Tens of Thousands of Syrians Protest in Central City of Hama
By ANTHONY SHADID
Published: July 1, 2011
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LinkedinDiggMySpacePermalink. BEIRUT, Lebanon — Tens of thousands of protesters poured Friday into the streets of Hama, a Syrian city abandoned by the military and security forces, gathering in the country’s biggest demonstration in nearly four months of unrest and staking a festive claim to a region that bore the brunt of a ferocious government crackdown a generation ago.
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SANA, via Associated Press
Syria's President Bashar al-Assad delivered a speech in Damascus, Syria, on Monday.
Related
Times Topic: Syria — Protests (2011)
The Lede Blog: Video Shows Large Protest in Hama, Syrian City at Heart of Previous Uprising (July 1, 2011)
Coalition of Factions From the Streets Fuels a New Opposition in Syria (July 1, 2011) The scenes of residents rallying in a central square there, captured by activists on video and circulated on the Internet, seemed to signal a new stage in an uprising that has so far only aspired to rival the mass protests in Egypt and Tunisia, where authoritarian leaders were eventually forced to step down. Protesters exploited at least a temporary vacuum in the official security presence in Hama to stage a panorama of dissent as celebratory as it was angry.
“Leave! Leave!” protesters chanted to a hip-hop beat.
The military and security forces withdrew last month from Hama for reasons that remain unclear. But the move seemed to reflect a compelling, if ambiguous, turn in an uprising that until recently was marked by repeated clashes between protesters and armed troops.
After weeks of stalemate, a new dynamic has emerged recently in Syria. The opposition gathered Monday in a rare meeting in Damascus, government officials are promising reform in coming weeks and protesters have shown a resilience that seems more and more difficult for the government to suppress.
The most visible shift has occurred in Hama, where a government crackdown in 1982 made the city synonymous with the brutality of Syria’s leadership. Since the withdrawal last month, protests have gathered momentum. Each night, youths have converged on Aasi Square, which they have renamed Freedom Square. On successive Fridays, crowds have grown bigger, surpassing 10,000 last week, diplomats say.
Friday’s scenes were even more dramatic; one resident compared it to a carnival. Speakers climbed atop cars and delivered speeches, slogans and songs, other residents said. Other people distributed water, falafel sandwiches and bananas to the crowds on the hot summer day.
“It’s a challenge,” said a nurse and activist in the city, who gave his name as Abu Abdo. “Hama is swelling the tide of protests for the rest of Syria.”
Estimates of the crowd were hard to verify, and activists have sometimes exaggerated the turnout in protests challenging more than four decades of rule by the Assad family. But few questioned the breadth of Friday’s demonstrations, which occupied parts of a city long kept under surveillance by the state’s repressive apparatus.
“We didn’t even see a policeman,” said a 35-year-old opposition leader there who gave his first name as Mazen. “If the government pulls out all its security men from the streets on Friday, I can say that all cities will have as big demonstrations as Hama.”
Residents said that swelling the ranks of protesters were people from the countryside, who arrived in the city unimpeded by checkpoints that had existed only weeks before. In Hama itself, even the traffic policemen were gone. The residents said that after the rally, protesters picked up trash and cleaned the square, in a scene reminiscent of Tahrir Square in Cairo in February, where demonstrators took it upon themselves to enforce civil order as the old power structure crumbled.
“The numbers are so intense in Hama,” said Omar Idlibi, a spokesman for the Local Coordination Committees, which have sought to represent the protesters.
Diplomats, activists and Syrian officials have differed on the meaning of the government’s strategy in Hama: whether the departure suggests a government attempt to avoid casualties, or military and security forces that are exhausted and overstretched.
Syrian officials have pointed to Hama as evidence that one of the region’s most repressive governments can tolerate peaceful dissent and suggested that it was part of a new government approach to embrace what a Syrian diplomat called “much-needed reform.”
“In the city of Hama, people have been demonstrating in public places for two weeks without any incident, because they expressed their political viewpoints peacefully,” Imad Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador to the United States, wrote in a recent letter to the Syrian-American community that was circulated by e-mail.
