Huge crowds rallied in cities across Syria Thursday in a mass show of support for President Bashar al-Assad “to make the world hear our voice” on the first anniversary of a deadly anti-regime revolt. State television showed tens of thousands of people waving Syrian flags and Assad’s portrait in squares in Damascus, the northern city of Aleppo, Latakia on the Mediterranean coast, Suweida to the south and Hasaka in the northeast. The cities have been relatively unscathed by the regime’s crackdown on a revolt which erupted on March 15, 2011 and has cost more than 8,500 lives, according to opposition activists.
“After a whole year of pressure on Syria, we want to make the world hear our voice: Leave Syria in peace,” a woman on the street told the state broadcaster. According to the official news agency SANA, “millions of Syrians flocked (to the rallies) … to tell the world that the Syrian people have chosen the path of national unity and stability, free from interference and foreign diktats.”