Thousands of Syrians rallied Friday on a “Day of Defiance” even as the regime of President Bashar al-Assad deployed tanks in at least three centres of an uprising against his autocratic rule. The European Union, meanwhile, was set to decide at talks Friday whether to directly target Assad among a list of around 15 Syrian officials facing an assets freeze and travel ban, a European diplomat said. Two protesters were wounded by gunshots during a demonstration in Homs as security forces fired into the air in a bid to disperse a crowd of at least 2,000 protesters, after tanks entered the central industrial city, an activist said.
“Dozens of people were arrested in several districts of the city during the night between Thursday and Friday,” said Najatai Tayara, another activist in Homs. In the Midan neighbourhood of Damascus, prominent dissident Riad Seif was arrested, Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP. Seif, a former MP, is a key figure of the Syrian opposition movement who was briefly detained in February 2006, only a month after spending almost five years in jail.
He belongs to a group of 12 prominent Syrian opposition figures who signed the “Damascus Declaration” calling for democratic reform in the autocratic Arab nation. Around 9,000 people demonstrated in two Kurdish neighbourhoods of Amuda and Derbassiye near Qamishli in the northeast, according to Kurdish activist Hassan Berro. Another 2,500 people took to the streets of the Mediterranean protest hub of Banias, while others rallied in Kafar Nubbol, 320 kilometres (200 miles) north of Damascus, and Al-Bukamal near the border with Iraq, said rights activists. The new troop deployment came as they pulled out of the restive town of Daraa in the south following a 10-day lockdown.
Hundreds of troops withdrew from Daraa on Thursday, and the military said its withdrawal carried on overnight into Friday. “Throughout the night, they withdrew from Daraa and this is continuing today. The troops’ departure is gradual,” General Riad Haddad, the military’s political department chief, told AFP. Haddad said 600 people were arrested in Daraa during the 10-day operation. On Wednesday, an activist had said around 100 tanks and troop transports converged on Ar-Rastan, near Homs.
Dozens of armoured vehicles, including tanks, and troop reinforcements were deployed near Banias, an activist told AFP on Thursday, contacted by telephone. “It looks like they are preparing to attack the town, like they did in Daraa,” he said. As on Fridays for the past seven weeks, activists have vowed to stage protests against the regime of President Assad across the nation after the main weekly Muslim prayers. The Syrian Revolution 2011, a Facebook group that has been a driving force of the protests, called for the “Day of Defiance” demonstrations, saying “Liberty is close.”
The protests broke out in Damascus on March 15, inspired by Arab world uprisings that have already toppled long-time autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt this year. They were promptly put down in the Syrian capital but moved to other centres including Daraa, Banias, Homs, nearby Hama, Aleppo in the north, and the majority Kurdish northeastern city of Qamishli.