Residents of Hama, though, have spoken in more jubilant terms, celebrating the departure of the military and security forces as a victory. Though the military and security forces have withdrawn from other towns and cities only to return in force, the size of the crowds on Friday suggested that a renewed crackdown would come only at a very high cost. Hama carries symbolic significance, too: In the culmination of a struggle between an armed Islamist opposition and the government in 1982, the military stormed Hama, the country’s fourth-largest city, killing 10,000 people and perhaps many more. This time around, “The regime showed more restraint there because of the sensitivities and the symbolism of Hama,” said Peter Harling, a Damascus-based analyst with the International Crisis Group. “There was a desire on the part of the regime to contain this.”
While officials have ceded territory to the protesters, their administration appears to still function in Hama. A pro-government rally was organized there last month. But the psychological impact of a security apparatus that vanished in days has reverberated through the predominantly Sunni Muslim city.
“Oh, youth of Damascus,” went a chant shouted this week by youthful protesters in Aasi Square, “we’re in Hama and we’ve toppled the regime.”
“This regime doesn’t want to create a problem in Hama,” said Omar al-Habbal, 57, a civil engineer in the city. “They don’t want to blow up an explosive situation.”
Syrian state television broadcast images of large pro-government rallies on Friday in Damascus and Aleppo, and despite the scenes in Hama, the government still draws on substantial support, particularly among minorities, the middle class and the business elite.
As in past weeks, violence erupted in several locales across the country, though the death toll was lower than previously. In Homs, a city to the south of Hama that has emerged as a nexus of the uprising, Mr. Idlibi said security forces killed three people, and residents said the military deployed armored vehicles into some neighborhoods.
“You took our loaf of bread,” a resident there quoted protesters as chanting. “When we asked for it back, you fired at us instead.” Others shouted, “Leave!”
Syrian state television said that armed men in Homs fired on crowds and security forces, killing a civilian and a policeman. It also reported that armed men blocked the road in a Damascus suburb and that in an exchange of fire with the gunmen, a civilian was killed.
It was almost impossible to reconcile the discrepancy in the different accounts.
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, and an employee of The New York Times from Damascus.
A version of this article appeared in print on July 2, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: With Police Absent, Protests Surge in Syrian City.
=====================================================
.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/world/middleeast/02syria.html
By ANTHONY SHADID
Published: July 1, 2011
=======================================================
LinkedinDiggMySpacePermalink. BEIRUT, Lebanon — Tens of thousands of protesters poured Friday into the streets of Hama, a Syrian city abandoned by the military and security forces, gathering in the country’s biggest demonstration in nearly four months of unrest and staking a festive claim to a region that bore the brunt of a ferocious government crackdown a generation ago.
Enlarge This Image
SANA, via Associated Press
Syria's President Bashar al-Assad delivered a speech in Damascus, Syria, on Monday.
Related
Times Topic: Syria — Protests (2011)
The Lede Blog: Video Shows Large Protest in Hama, Syrian City at Heart of Previous Uprising (July 1, 2011)
Coalition of Factions From the Streets Fuels a New Opposition in Syria (July 1, 2011) The scenes of residents rallying in a central square there, captured by activists on video and circulated on the Internet, seemed to signal a new stage in an uprising that has so far only aspired to rival the mass protests in Egypt and Tunisia, where authoritarian leaders were eventually forced to step down. Protesters exploited at least a temporary vacuum in the official security presence in Hama to stage a panorama of dissent as celebratory as it was angry.
“Leave! Leave!” protesters chanted to a hip-hop beat.
The military and security forces withdrew last month from Hama for reasons that remain unclear. But the move seemed to reflect a compelling, if ambiguous, turn in an uprising that until recently was marked by repeated clashes between protesters and armed troops.
After weeks of stalemate, a new dynamic has emerged recently in Syria. The opposition gathered Monday in a rare meeting in Damascus, government officials are promising reform in coming weeks and protesters have shown a resilience that seems more and more difficult for the government to suppress.
The most visible shift has occurred in Hama, where a government crackdown in 1982 made the city synonymous with the brutality of Syria’s leadership. Since the withdrawal last month, protests have gathered momentum. Each night, youths have converged on Aasi Square, which they have renamed Freedom Square. On successive Fridays, crowds have grown bigger, surpassing 10,000 last week, diplomats say.
