VARIOUS/FILE: Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad is expected to scrap emergency laws that date back to 1963

Record ID: 279022

  • Title: VARIOUS/FILE: Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad is expected to scrap emergency laws that date back to 1963
  • Date: 29th March 2011
  • Summary: DAMASCUS, SYRIA (FILE - JULY 10, 2000) (REUTERS) CROWDS CARRYING PICTURES OF ASSAD MARCHING ON REFERENDUM DAY
  • Embargoed: 13th April 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations,Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA9F5GDS5K20UY7VVVSZIL03M4H
  • Story Text: President Bashar al-Assad is expected to scrap long established emergency laws in an attempt to quell current protests in Syria.
    Assad has been facing the biggest challenge to his rule since popular protests demanding greater freedoms and an end to corruption erupted two weeks ago and spread to parts of the capital Damascus and the coast.
    Assad's adviser Bouthaina Shaaban said after the protests took the ruling elite by surprise that emergency law would be lifted but has not given a timetable.
    The Baath Party imposed the laws when it took power in a 1963 coup. They were continued when Bashar's father, Hafez al-Assad, took over leadership of Syrian in a bloodless coup.
    Hafez Assad wielded power in Syria with brutality, not hesitating to use tanks and troops against dissenters. His regime was subject to a series of reports by human rights groups, including one by Amnesty International which charged his government with the "disappearance" of thousands of people opposed to Assad.
    Lawyers say the law has been continually been used by Bashar Assad, Hafez's son and successor, and the Syrian authorities to ban protest, justify arbitrary arrests and closed courts and give free rein to the secret police in the country of 22 million.
    Syrian forces fired into the air on Monday (March 28) to disperse a pro-democracy protest in the southern flashpoint city of Deraa, where reformists want to overthrow the 41-year rule of the Assad family.
    More than 60 people have been killed so far in the crackdown in the town on the Jordanian border. Residents said security forces' snipers were on rooftops.
    Bashar Assad has yet to speak publicly on the protests, which have taken in the northern port of Latakia and Hama in central Syria, but officials say he will make an announcement in the next two days amid speculation he could lift emergency rule.
    Assad's crackdown on what his officials say are armed groups has drawn international condemnation as protesters, emboldened by uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, confronted the security system of one of the most tightly controlled Arab countries.
    President Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser said on Monday the United States expected the Syrian government to respect the rights of Syrians to demonstrate peacefully.
    Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said events in Syria were "deeply concerning" but ruled out Libya-style intervention.
    A statue of the late president Hafez al-Assad, the president's father, was toppled last week before security men in plain clothes opened fire with automatic rifles from buildings.
    People have also turned out on the streets of Hama, where in 1982 the forces of Hafez al-Assad killed thousands of people and razed much of the old quarter to crush an armed uprising by the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.
    Bashar al-Assad, 45, faces calls to lift emergency laws that have been used since 1963 to stifle political opposition, justify arbitrary arrest and give free rein to a pervasive security apparatus.
    The protesters want political prisoners freed, and clarity on the fate of tens of thousands of dissidents who disappeared in the 1980s.
    Such demonstrations would have been unthinkable a couple of months ago in Syria, where the Baath Party has been in power for nearly 50 years but now faces the wave of Arab revolutionary fervour that toppled the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia.
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