Iran ervan de gevechten langs de noordelijke grens gearrangeerd te hebben, meldt de Israëlische krant Haaretz.

Brigadier-generaal Yoav Mordechai bevestigt dat het Israëlische leger het vuur opende op Palestijnse vluchtelingen die de grensstad Majdal Shams by Syrië binnendrongen. Een anonieme bron binnen de Israëlische overheid ziet het incident ook als een “cynische en doorzichtige poging van Syrië om met opzet een crisis uit te lokken en de aandacht van de problemen thuis af te leiden.”

In eigen land heeft de Syrische president Bashar al-Assad al wekenlang te maken met demonstraties tegen hem en zijn regime. Assad wordt door de internationale gemeenschap bekritiseerd vanwege het inzetten van tanks tegen zijn eigen burgers. Volgens mensenrechtenorganisaties zijn bijna achthonderd mensen gedood door Syrische veiligheidsdiensten.

‘Dag van de Grote Ramp’

Vandaag vieren Israëliërs de verjaardag van de stichting van de staat Israël, een dag die door Palestijnen de “Dag van de Grote Ramp” genoemd wordt. Bij onlusten aan de Israëlische grens zijn al ruim tien mensen omgekomen, tientallen Palestijnen proberen de grens met Israël over te steken.

Op meerdere plaatsen op de Westelijke Jordaanoever en in de Gazastrook worden vandaag marsen gehouden ter herdenking van de Nakba, de vlucht en verdrijving van de Palestijnen in 1948 toen Israël werd gesticht. Israël heeft de Westelijke Jordaanoever voor een dag afgesloten en de troepen van het leger staan op scherp.

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Op zondag 15 mei 2011 13:26 schreef remlof het volgende:

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Ik bedoelde meer dat Libanon echt zo'n staatje is dat door niemand serieus wordt genomen en continue wordt misbruikt door zowel Syrië als Israël. Op Turkije zouden ze niet zo snel schieten

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Op zondag 15 mei 2011 18:11 schreef Baghdaddy het volgende:

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Libanon heeft best wat invloed hoor voor zo'n kleine staat. Vooral in Israel en Palestina.

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Assad's regime of torture
President Assad reaffirms his father's legacy by quelling dissent with brute force.
Hugh Macleod and a special correspondent Last Modified: 15 May 2011 14:30

"Bashar is God! Bashar is God!"

As the fists and boots and sticks pummelled his body and bloodied his face, the college student screamed out what he thought his interrogators wanted to hear: The name of Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad.

It worked. The secret policemen tired of beating him for the day and threw him back into the makeshift cell, a room inside the power station in Banias, where local prisons are full to bursting from a wave of arrests ahead of the military assault on the port city, which began earlier this month.

The respite was short-lived. Handcuffed by his wrists and ankles and blindfolded, the student, who gave testimony to a trusted local activist on condition of anonymity, was led to a car and driven to another torture cell.

"I was being beaten all over my body. I was bleeding and was saying the shahada to myself, ‘There is no God, but God,' because I thought I was going to die at that moment," he said.

'Rampant torture'

Arrested simply for trying to travel from Banias back home to his village on the outskirts of the city, the student had nothing valuable to tell his torturers about the organised political opposition to President Assad and his family's forty-year dictatorship.

But that, it appears, was not the point.

Where the torture cells of Tadmor, Syria's desert prison, once extracted confessions from individuals accused of standing against the Assads - Communists like Akram Bunni, left partially paralysed after his spine was stretched in a torture known as the German Chair; Muslim Brotherhood members whipped with cable and stunned with electric shock devices - today's torturers appear to be pursuing a policy of deterrence and collective punishment.

The student was released after only a few days, but the message to the wider community of Banias was clear: A naked body, covered in blood, left to limp along the long road back to his village, clutching his broken hand, for all to see.

Three other young men, beaten, thrown down stairs and forced to drink water from a toilet after being starved, were also dumped naked and bloodied on a road outside Banias.

A YouTube video, claiming to have been shot in Banias but which cannot be independently verified, shows men with signs of severe beating on their backs and faces.

"Syrian security is now releasing detainees with unhealed wounds caused by torture in order to spread panic and fear among people hoping it will reduce the numbers participating in demonstrations," said Wissam Tarif, Director of Insan, a leading Syrian human rights organisation, which has documented cases of torture.

Hundreds of disappearances

Across Syria a campaign of mass arrests since the uprising began in mid-March has seen more than 7,000 Syrians arbitrarily detained and thrown into prisons, according to a count by activists, contacting detainees' family and friends.

The detained include a wide cross section of society, mainly young men aged between 20 and 50, but including children and elderly, especially activists and those involved in protests or seen filming them, but also community leaders, imams and students.

