Anti-regime protesters called for permanent sit-ins across Syria from Tuesday as the authorities were reported to have arrested more than 1,000 people in their latest crackdown on demonstrations.
“We call on Syrians in all regions to gather from Tuesday evening in all public places to organise sit-ins which will continue day and night,” said a Facebook post by the opposition Syrian Revolution 2011 website. The call came one day into a 15-day interior ministry deadline for people who had committed “unlawful acts” to give themselves up, and as security forces rounded up activists and dissidents across the country.
It also urged Syrians to “supply information about saboteurs, terrorists and arms caches,” pledging “they will be spared any subsequent legal consequences.” The ultimatum came as activists pledged fresh anti-government protests following the weekend deaths of dozens of people.
The National Organisation for Human Rights in Syria said in a statement that more than 1,000 people had been arrested in two days.”There has been an insane intensification of arrests in towns. The authorities are arresting anyone who wants to demonstrate, especially writers, intellectuals and activists known to be demanding reform,” it said. Internationally, France said President Bashar al-Assad’s government is losing legitimacy.
“A government that kills its citizens because its citizens want to express themselves and install a real democracy loses its legitimacy,” Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told journalists in Paris. Asked whether France wanted Assad to be specifically named in EU sanctions against Syria being discussed in Brussels, Alain Juppe told reporters: “France wishes so.”
On Monday Juppe had warned that Assad’s regime was bound to fall if it continued its bloody crackdown. “If the regime perseveres down this path, it will fall, one day or another, but it will fall,” he said. Rami Abdel Rahman of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said arrests were being made all the time in a nationwide crackdown, and that regime agents were armed with lists of people to be pulled in. Activists posted footage on YouTube of protests in Homs and in the Midan district of Damascus.
“No to violence, no to sabotage, no to unemployment” read a banner at one demonstration in the Bab Sbaa quarter of Homs. Protests also took place in Hama and in the Jassem area near the southern flashpoint town of Daraa — hub of the anti-regime protests that erupted in Syria on March 15 — where many arrests were reported.
