Syrian protesters bury the dead in Hama
Published 04 June 2011 17:04 303 Views
Activists say Government tanks are moving towards the central Syrian city of Hama - security forces shot dead dozens of protesters there on Friday. Witnesses have also reported gunfire in the north western town of Jisr al-Shughour. Protesters are trying to overthrow President Bashar al Assad. Soraya Lennie has more.
Burying the DEAD in Syria
Security forces killed at least three demonstrators in northwestern Syria, after more than 100,000 mourners turned out in Hama for the funerals of protesters, rights groups said.
In Jesr al-Shoughour on Saturday, security forces opened fire to scatter demonstrators protesting after the funeral of a civilian killed on Friday in protests at the nearby village of Has in northwestern Idlib province.
Abu Khaled, a Syrian activist, told Al Jazeera that the level of violence in the crackdown on protests was "beyond imagination".
He transferred injured protesters from Jesh al-Shoughour to Turkey's Antakya, a city located 25km away across the border.
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"Today we had massacres [...]. It's beyond imagination the Syrian regime used army and intelligence elements and gangs and thugs to hurt the city," Abu Khaled said.
Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said more than 100,000 people attended the funerals of at least 53 people killed during anti-regime protests on Friday, all but five of them in Hama.
The London-based Observatory said security forces on Friday shot into a crowd of more than 50,000 people gathered for the central city of Hama's biggest rally since protests erupted in mid-March.
In Homs, a city 40km from Hama, two people were killed on Friday and another two were killed in nearby Rastan, Abdel Rahman said. One person was also killed as security forces opened fire in Idlib.
Residents of Hama said security forces stayed away from the funerals. One resident said internet access was still cut off in Hama on Saturday, as users elsewhere said online services had been restored after a cut of more than 24 hours.
Internet shutdown
Washington on Saturday expressed concern at the internet shutdown, warning the embattled regime that trying to silence protesters "cannot prevent the transition currently taking place."
"We are deeply concerned by reports that Internet service has been shut down across much of Syria, as have some mobile communication networks," Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said in a statement.
"We condemn any effort to suppress the Syrian people's exercise of their rights to free expression, assembly, and association."
Syria's official press said 20 people were killed on Friday, including police, security agents and civilians "by shots fired by armed groups."
In Hama, police killed three "saboteurs" as they set a government building alight, state television said, adding that 80 security force members were injured.
State television said on Friday that armed groups, taking advantage of a crowd of "nearly 10,000" in Hama, opened fire on civilians and the security forces.
In 1982, the city was the scene of a brutal crackdown that left around 20,000 people dead when the Muslim Brotherhood rose up against the late Hafez al-Assad, father of current President Bashar al-Assad.
International condemnation
Amid mounting pressure internationally, Britain condemned Friday's killings.
"The Syrian government has shown an abhorrent disregard for human life as ordinary Syrians took to the streets in memory of the innocent children who have died during the unrest," Alistair Burt, the foreign office minister, said.
Activists had called the protests over the dozens of children killed in anti-government protests including 13-year-old Hamza al-Khatib, whom activists say was tortured to death, a charge the authorities deny.
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UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Friday expressed alarm at the heightened crackdown. Rights groups say more than 1,100 civilians have been killed and at least 10,000 arrested since protests began.
The Observatory's Abdel Rahman said 60 people were detained on Friday during a demonstration in Baniyas.
But among hundreds released since Assad announced an amnesty on Tuesday, opposition figure and writer Ali Abdullah, 61, walked free on Saturday, the Observatory said.
It said also released were lawyer Muhannad al-Hasni, who heads an unlicensed rights group, and opposition figure Meshaal al-Tamo, leader of a banned Kurdish party.
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بان كي مون: تصاعد اعمال العنف في سوريا يثير "القلق"
السبت 4 حزيران (يونيو) 2011
اعرب الامين العام للامم المتحدة بان كي مون الجمعة عن "قلقه الشديد" لتصاعد اعمال العنف التي تمارسها السلطات السورية بحق المتظاهرين، متحدثا عن حصيلة للضحايا تجاوزت الف قتيل.
وقالت متحدثة باسم الامم المتحدة فانينا ميستراتشي ان "الامين العام قلق بشدة ازاء تصعيد العنف في سوريا الذي يعتقد انه اوقع ما لا يقل عن سبعين قتيلا خلال الاسبوع المنصرم وحده، ما يرفع عدد الضحايا الاجمالي منذ منتصف اذار/مارس الى اكثر من الف قتيل وعدد اكبر من ذلك بكثير من الجرحى والاف المعتقلين".
وهي اول حصيلة للقتلى خلال التظاهرات تصدر عن رئاسة الامم المتحدة.
