Onrust in Syrië #7 - Waar Assad de duivel is die we kennen

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Op woensdag 2 november 2011 18:17 schreef Frutsel het volgende:

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Op woensdag 2 november 2011 19:12 schreef abdalfawaz het volgende:

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Oke en wat zijn de tegenmaatregelen als ze dit niet gaan doen..?

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Betogers in Syrië gedood ondanks akkoord

DAMASCUS (ANP) - Syrische militairen hebben donderdag zeker drie mensen gedood in de stad Homs in het midden van het land, enkele dagen nadat het regime in Damascus had ingestemd met een plan voor het beëindigen van het geweld. Dat heeft het Syrische Observatorium voor Mensenrechten laten weten.

Volgens de mensenrechtenbeweging is hevig artillerievuur hoorbaar in de wijken Baba Amr en Al-Inshaat. Die wijken zijn bolwerken van het verzet tegen het bewind van president Bashar al-Assad

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Op woensdag 2 november 2011 19:12 schreef abdalfawaz het volgende:

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Oke en wat zijn de tegenmaatregelen als ze dit niet gaan doen..?

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Op woensdag 2 november 2011 17:44 schreef computerprobleem het volgende:

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Op donderdag 3 november 2011 20:46 schreef waht het volgende:

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De signaalwerking is die van de NAVO richting de rest van de wereld, "We kunnen het nog steeds".

Zonder repercussies een land bombarderen is niet zo maar iets wat elk land kan doen.

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Weer Syrische betogers gedood

DAMASCUS - Syrische militairen hebben vrijdag in de stad Homs in het midden van het land vanaf tanks op burgers gevuurd. Zeker drie mensen zijn omgekomen.

Dat hebben activisten in Homs laten weten.

Volgens de oppositie tegen president Bashar al-Assad hebben militairen donderdag zeker 20 burgers gedood. Eerder deze week stemde Damascus in met het plan van de Arabische Liga om onder meer zijn troepen terug te trekken uit de steden.

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Arabische Liga geeft Assad twee weken respijt

CAIRO - Het regime van de Syrische dictator Bashar al-Assad krijgt tot en met half november de tijd om een eind te maken aan de belegering van opstandige steden.

Daarna kan een dialoog beginnen tussen het bewind en de oppositie.

Dat heeft Ahmad ben Hali, de plaatsvervangend secretaris-generaal van de Arabische Liga, donderdag gezegd tegen de Arabische nieuwszender al-Arabiya.

''We zitten nu in de beginfase'', stelde Ben Hali een dag nadat het Assad-regime had ingestemd met een routekaart van de Arabische Liga voor vrede in Syrië.

Terugtrekking

Naast terugtrekking van militairen uit Syrische steden wordt daarin ook gesteld dat het doden van betogers direct moet stoppen.

Het regime heeft er verder mee ingestemd alle politieke gevangenen vrij te laten en een dialoog te beginnen met de oppositie. De beloftes van Assad stonden woensdag en donderdag in schril contrast met de praktijk.

Tientallen burgers werden volgens de oppositie om het leven gebracht door medewerkers van de veiligheidsdiensten. Volgens het bewind werden 13 militairen gedood door extremisten.

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Occupy demonstrators at St Paul's link up with protests in Syria - video

Occupy London protesters take part in a two-way livestream connecting demonstrations at St Paul's Cathedral with those in Damascus and Homs in Syria. They claim it is the first such event in the UK, and part of their attempts to link protest movements around the world. Around 50 UK-based Syrians took part in the protest, which streamed live to Syria

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Op zaterdag 5 november 2011 00:20 schreef NDAsilenced het volgende:
Zojuist op het late (0:00) journaal nog het item gezien over Syrië. Allemaal weer narigheid en shit, maar dit vond ik toch wel opmerkelijk.

