Syrians should wage a campaign of civil disobedience to try to force President Bashar al-Assad from power, an exiled dissident said on Saturday at a meeting in Turkey aimed at forging a united opposition.
The opposition, divided between Islamists and liberals, is holding a “National Salvation Congress” to try to unite behind the goal of ending 41 years of Assad family rule, but is struggling to agree on whether to form a shadow govt.
“I’m for anything that unifies the Syrian people and helps our people inside, and unifies our ranks in confronting this illegitimate repressive regime that has usurped power and human rights,” opposition figure Wael al Hafez told the meeting in Istanbul.
“We want to raise the intensity of the peaceful confrontation by civil disobedience and to choke the regime economically and paralyse the state with the least damage.” The West has criticised Assad’s crackdown on four months of protests demanding political freedoms. On Friday, his troops killed at least 32 civilians, including 23 in the capital Damascus. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, visiting Turkey, said Assad’s repression of peaceful protests was “troubling”. “The brutality has to stop. There must be a legitimate, sincere effort with the opposition to try and make changes,” she said in a televised interview with a group of young Turkish people at an Istanbul coffee shop on Saturday. “I don’t know whether that will happen or not. And none of us really have influence other than to say what we believe and encourage the changes that we hope for.”
The opposition said the authorities had targeted a wedding hall in Damascus where it had planned to hold a simultaneous conference, connected by video link to the one in Istanbul.
“Several martyrs are fallen and others have been arrested,” said Haitham al-Maleh, a venerable former judge who was among political prisoners released by Assad in March when the uprising began. “The regime cannot deny us our freedoms. This state is for the Syrians, not Assad family’s property,” Maleh told the meeting of several hundred people.
