SYRIA YESTERDAY lifted the country’s 48-year-old emergency law in response to five weeks of protests against autocratic Baath party rule. The law gave the authorities the power to ban gatherings of more than five people, arrest dissidents without charge, and intervene in peoples’ lives.
The government also abolished the state security court which conducted trials of political prisoners and adopted legislation permitting “peaceful” protests. The laws are due to be ratified by President Bashar al-Assad who had pledged to adopt such measures by this week.
It remains to be seen whether they will satisfy protesters who are mourning the deaths of 200 people and demanding that those responsible be arrested and tried in the cities where killings took place. Protesters also call for the release of all political prisoners.
The authorities have warned that once the emergency law is cancelled, illegal demonstrations will not be tolerated.
Before adopting this legislation, Damascus cracked down hard on dissent. Syrian security forces employed live fire and tear gas to disperse a crowd camped in the iconic clock tower square of Homs, the country’s third city. The square was cleared and sealed off, four people were reported killed and four injured.
Armed action followed the interior ministry’s announcement that Syria was facing an insurrection by “armed Salafist groups”, radical Muslim puritans regarded as “terrorists”. The ministry said the authorities “will act with determination to impose security and stability” and will “pursue the terrorists wherever they are in order to bring them to justice and end the armed revolt”.
There were compelling reasons why Damascus decided to act now. Homs, a central industrial city with a population of 1.5 million is not Deraa, the drought-devastated rural town on the Jordanian border where protests began after teenagers were arrested for writing politically provocative slogans on walls. The regime took a hard line but did not feel unduly threatened as long as unrest was confined to the farming folk of Deraa and its environs.
But when protests erupted in the port city of Latakia, the base of the Assad clan; Baniyas, home to one of the country’s major oil refineries; and Douma, a working class suburb of Damascus, the authorities realised that the populace was no longer apolitical and docile.
By the time Homs erupted, protests had been joined by labourers, intellectuals, school children and university students, shopkeepers, clerks and clerics, and their demands had been raised to a dangerous level. Some had taken up the Egyptian chant that brought down Hosni Mubarak: “The people want the end of the regime.” Dissidents are divided between activists who seek regime change and moderate elements who want reform. Activists say people move from camp to camp, depending on circumstances.
At times of escalation they gravitate to the regime-change camp; when there is calm, people tend to support reform. The ending of the emergency is likely to benefit reformers and deepen division. The involvement of Homs and its sister city, Hama, was also highly sensitive.
These cities served as bases for the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood which staged a revolt against the secular regime and was crushed in the battle of Hama in 1982.
The Brotherhood and allied Salafists have declared their sup- port for the protests, convincing some in Damascus that militant Muslims have been behind the demonstrations. The WikiLeaks’ revelation that the US state department has been covertly financing Syrian opposition groups. and a British-based satellite television channel that broadcasts anti-regime material, is certain to have been regarded by the regime as proof that “foreign hands” are stirring revolt in Syria. Once protests stop, the clampdown on these elements is likely to begin.