Demonstranten zingen hun protest op de Jingle-Bells melodie, na het vrijdaggebed: (op 0:55)
http://nos.nl/video/310389-syrie-blijft-demonstranten-doden.html

Tja, ik denk dan weer, zouden ze weten dat ze een melodie zingen dat geassocieerd wordt met de viering van een zeker Christelijk feest? Laat de Imam het maar niet horen.

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Op zaterdag 5 november 2011 01:20 schreef rakotto het volgende:

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Is de hele wereldbeeld van Moslims/Middenoostenaars nu verstoord?

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Op zaterdag 5 november 2011 14:28 schreef NDAsilenced het volgende:

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Ik vind je vraag niet heel duidelijk gesteld, maar op beide interpretaties is het korte antwoord, nee.

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A tale of two Syrian villages
Locals in Masyaf claimed hundreds of Alawite families had been expelled from Sunni villages. In Bareen, I visited Miyada Idris in the house she was renting with her husband Juma Jbeili, five children and sister-in-law. The family had fled their home in Akrab’s Alawite enclave of Jbeili, a community of about 200 families. Their new home, an unpainted concrete block, had no furniture - save for some thin mattresses on the floor. There was no glass in the windows and no running water. The family left Akrab after feeling intimidated by what Miyada dubbed "sectarian slogans".

"At first it was every Friday, then every day," she said. "They burned state buildings and attacked some shops and they called for jihad. My husband’s name was written as a collaborator with the state because he called security to protect us. There were papers on the streets and walls with his name and others’ names written and it said they were collaborators - and [that] after the fall of the regime 'their blood will be spilled'."
They said they could not return to their life and farm home in Akrab. "We’re afraid they’ll kill us," said Miyada. "We will transfer our children to school here." Locals had cursed and threatened them, while the local bakery set aside bread rations for the revolutionaries, she said.

I also visited the family of Naji Jbeili. They too were Alawites from Akrab, who had fled after being threatened at gunpoint by Sunni men. They too had owned their home in Akrab. Now they rented a small unfurnished house for about $100 a month.

"Their hatred appeared," said one of the men in the family. "It's finished, we can never go back," said another. They worried that armed men would prevent them from returning to reclaim their belongings. "We are waiting for the army to remove the armed men," one told me. Mosques and town leaders were against the regime, said the family, blaming the people of Hula for coming to their village and stirring up problems.

The other side of the coin
I returned to Hula with two opposition activists, named Khaled and Odai, from Homs. They were both in the opposition coordinating committees. They had been jailed in the past and were now wanted by Syrian security. After receiving word that police might have closed the road to Hula, the pair asked a friend - whose brother was in jail for "opposition activities" - to drive one kilometre ahead of us to give warning of any security checkpoints.

They blamed the government for the sectarianism. "The security apparatus is like the old British empire," said Khaled. "Divide and conquer." They denied that sectarian slogans were chanted in demonstrations. "Alawites say we will throw them into the sea but nobody in the opposition ever said 'Alawites to the coffin and Christians to Beirut'," he said. Khaled, however, admitted that the opposition was almost entirely Sunni. "One out of 10,000 Alawites are in the opposition," he said. "Maybe 200 in total, and they are all known by name."

Khaled's neighbour in Homs was a poor Alawite labourer, who earned about $12 a day. "But he is afraid of talking, and afraid of both sides," Khaled said. "He says Alawites in the opposition are punished more than others."

Like my Alawite driver had done previously, they planned their route based on the sects of the villages on the way. They wanted to avoid the Shia village of al Ghur. "We don’t want to go there," said Khaled. "They won't kill us for political reasons, they will kill us for religious reasons - so they will go to paradise." Instead, they passed Sam’aleel, a Circasian Sunni village, and drove on through Burj, a Turkman Sunni village. Leaving Burj to enter Tel Daw and Hula, our path was partially blocked by large rocks, placed there by opposition activists, while the road itself was marked by the tracks of Syrian tanks and armoured vehicles. "These are smuggling roads," Khaled explained to me, as we entered Hula. Once in Hula, my two companions relaxed. All the government spies had fled or been killed, they told me. "Here they are very harsh with spies," Khaled said.

