Lifting of Syria's emergency laws dismissed as a sham

Published on Tuesday 19 April 2011 15:44

Syria's government approved the lifting of the country's nearly 50-year-old state of emergency yesterday, but opposition leaders dismissed it as an attempt by President Bashar Assad to claim reforms but maintain his hard-line rule.

The blunt response suggested the month-old uprising could be entering a more volatile stage, with protesters now aiming higher to seek Mr Assad's fall and his regime warning that the demonstrations must end.

"We want freedom," chanted thousands of people in the southern city of Daraa and coastal town of Banias, according to eye-witnesses.

Prominent Syrian writer Yassin Haj Saleh, who spent 16 years in jail for his links to a pro-democracy group, claimed the president was looking for a "manoeuvre to gain time" by removing emergency rule, which had given authorities almost boundless powers of surveillance and arrest.

"They are basically telling the people, 'We have fulfilled your demands, so go home, and if you don't we will break your head'," Saleh said in Beirut. "But in reality, nothing will change."

The announcement of the end to the much-reviled emergency rule came just hours after a show of strength by authorities. Security forces stormed an occupied square in Syria's third-largest city of Homs and officials issued a stern warning on national television for the protesters to back down.

Hundreds of people had gathered at Clock Square in the centre of the city, bringing mattresses, food and water to the site for an Egypt-style stand-off. They vowed to stay until Mr Assad was ousted, but security forces fired on the protesters, chasing them through the streets for hours. Witnesses said at least one person was killed and many others were wounded.

"They shot at everything, there was smoke everywhere," one protester said. "I saw people on the ground, some shot in their feet, some in the stomach."

The government's ultimatum appeared to show that ending emergency laws will not ease the increasingly harsh blows against opponents.

Mr Assad's regime has labelled the protest movement as an "armed insurrection" and a power grab by Islamic extremist - descriptions that could give authorities the cover to continue the crackdown.

The Syrian news agency Sana said the cabinet also gave the go-ahead to abolishing the state security court, which handled the trials of political prisoners, and approved a new law allowing the right to stage peaceful protests with the permission of the Interior Ministry.

"Repealing the emergency law would do little to restrict the power of various security agencies because Syria has other laws that guarantee members of the secret police immunity for virtually any crime committed in the line of duty," said Mohamad Bazzi, an expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Most of Syria's 23 million people were born or grew up under the state of emergency that, among other things, puts strict control on the media, allows eavesdropping on telecommunications and permits arrests without warrants.

The regime had claimed the reason for the emergency rule was because of the tech- nical state of war with Israel, but rights groups and others say it was mostly used as the backbone of the authoritarian system.