وقالت المتحدثة ان بان كي مون يشعر ب"قلق شديد ازاء استمرار الانتهاكات الخطيرة لحقوق الانسان بما في ذلك التقارير المقلقة عن مقتل اطفال جراء التعذيب والرصاص الحي والقصف. يجب اجراء تحقيق كامل ومستقل وشفاف في كل اعمال القتل".
واشار الامين العام للامم المتحدة الى اعلان الرئيس السوري بشار الاسد عن عفو عام واطلاق حوار وطني.
غير ان المتحدثة لفتت الى ان بان كي مون "يشدد على وجوب وقف القمع العنيف الذي تمارسه قوات الامن والجيش فورا من اجل قيام حوار حقيقي يشمل الجميع ويقود الى اصلاحات شاملة وتغيير يدعو اليه الشعب السوري".
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تعليقات القرّاء
عدد الردود: 1
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Mr BAN is very concerned about the killing yesterday, for only seventy to eighty people in FUNERALS were killed, and up to 1100 so far, and 13000 detained and tortured, that apart from the hundreds injured, and certainly some of them will die. But Mr BAN did not tell us how he is going to help, these HELPLESS people, and forbid, the Criminals to stop the killing. Today we read that Helicopters of the Regime were shooting on the people indiscriminatingly. May be MR BAN is waiting for the Number of DEATHS to hit 2000, to make a move. Or the Regime uses Fighter Jets to disperse the Protesters.khalouda-democracy
Report 3105 on Hamza's DEATH by the Sons of ....Regime.
Report on Hamza DEATH. 13 year old KID.
Slain Syrian boy once wanted to be a cop -- before the crackdown
June 3, 2011 -- Updated 0142 GMT (0942 HKT)
(CNN) -- Hamza Ali al-Khateeb, the Syrian boy whose killing has enraged, mobilized and emboldened the country's opposition movement, once harbored dreams of being a police officer.
But the 13-year-old changed his ambitions when the government crackdown went into full swing.
"When he saw police officers kill the people in the revolution, he would say, 'The police kill the people and I don't want to be like them. I do not know what I will be but the police kill people and torture them,'" according to one of his relatives, who escaped to Kuwait amid the regime's suppression of protesters.
The relative asked not to be named out of fear for the safety of his family in Daraa, the southwestern city where the anti-regime demonstrations started in mid-March.
Family members say Hamza got separated from his father in the chaos during demonstrations around Daraa on April 29, when protesters marched on the city to break the Syrian military siege and force the delivery of important supplies, such as medicine and milk for babies.
A few weeks ago, the family received the boy's body. A video that showed up on YouTube displays an appalling and mutilated corpse; much of the video is too graphic to broadcast. The face is bloated and purple and his body is covered in bruises. There are gunshot wounds to his torso and his genitals are mutilated.
CNN cannot independently verify what happened to Hamza or the authenticity of the video.
His death has punctuated the domestic and international outcry against the clampdown by President Bashar al-Assad's government against peaceful protests. "I can only hope that this child did not die in vain," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said this week.
Patrick McCormick, a spokesman for the U.N. children's agency, UNICEF, said children are not immune to the civil unrest across the region.
"The pictures are shocking. They have gone all over the world. And no one could see that without being deeply moved and ashamed about what happened to that boy," he said. "I have no idea why anybody would brutalize a young boy like that. I cannot even begin to go there. We just know that somehow it happened."
UNICEF is calling for investigations so the perpetrators can be brought to justice, "some sort of justice in a situation that's volatile," McCormick said.
"We want to get to the bottom of it."
The relative, interviewed Thursday by CNN, described Hamza as a smart kid who loved school and soccer, and who was raised in a modest setting where he was the youngest child of a laborer.
"He was only 13 years old but he had the maturity of a 30-year-old," the relative said.
The boy supported the demonstrations and would refuse to eat during the military's late April siege in Daraa because others didn't have food and he felt it would be unfair to eat while they went hungry.
Hamza would accompany his family to protests, waving a Syrian flag and chanting, "No Hezbollah and No Iran. We want freedom," the relative said.
The relative said he, Hamza and other members of their extended family took to the streets on the day the boy got lost and apparently swept up by Syrian officials.
Children accompanied the marchers, the relative said, because "we did not expect people to shoot."
"Hamza was among the children and carried a small Syrian flag with three stars, the flag of Syrian independence."
After he went missing, his family searched for days but failed to find him.
Eventually, another relative got a tip that Hamza was being held in prison, saw the boy alive and well, and begged the security forces to free him. Security officials asked Hamza's family to return in two days and said they would release the teen.