'A people's movement'
We drove through narrow, unpaved alleys and stopped in front of a house with motorcycles parked outside it. I was taken into a guest room full of bookshelves with religious books, where four men sat on mats. One was a policeman with a large beard; another was a thin, older, bespectacled school teacher and a third was a tall, young medical student. I asked why they were opposed to the regime. "It is corrupt, oppressive, and makes sectarian divisions," said the school teacher. "We [have been] against this regime for a long time." He cited many arrests made during the Muslim Brotherhood uprising between 1976 and 1982.

"What's happening here in Syria and Hula is popular," said the teacher. "It’s a people’s movement. There is no leader. We are against oppression, insults and [a] lack of dignity." Like many opposition supporters, they felt a strong sense of injustice. "I don’t feel Syrian," the teacher said. "Syria is for the Assad family ... A security man without [even] an elementary school degree can insult me in front of my family," he added.

Distrust of the other
"There were no problems with Alawites before," said the teacher. "But there was always this feeling inside you that this man is looking down on you, even if you try to distance it from yourself, that he has perks and full rights and you don’t. We are tenth-level citizens and they are above."

"Alawites get preferential treatment in university," said the medical student, insisting that Alawites received the answers to high school examinations.

They conceded that most Alawites supported the regime. "They think if the regime goes, they will go," the teacher said. Khaled added: "They believe that if the regime leaves, they will die."

They were upset about the ban of the niqab, or full veil, on women in public schools - while the medical student complained that the books of the medieval Islamic scholar and Salafi source, Ibn Taimiya, were banned.

"We feel as though we are living under occupation," the teacher said. Security officers had been placed on the rooftops of schools, frightening teachers and students. They said that, once, when townspeople had tried to broadcast a speech by the incendiary exiled Sheikh Adnan al-Arur in the main square, security officials shut off their electricity.

"It's our right to revolt," one of the men said. But the teacher admitted that they could not fight the state with arms.

Two days before I met them, the army raided the town, wounding three men, shooting at livestock and at houses, they told me. They said a soldier from Hula, named Radeeb Hamadi, had been recently stopped by security at a checkpoint in Kiswa. After the security officers saw he was from Hula, they stabbed him to death, the men alleged.

Protests begin
The first demonstration in Hula took place on March 25. Four days later, the medical student was arrested for demonstrating in Homs. He said he was hung from his arms and beaten, as well as given electric shocks; they called him "gay" and stepped on his face. There was sewage water on the floor of his cell.

Wael Qaseem, Hula’s first opposition "martyr" was killed on April 8 while protesting. They claimed Wael’s killer was a security officer from Tareen named Wissam al-Waeri. "On the day of Wael’s funeral, people said: 'We won't be quiet about it' - and protested," said the teacher. "Then the shabiha ["thugs"] came with the army and shot at people, killing one man and injuring 10 others, while seven were arrested.""April 22 was the massacre," they said. Thousands of protesters from different areas gathered together. "It was peaceful," said the teacher. "We said 'freedom' only, not 'the downfall of the regime'." The police did not oppose the demonstration, they said, and they withdrew to allow for security officers with Alawite accents to open fire on the protesters. Locals responded with rocks - and some gunfire. Eventually, the security forces ran out of ammunition, my companion told me. Reinforcements evacuated the security officers, relocating them to the water department office outside the town, as protesters burned down their headquarters. Following those clashes, protesters began calling for the downfall of the regime. Six protesters were killed that day. "The youngest martyr was 15," one of the men told me. "I washed his body myself." Dozens of others were wounded.

