Wednesday, 27 April 2011
The 203 members of Syria’s ruling Baath Party see violence against the protesters as contradictory to their party’s values. (File Photo)
Some 203 members of President Bashar al-Assad’s ruling Baath Party resigned late Wednesday, bringing the total to 233 loyalists who have quit in April, according to Al Arabiya and other news reports.
Meanwhile, a convoy of at least 30 Syrian army tanks was seen moving on tank carriers on the Damascus circular highway on Wednesday, a witness said, as a rights group said that 453 civilians were killed during almost six weeks of pro-democracy protests.
The tanks were coming from the southwest of Damascus near the Golan Heights frontier with Israel and passed on the highway at about 0500 GMT, the witness told Reuters.
They were heading in the direction leading to the northern suburb of Douma and to the southern city of Deraa, where President Bashar al-Assad sent forces to crush peaceful protests against his autocratic rule.
Republican Guards units are based all around Damascus. Another mechanized division is stationed 20 to 30 kilometers southwest of the capital, in charge of defending the occupied Golan Heights frontier with Israel, which has been relatively quiet since a 1974 ceasefire brokered by the United States.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, meanwhile, said it had collected the names of at least 453 civilians killed during pro-reform protests in the geopolitically strategic country of 23 million.
Asked who killed them, Observatory director Rami Abdul Rahman told Reuters: “It does not require a comment. The names we have are from Deraa, Damascus, rural Damascus and the coast.”
Syria is a single-party state in which Mr. Assad’s organization, known formally as the Arab Socialist Baath party, leads the National Progressive Front in the 205-member legislature, known as the Majlis al-Sha’ab, or People’s Council. The party is guaranteed 167 seats, while 81 are notionally “independent.” Legislators are “elected” from 15 multi-seat constituencies around the country.
The People’s Council is essentially a rubber stamp for the Baath Party’s policies, which are dictated by Mr. Assad and his tight circle.
In the meantime, the United Nations Human Rights Council will hold a special session on Syria on Friday, a UN spokesman said.
The special session “will be held on Friday 29 April at 11 a.m.,” Cedric Sapey, spokesman at the Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights, told Agence-France Presse.
The request, filed by the United States, was jointly submitted by 10 European states, as well as Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Senegal and Zambia. No Arab countries were among those requesting the session, which requires one-third of the forum’s membership of 27 countries to proceed.
France summoned Syria’s ambassador in Paris to the foreign ministry Wednesday to repeat its demand that Damascus halt the use of military force against political protests, the ministry said, according to AFP.
In addition, Syrian ambassadors were summoned to foreign ministries in Rome, Madrid, Berlin, and London.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday condemned as “unacceptable” the situation in Syria, where troops are waging an assault against pro-democracy protests.
Germany on Wednesday said it would strongly back European Union sanctions against Syria over its bloody crackdown on anti-government protesters.
Government spokesman Steffen Seibert told a media briefing that Berlin condemned “severe human rights violations” by Syrian forces against demonstrators and would back punitive measures by the EU, according to AFP.
Foreign ministry spokesman Andreas Peschke said that Germany had called a meeting Friday in Brussels to discuss possible EU punitive measures against Syria and would unveil its own concrete proposals for sanctions.
(Dina Al-Shibeeb of Al Arabiya can be reached at: dina.ibrahim@mbc.net. Abeer Tayel, also of Al Arabiya, can be reached at: abeer.tayel@mbc.net)
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