However, the first relative told CNN, "the security forces were angry at us, asking how we found out where Hamza was and infuriated that we had found him. Then they tortured the poor boy for two days."
When the parents went to the prison, security officials told them to go to the hospital. That's where they found the corpse.
"We went to the hospital and what we saw was horrific. His mother had a nervous breakdown. These are people who are not afraid of God who do not know God," the relative said of the security officials.
The family took Hamza back to his village for burial and held a wake in the child's honor.
"His father was destroyed and his mother seemed to have lost her sanity crying for him one minute and then yelling shrills of joy for his martyrdom the next," the relative said.
The relative said that the night the family received the body, Hamza's father was arrested and taken away by security forces.
The security forces threatened him and told him not to speak to any media outlets, human rights organizations or anyone else.
"They told him we have killed one of your children and we can kill the rest of them too," he said.
Syrian state TV on Tuesday ran a segment in which a person identified as the medical examiner in the case said the body's injuries were sustained when the boy was alive, but there was no evidence on the surface of the body that the boy had been subjected to torture, violence or retaliation.
The medical examiner said proper procedures to identify the body were followed after the body first arrived, and went on to describe how a body deteriorates in phases after death, turning dark brown, for example, with parts becoming enlarged.
The boy's death, he said, was the result of the three gunshot wounds he sustained.
Syria TV also said al-Assad met with members of Hamza's family on Tuesday, and it showed men it identified as the boy's father and uncle who said that al-Assad was very welcoming and understanding, and promised reform.
The relative had fled Syria by the time state TV aired the video of the father and uncle thanking al-Assad.
But, he said, "I swear to you they said this because they were threatened. The father is defeated. They told him they would kill his children and destroy his family. They forced him to say this."
The man said he is very concerned about the issue of child victims and feels the regime was purposely targeting children to "teach us a lesson."
"There is not just one Hamza in Syria," the relative told CNN. "There are hundreds of Hamzas, and these men do not know God so they will make a hundred more Hamzas."
CNN's Arwa Damon contributed to this report.
تنسيقيات أحياء دمشق: الخطاب الطائفي لقناتي "وصال" و"صفا" يخدم نظام بشّار الأسد
السبت 4 حزيران (يونيو) 2011
تنسيقيات أحياء دمشق:
أصبح واضحا في الآونة الأخيرة الصبغة الطائفية لبعض القنوات التلفزيونية، وعلى وجه التحديد: قناتا "وصال" و"صفا". يهمنا أن نؤكد في تنسيقيات أحياء دمشق أن الخطاب الطائفي لمثل هذه القنوات يصب بشكل واضح في مصلحة النظام عبر المساهمة في جر البلاد نحو منزلق الطائفية، ومن هذا المنطلق فإننا ندين هذا الخطاب ونعتبره مسيئا للوحدة الوطنية في سورية.
الفريق الإعلامي لتنسيقيات أحياء دمشق
Dictator
More than 100 protesters killed yesterday Friday by the Regime's Criminals.
Report: Deaths mount in Syrian violence
June 4, 2011 -- Updated 1053 GMT (1853 HKT)
CNN) -- The number of people killed by indiscriminate gunfire from government forces in the western Syrian city of Hama on Friday may exceed 80, said the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, citing reliable medical sources.
Killings occurred when security personnel opened fire on demonstrators, who took to the streets after Friday prayers, witnesses said. More than 1,000 people have been killed in Syria since anti-government demonstrations began in mid-March.
Demonstrations across the country on Friday were dedicated to children who have taken part in the persistent and angry uprising against the Syrian government.
CNN has not been granted entrance to Syria and cannot independently confirm the report.
| أكثر من 100 ألف شخص شاركوا اليوم بتشييع قتلى الجمعة في مدينة حماة السورية |
شارك أكثر من 100 ألف شخص اليوم السبت في مراسم تشييع عشرات الأشخاص الذين قضوا أمس الجمعة بنيران قوات الأمن السورية في مدينة حماة، بحسب ما أفاد المرصد السوري لحقوق الانسان.
شارك أكثر من 100 ألف شخص اليوم السبت في مراسم تشييع عشرات الأشخاص الذين قضوا أمس الجمعة بنيران قوات الأمن السورية في مدينة حماة، بحسب ما أفاد المرصد السوري لحقوق الانسان.
سورية: تقارير حقوقية عن مقتل العشرات في مظاهرات الجمعة
آخر تحديث: السبت، 4 يونيو/ حزيران، 2011، 02:13 GMT
Protesters in Syria Friday 0306
Syria's brutal crackdown continues
Published 03 June 2011 20:41 1259 Views
At least 30 people have been killed in Syrian town of Hama after security forces opened fire on protesters.
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