Syria: forces continue to shoot protesters dead despite calls from West for Assad to quit

[Pastor Dale Morgan]

Perilous Times

Syria: forces continue to shoot protesters dead despite calls from West for Assad to quit

Syrian security forces continued to shoot dozens of protesters dead yesterday despite calls from the West for President Bashir al-Assad to quit, as Russia moved to reassert its support for the regime.

By Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent

6:15PM BST 19 Aug 2011

Activists based outside the country said there were reports of shootings in the suburbs of Damascus, Deir al-Zour near the border with Iraq and above all in Deraa in the south, the province where the uprising against President Assad’s rule began in March.

By late afternoon, at least 19 people had been killed, the activists said, despite a pledge the day before by Mr Assad to Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general, that he had pulled his security forces off the streets.

Nevertheless, Moscow distanced itself from calls by the United States, Britain and other European Union countries on Thursday for Mr Assad to step down. The decision, in keeping with Russia’s historic alliance with the Assad family, makes the chance of action by the UN security council unlikely.

“We do not share the point of view of the United States and Europe in regard to President Bashar al-Assad,” the foreign ministry spokesman, Alexander Lukashevich, said. The Interfax news agency quoted ministry sources as saying that Mr Assad had done “quite a lot” on promised reforms, and that the pledge to stop military operations was an “important move”.

In a serious blow, Turkey also refused to join the calls for Mr Assad to go, saying the opposition was not yet united. Turkey, once a key ally of Mr Assad, had previously suggested it might be on the verge of turning against him definitively.

An 11-year-old and a 72-year-old were among the 11 people killed in the province of Deraa, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, which has been monitoring the numbers killed in the uprising.

Mousab Azzawi, a spokesman, told The Daily Telegraph they now had the names of 30,000 people who remained in detention after having been arrested since the uprising began in mid-March.

Videos posted online showed tens of thousands of people gathered in cities across the country on what was termed, after Thursday’s call by President Barack Obama for Mr Assad to step aside, the Day of “Signs of Victory”.

The United Nations commissioner for human rights is calling for the security council to refer Mr Assad and members of his regime to the International Criminal Court. Dr Azzawi said even with the Russians likely to veto any resolution condemning Mr Assad, the western intervention was important.

Protesters in one city, Homs, suggested they knew of the latest developments when they were heard chanting: “Bye-bye Bashar. See you in The Hague.”

“Russia has a bad record on human rights so we were not expecting Russia to take any action to stop this bloodshed,” he said. “But if the referral to the ICC does happen and if the key figures in Syria, who are in their tens not their hundreds, are referred they will start to say, ’we will face consequences’.

“They will start to leave and the regime will fall apart.”