Friday’s scenes were even more dramatic; one resident compared it to a carnival. Speakers climbed atop cars and delivered speeches, slogans and songs, other residents said. Other people distributed water, falafel sandwiches and bananas to the crowds on the hot summer day.
“It’s a challenge,” said a nurse and activist in the city, who gave his name as Abu Abdo. “Hama is swelling the tide of protests for the rest of Syria.”
Estimates of the crowd were hard to verify, and activists have sometimes exaggerated the turnout in protests challenging more than four decades of rule by the Assad family. But few questioned the breadth of Friday’s demonstrations, which occupied parts of a city long kept under surveillance by the state’s repressive apparatus.
“We didn’t even see a policeman,” said a 35-year-old opposition leader there who gave his first name as Mazen. “If the government pulls out all its security men from the streets on Friday, I can say that all cities will have as big demonstrations as Hama.”
Residents said that swelling the ranks of protesters were people from the countryside, who arrived in the city unimpeded by checkpoints that had existed only weeks before. In Hama itself, even the traffic policemen were gone. The residents said that after the rally, protesters picked up trash and cleaned the square, in a scene reminiscent of Tahrir Square in Cairo in February, where demonstrators took it upon themselves to enforce civil order as the old power structure crumbled.
“The numbers are so intense in Hama,” said Omar Idlibi, a spokesman for the Local Coordination Committees, which have sought to represent the protesters.
Diplomats, activists and Syrian officials have differed on the meaning of the government’s strategy in Hama: whether the departure suggests a government attempt to avoid casualties, or military and security forces that are exhausted and overstretched.
Syrian officials have pointed to Hama as evidence that one of the region’s most repressive governments can tolerate peaceful dissent and suggested that it was part of a new government approach to embrace what a Syrian diplomat called “much-needed reform.”
“In the city of Hama, people have been demonstrating in public places for two weeks without any incident, because they expressed their political viewpoints peacefully,” Imad Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador to the United States, wrote in a recent letter to the Syrian-American community that was circulated by e-mail.
Residents of Hama, though, have spoken in more jubilant terms, celebrating the departure of the military and security forces as a victory. Though the military and security forces have withdrawn from other towns and cities only to return in force, the size of the crowds on Friday suggested that a renewed crackdown would come only at a very high cost. Hama carries symbolic significance, too: In the culmination of a struggle between an armed Islamist opposition and the government in 1982, the military stormed Hama, the country’s fourth-largest city, killing 10,000 people and perhaps many more. This time around, “The regime showed more restraint there because of the sensitivities and the symbolism of Hama,” said Peter Harling, a Damascus-based analyst with the International Crisis Group. “There was a desire on the part of the regime to contain this.”
While officials have ceded territory to the protesters, their administration appears to still function in Hama. A pro-government rally was organized there last month. But the psychological impact of a security apparatus that vanished in days has reverberated through the predominantly Sunni Muslim city.
“Oh, youth of Damascus,” went a chant shouted this week by youthful protesters in Aasi Square, “we’re in Hama and we’ve toppled the regime.”
“This regime doesn’t want to create a problem in Hama,” said Omar al-Habbal, 57, a civil engineer in the city. “They don’t want to blow up an explosive situation.”
Syrian state television broadcast images of large pro-government rallies on Friday in Damascus and Aleppo, and despite the scenes in Hama, the government still draws on substantial support, particularly among minorities, the middle class and the business elite.
As in past weeks, violence erupted in several locales across the country, though the death toll was lower than previously. In Homs, a city to the south of Hama that has emerged as a nexus of the uprising, Mr. Idlibi said security forces killed three people, and residents said the military deployed armored vehicles into some neighborhoods.
“You took our loaf of bread,” a resident there quoted protesters as chanting. “When we asked for it back, you fired at us instead.” Others shouted, “Leave!”
Syrian state television said that armed men in Homs fired on crowds and security forces, killing a civilian and a policeman. It also reported that armed men blocked the road in a Damascus suburb and that in an exchange of fire with the gunmen, a civilian was killed.
It was almost impossible to reconcile the discrepancy in the different accounts.
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, and an employee of The New York Times from Damascus.
A version of this article appeared in print on July 2, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: With Police Absent, Protests Surge in Syrian City.
=====================================================
.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/world/middleeast/02syria.html
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