In Deraa alone, state news reported some 500 people were arrested in one day, with security forces going door to door and seizing any male aged between 15 and 40. A recently leaked document, purportedly from Political Security, appears to confirm the mass arrests of males, including children, from Deraa.

The total arrests since mid-March are around twice the number of political prisoners the Syrian Human Rights Committee estimated were being held in Syria in 2006.

Human rights groups have documented hundreds more cases of people who disappeared in and around protest marches, with families left not knowing if their loved ones are dead or alive.

Enforced disappearance, when the state refuses to acknowledge the whereabouts of an arrested person, is a crime under international law.

Inside prison, detainees face what Human Rights Watch has described as "rampant torture".

In interviews with 19 Syrian detainees last month, including two women and three teenagers, Human Rights Watch found that all but two had been tortured, including being whipped with cable and stunned with electric-shock devices while drenched in cold water.

Amnesty International reported cases of detainees forced to lick blood off the floor of a prison and others who also drank toilet water after being starved for three days.

Insan said it has received numerous reports of torture where detainees have been left naked in groups for hours, doused in cold water before collectively being beaten.

"The use of unwarranted lethal force, arbitrary detention and torture appear to be the desperate actions of a government that is intolerant of dissent and must be halted immediately," said Philip Luther, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

President Assad signed Syria's ratification of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 2004.

Yet with every black eye, broken bone and scream of pain, one of the world's most repressive regimes shows to what lengths it is prepared to go to keep the Assad family in power.

While activists have documented torture used as collective punishment and deterrence, there are still many cases where the security forces use it to extract information from an individual believed to pose a risk to regime stability.

Interrogations

Ali, an Allawite, the sect from which the Assad family and much of the ruling elite hail, was captured by secret police during a small protest in Mezze, a suburb of Damascus.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Ali said the beating began as soon as he was on the bus to prison. "You are Alawite and you don't like Bashar?" the police officer screamed at him. "Are you with the Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood?"

The fist landed square in his face as Ali tried to explain that the protesters were not fundamentalist Salafi Muslims. Ali was taken to the notorious Air Force security branch in Bab Touma, a stone throw away from the Old City where tourists were enjoying the sights.

The interrogator had footage from the protest filmed on a phone, showing Ali chanting for freedom. "He got up and walked behind me, grabbed my hair and slammed my face into the table. He was really angry."

Ali's hands were tied behind his back while he was punched in the face repeatedly. "He told me to confess I was there, and who had organized it, and was it someone from outside Syria?"

Blindfolded, Ali was driven to another prison, where, still unable to see, he was beaten, pushed down stairs and had cigarettes stubbed out on his back. Again the interrogator wanted to know if he was allied with Islamist groups, this time Hezb ut-Tahrir.

By contrast, Abu Mohammed's interrogators appeared less certain who to blame for the uprising they were struggling to contain.

Arrested from his Damascus home in late March, the journalist was taken, along with his laptop and mobile phone, to a branch of Internal Security on Baghdad Street.

The cell was already filled with protesters rounded up that day.

"We were hundreds so it was hard for interrogators to deal with us. They are used to tens being arrested at a time, not hundreds," he said.

For the next sixteen days Abu Mohammed followed the same routine: Dragged into an interrogation room and punched in the face.

"The interrogators were simple and uneducated men, they just shouted at me and hit me if I disagreed. They didn't know what they wanted."

The journalist was asked for his email address. "He asked me what ‘Hotmail' means. I answered in a simple and direct way. The main thing I realised was to answer what they wanted to hear, not what I thought."

His father's footsteps

The uprising in Syria began with the torture of children: 15 boys, aged between 10 and 15, from Deraa, who were beaten and had their finger nails pulled out by men working for General Atef Najeeb, a cousin of President Assad.

Two months into the most serious threat to the decades-old dictatorship, the jails in some cities are already full. As well as holding prisoners in the power station in Banias, security forces have also begun using a local sports stadium to hold hundreds of detainees, according to eyewitness accounts gathered by activists.

The release of all political prisoners has become a unifying cry among protesters across the country, who began by calling merely for reform and an end to corruption and who now demand the toppling of the president and his regime.

Like the father from whom he inherited power, President Assad has sought to crush the uprising against him with force and mass arrests.

During a campaign of repression against the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s under late President Hafez al-Assad, some 17,000 Syrians disappeared, according to testimony to the United Nations Human Rights Council by Radwan Ziadeh, head of the Damascus Centre for Human Rights Studies.

