Syria hit by new protests as Assad pledges reform

[1]

Regime supporters broke up two rallies in southern Syria on Sunday, wounding five people after a presidential vow to end emergency rule within a week was dismissed as not enough and was followed by new protests.

At least five demonstrators were wounded when regime agents dispersed two pro-freedom rallies in the south, bastion of Syria's Druze minority, rights activists said.

Some 400 people had gathered to celebrate Independence Day in Suweida, said Mazen Darwish, director of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression.

Demonstrators carried portraits of the leaders of the revolution that ended French rule and chanted slogans calling for freedom, he said.

But regime backers cut short the rally, he said, beating protesters and trampling on portraits of Syrian revolutionary leaders who fought to end the French mandate.

"Two demonstrators were injured and hospitalised," Darwish said.

In the nearby village of Al-Qraya, a delegation of about 150 people was not allowed to celebrate Independence Day as they had done in previous years, Muntaha al-Atrash said.

Three people were injured and hospitalised, Darwish said.

In the southern town of Daraa, nerve centre of more than a month of anti-regime protests, upwards of 4,000 people, including former political prisoners and religious leaders, staged another rally.

They chanted anti-regime slogans, said a rights activist who requested anonymity.

In the northern coastal town of Banias, which has been shaken by a deadly security crackdown and shootings that residents blame on regime thugs and agents, 2,500 people demonstrated, a rights activist said.

They marched under banners that read: "You are in Banias, not in Israel" in a rebuke to officials blaming the violence on foreign plotters.

State media, meanwhile, reported that customs officers had intercepted arms shipments at border posts with Iraq, Turkey and Lebanon.

Sunday's protests followed a Saturday televised address by President Bashar al-Assad promising to end emergency rule, in force since 1963, when the Baath party took power, within a week.

Assad, who has ruled Syria since the death of his father Hafez in 2000, told his newly formed cabinet to replace draconian emergency laws within seven days.

But rights activists said the gesture fell short of protesters' demands.

Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday that cancelling "military courts" and revoking a law granting security agents immunity were also necessary.

And prominent Syrian human rights lawyer Haytham Maleh said: "It is a step, but it is not enough. It must be accompanied by reform of the judicial system which is corrupted."

The current emergency law restricts public gatherings and movement, authorises the interrogation of any individual and the monitoring of private communications and also imposes media censorship.

Maleh called for the release of political prisoners and said "interference by the security services in the lives of the citizens must stop."

"Demonstrators must be allowed to protest," said Maleh who was released under a presidential pardon in March after more than two years in jail.

An estimated 200 people have been killed, mostly by security forces, since protests erupted in Syria on March 15, according to Amnesty International.

"We are sad for all the people we have lost and all the people injured, and consider them all martyrs," Assad told his new cabinet on Saturday.

He said protests were "allowed by the Syrian constitution," although he added "there is no law in place to regulate them" and "police must first be trained and equipped to handle them."

Shortly after Assad's address, 2,000 people rallied against the regime in Daraa, the official SANA news agency reported.

Another 2,000 protesters staged a sit-in in the suburb of Douma north of Damascus, demanding the release of relatives arrested on Friday during nationwide protests, activists said.