DAMASCUS – Syrian authorities arrested an opposition figure in the restive city of Homs, an activist said Wednesday as rights groups derided the government’s move to end decades of draconian emergency rule.
Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Mahmud Issa was taken into custody in Homs Tuesday, hours after the cabinet approved a bill to rescind the state of emergency. The bill will now go before parliament, which is not due to meet until after May 2.
The cabinet had also agreed to abolish the state security court and approved a bill regulating demonstrations, after the interior minister imposed a total ban on political gatherings and security forces shot dead protesters in Homs.
More than 2,000 people defied the authorities and protested against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in the northern coastal city of Banias late on Tuesday, witnesses said. At least 10 people were reported killed on Tuesday in clashes in Homs, where some 20,000 people staged an overnight sit-in protest demanding Assad’s ouster.
Later, “a patrol of the political security services arrested (regime) opponent Mahmud Issa in Homs after he gave an interview to Al-Jazeera television,” said Abdel Rahman. In his interview, Issa spoke of the death of General Abdo Khodr al-Tellawi in the region of Homs and, according to Abdel Rahman, said he knew who carried out his murder and asked authorities to investigate and arrest them.
The official SANA news agency said Tuesday that “armed criminal gangs… came upon General Abdo Khodr al-Tellawi, his two children and his nephew, and killed them in cold blood” and “mutilated” their bodies. Assad’s regime has blamed “armed criminal gangs” for deadly violence since pro-reform demonstrations erupted in mid-March across Syria, one of the Middle East’s most autocratic countries.
The latest overture by Assad’s government was roundly criticised as failing to go far enough. Amnesty International, which says around 220 people have been killed in the month-long crackdown, including 26 in recent days, said in a statement that the “pledges ring hollow.”
The London-based international rights watchdog called on Assad to “back up his pledge to introduce reforms with immediate, concrete action to end the continuing wave of killings of protesters by his security forces.”
“Assad should match his action in lifting the emergency by establishing an immediate independent investigation into the unlawful killings and other violations committed by his forces, and by providing reparation to the victims,” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty’s director for the Middle East.
The Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights and its branch in Syria, the Damascus Centre for Human Rights Studies, said the move to lift emergency rule “falls short of significant human rights reforms.”
“Evidence in the field also demonstrates the hardening of the response of the security forces to the spreading protests,” they said in a joint statement. They added that security forces killed at least 30 demonstrators and wounded hundreds in Homs and Latakia, another key protest centre, between Friday and Monday. With protests intensifying and spreading across the country, Assad delivered a speech to his new cabinet on Saturday and promised an end to the emergency law in force since 1963.