Torture allegations and desertion
Abu Suleiman, the bearded policeman, was serving in Homs on April 22, during the first large demonstration there. He told me he called his family in Hula that day and heard shooting in the background. He shouted in rage and Alawite policemen reported him, he said. Political security officers then raided the police station, pointed their guns at him and beat him. He was taken to have his head stitched at the military hospital, which was full of armed civilians, he said. In Military Security detention, he was tortured with burning metal. He showed me the scars all over his body. He said he was beaten with clubs and chairs. His back was injured from being beaten with a rifle. They threatened his mother and daughters. Abu Suleiman told me he was tortured for 27 days and he spent a total of 45 days in different prisons. He was accused of spreading sectarianism, insulting the state and inciting demonstrations. He was allowed to return to his job but he deserted, he told me.

The medical student was also jailed, accused of spreading chaos, fighting security, destruction, sectarianism - as well as "harming national unity and the state". His alleged torturers called him a traitor and a collaborator with Israel and said he called Christians "infidels".

The fourth man with us had also deserted his Hama police force service and was staying in Hula.

I climbed on the teacher's motorcycle as he gave me a tour of the neighbouring villages - with Abu Suleiman leading us on his motorcycle to keep an eye out for trouble. As we rode through towns, little boys waved to us and gave us the "V for victory" sign with fingers. Most houses we drove past had large bullet holes in their windows or in the walls near the windows. Many streets were blocked off with large stones and mounds of gravel or logs. Young men had set up checkpoints to protect the town, they told me. On one large concrete barrier, protesters spray-painted a sign pointing south to the Golan, mocking security forces for fighting Syrians rather than liberating land occupied by Israel. The few paved roads were scarred by burnt tyres, while the fields around us were dry. Abu Suleiman pointed to his house, a simple building made of plain breezeblocks. As we headed to the outskirts of town, a truck coming towards us honked its horn. He warned us that a new military security checkpoint had just been put up and we should turn around.

We continued driving, passing a bulldozer riddled with bullets, probably formerly tasked with preventing opposition activists from constructing roadblocks. The cemetery was a simple plot of land with breezeblocks both marking the graves and acting as tombstones. We rode on, past the "Mosque of the Martyrs", until recently named the "Mosque of the Martyr Basil al-Assad", after the brother of the president who died in a car crash. They renamed the roundabout next to it "Freedom Roundabout".

Before we parted, I asked them how they thought they could succeed. "By continuing," the teacher said. "We will continue, under the slogan: 'Death but no humiliation'."

Al Jazeera English

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Op zaterdag 5 november 2011 20:26 schreef Truffelvarken het volgende:
Assad en zijn Alevieten zullen zich nooit overgeven aan de Shiiten of Soennieten. Zeker niet na de verheffende moord op Gadaffie wereldwijd op de TV met steun van de onovertroffen VN.
Dat is voor hen, maar ook voor andere minderheden in Syrië, zelfmoord op een bijzonder onaangename manier.

Al Jazeera's Nir Rosen on the Syrian uprising

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Op zaterdag 5 november 2011 22:00 schreef StateOfMind het volgende:
Hoe groot is het Syrische leger (de landmacht bedoel ik dan) eigenlijk?

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Op zaterdag 5 november 2011 22:51 schreef rakotto het volgende:

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Totaal:

747,000

Actief:

304,000

Bron: Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_Syria

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Op zaterdag 5 november 2011 17:47 schreef rakotto het volgende:

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Een taalfout duidelijk maken en dan niet op de vraag een antwoord geven.

Wat ik dus zei is: Vind je het vreemd dat Moslims/Middenoostenaars zich gedragen als normale mensen en dat er eigenlijk niets aan de hand is met een "Christelijke" melodie volgens hun hen?

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Op maandag 7 november 2011 12:40 schreef NDAsilenced het volgende:

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Ik beweer dus, althans vermoed, dat ze de oorsprong helemaal niet kennen. Verder zijn het uiteraard 'normale' mensen, echter ook moslim.