Syria rounds up opponents after 120 dead

Security forces raid homes across Syria, arresting regime opponents following deadly protests.

Middle East Online

'No Baath party, no Assad. We want to liberate the country' DAMASCUS - Security forces raided homes across Syria, arresting regime opponents, as funerals were held on Sunday for protesters and mourners killed in a bloody crackdown which activists said cost 120 lives. Students, meanwhile, called for a strike and two MPs resigned after more bloodshed on Saturday when Syrians swarmed the streets to bury scores of demonstrators killed in protests the previous day. At least 120 people were killed in the two-day crackdown, the Committee of the Martyrs of the 15 March Revolution said on Sunday. It issued an updated list of names of 95 people it said were killed on Friday in massive protests which swept across Syria. The death toll for Saturday has risen to 25 people killed by gunfire, it said. Most were killed in the southern protest hub region of Daraa and in and around Damascus, during funerals of people killed on Friday. Human Rights Watch urged the United Nations to probe the "carnage" from the massive "Good Friday" demonstrations and called for sanctions to be slapped on Syrian officials responsible for the killings. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said dozens of people were arrested in northern Syria on Friday, just a day after President Bashar al-Assad had lifted decades of emergency rule. It gave the names of 18 men rounded up in the northern cities of Idlib, Raqqa and Aleppo, but said "dozens more were arrested in other Syrian towns." Witnesses and activists said several people were also rounded up in and around Damascus, but could not give exact numbers. The authorities "continue to carry out arbitrary arrests despite the lifting of emergency rule," the Observatory said in a statement, urging the release of political prisoners and a probe into Friday's killings. Police checkpoints have gone up across Damascus, where hotspot neighbourhoods have been locked down and only residents allowed to enter after identity checks, witnesses said. On Thursday, Assad signed decrees ending a draconian state of emergency, imposed by the ruling Baath Party when it seized power in 1963, to placate more than a month of "freedom" protests. He also abolished the state security court that has tried scores of regime opponents over the years outside the normal judicial system and whose verdicts cannot be appealed. Tens of thousands swarmed cities and towns across Syria on Friday to test the implementation of the reforms, but security forces fired live rounds and tear gas against them, activists said. "After Friday’s carnage, it is no longer enough to condemn the violence," Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said in a statement. "Faced with the Syrian authorities’ 'shoot to kill' strategy, the international community needs to impose sanctions on those ordering the shooting of protesters," he said. Thousands of people on Sunday attended the funerals in the southern town of Noa of five of those killed the previous day and later demonstrated without any intervention from the police, an activist said. The mourners carried banners calling for the abrogation of an article in the constitution designating the Baath party as leader of the state and society, the activist said. Several weeks of protests have been demanding across-the-board political reforms as well as the dissolution of the feared security services who have cracked down mercilessly against demonstrators. The Syrian Revolution 2011 group, a driving force behind the protests, indicated its determination to keep up the pressure. "We are going out (on the streets) today, tomorrow and the day after," said a statement posted on Sunday on its Facebook page. Meanwhile public figures, including independent Daraa MPs Nasser al-Hariri and Khalil al-Rifai, have resigned in frustration at the crackdown. Daraa's top Muslim cleric, Mufti Rizq Abdulrahman Abazeid, also quit, as did a member of Daraa city council, Bassam al-Zamel, who told Al-Jazeera television "it is a duty on us to present our resignation." "I call on the president to contain the security forces," Zamel said. Students in Daraa and Damascus declared a general strike in all Syrian universities until "massacring the peaceful protesters comes to a stop and all prisoners of conscience and opinions are released," a statement said. More than 340 people have been killed in Syria since protests were launched March 15, according to a compilation of figures provided by Amnesty International and Syrian activists. Syria blames "armed gangs" for the unrest aimed at fuelling sectarian strife among the country's multi-religious and multi-ethnic communities. The crackdown unleashed a chorus of international condemnation. US President Barack Obama blasted the use of violence and accused Assad's regime of seeking Iran's aid in the brutal crackdown -- a charge denied by both Tehran and Damascus. Canada called on Damascus "to exercise restraint and to respect the rights of the Syrian people to freedom of expression and assembly." EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton called the crackdown "intolerable," and even Syrian ally Russia urged Damascus to speed up reform. HRW called for US and EU "sanctions on Syrian officials responsible "for the use of lethal force against peaceful protesters and the arbitrary detention and torture of hundreds of protesters, and push for similar sanctions to be imposed by the (UN) Security Council." On a positive note, authorities freed prominent militant Daniel Saud a day after arresting him without a warrant at his home in the northern city of Banias, said Ammar al-Qurabi of Syria's National Organisation of Human Rights.