And in a chilling parallel to the actions of his father, who responded to the Muslim Brotherhood uprising by sending tanks and ultra-loyal troops commanded by his brother to raze Hama, killing between 10,000 and 30,000 civilians, President Assad has laid siege to Deraa, Homs and Banias with tanks and troops commanded by his brother, Maher al-Assad.

Today, in two months of protests, Syrian security forces have killed an estimated 850 people.

On Wednesday, Syria dropped its bid to join the UN Human Rights Council, which has ordered a fact-finding mission to Syria to investigate human rights abuses.

After eight days in a windowless two by two meter dungeon deep underground, Ali was freed without charges. His wallet, with half the money stolen, was returned, but he was too weak to drive home so took a taxi to a friend's place, too ashamed to let his parents see.

"The worst is you don't know what will happen. You and your family have no idea what is going on," said Ali who, despite his experience, remains unbowed.

"I have seen personally the real ugly face of security, and it is much uglier than I thought. I will protest again because now I really realize what freedom means. If we give up now we will all be arrested again anyway."

*All names of prisoners have been changed for their own safety.
Bron: Aljazeera

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Activists: Massgrave found in Syria

Syria’s brutal crackdown against pro-democracy protests took a chilling turn on Monday with the discovery of a mass grave in Deraa, the town at the heart of protests roiling the country for two months, an activist said.

“The army today allowed residents to venture outside their homes for two hours daily,” said Ammar Qurabi of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria.

“They discovered a mass grave in the old part of town but authorities immediately cordoned off the area to prevent residents from recovering the bodies, some of which they promised would be handed over later,” he said on the phone from Cairo.

Mr. Qurabi said the Syrian regime must bear full responsibility for the crimes committed against “unarmed” citizens and urged the international community and civil society to pressure it to stop the “brutal repression” of its people.

He was unable say how many people were buried in the alleged mass grave.

His account could not be independently verified as Syrian authorities have all but sealed off the country to foreign journalists amid a brutal crackdown against unprecedented protests threatening the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Mr. Qurabi said that 34 people had also been killed in the past five days in the towns of Jassem and Inkhil, near Deraa.

“I fear that dozens more casualties may be lying in nearby wheat fields and orchards because families have not been able to access the region which is encircled by security troops and snipers,” he said.

The unrest in Syria first erupted in Damascus on March 15 but was promptly put down and soon spread to Deraa and across the country with protesters emboldened by the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.

More than 850 people, including women and children, have been killed and at least 8,000 arrested as security forces crack down on the protest movements, according to rights groups.

The bloodshed spilled into neighboring Lebanon at the weekend when a Syrian woman, among dozens fleeing the northwestern town of Tall Kalakh, was killed and six other people wounded, a Lebanese security official said.

Witnesses contacted by telephone also reported 10 people were killed on Sunday in Tall Kalakh, located near the Lebanese border, as security forces deployed inside the town.

Shelling and shooting was also reported in the nearby town of Arida, an activist told AFP.

Meanwhile hundreds of protesters and rights advocates detained in recent days were released on Sunday after signing pledges not to take part in further protests, said Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“Several of them said they had been tortured,” he said, adding that thousands of people remained jailed and more arrests were taking place.

The regime has blamed the deadly violence on “armed terrorist gangs” backed by Islamists and foreign agitators.

Dozens of Syrians who fled the violence in their hometowns gathered in north Lebanon on Monday to demand the fall of Mr. Assad’s regime, an AFP correspondent witnessed.

“The people want the fall of the regime,” chanted the group gathered in the village of Al-Boqayah, located along the border.

Most of the protesters hailed from the Syrian towns of Tall Kalakh and Arida.

“We don’t love you, Bashar,” and “Tall Kalakh, have no fear, we are with you,” they shouted.

The United Sates and European Union have responded to the unrest in Syria by imposing sanctions on members of President Assad’s inner circle but stopped short of targeting him personally.

Rights groups have called for harsher sanctions but there are fears that should Mr. Assad’s regime fall that would have serious ramifications for the region and could lead to civil war.

Human Rights Watch at the weekend accused the regime of pushing forth with its campaign to crush the pro-democracy protests by rounding up activists and holding many of them incommunicado while going after their families.

“Syria’s leaders talk about a war against terrorists, but what we see on the ground is a war against ordinary Syrians—lawyers, human rights activists, and university students—who are calling for democratic changes in their country,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director of the New York-based organization in a statement released Sunday.

“Syria’s emergency law may have been lifted on paper, but repression is still the rule on Syria’s streets.

“Behind the empty rhetoric of promises and national dialogue, there is a systematic campaign to rebuild Syria’s wall of fear with only one purpose: allowing (President Bashar) al-Assad and his cronies to maintain their absolute grip on power,” she added.