Reports: Syria's Government Passes Bill To Scrap Decades-Old Emergency Law

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Reports: Syria's Government Passes Bill To Scrap Decades-Old Emergency Law

April 19, 2011

Syria's state news agency says the government has approved a bill lifting a nearly five-decades old emergency law -- one of the main demands of pro-reform demonstrators.

President Bashar al-Assad still has to sign the bill into law, but reports say his signature will be a formality.

The SANA news agency said the government also abolished the state security court, which handled the trials of political prisoners, and approved a new law allowing the right to peaceful protests.

But it's unclear whether the moves will ease the crackdown on antigovernment demonstrators.

Shots Into The Crowd

Syria's rumbling political crisis appears to have worsened dramatically after security forces reportedly fired into a crowd of antigovernment demonstrators who occupied the main square of the country's third-largest city.

Witnesses said troops opened fire overnight, first with tear gas and then with live ammunition, on a sit-in being staged in Homs, scattering thousands of protesters who had gathered in the city's Clock Square. Syria's Interior Ministry said it was acting against what it described as an "armed insurrection."

"They shot at everything, there was smoke everywhere," an activist in Homs told AP. "I saw people on the ground, some shot in their feet, some in the stomach."

Reports citing witnesses said at least one person had been killed in the incident.

The demonstrators had vowed not to leave the square until the government of President Assad had fallen.

AFP, citing activists, said a crowd of 20,000 had gathered in Clock Square and renamed it Tahrir Square after the area in Cairo that became a focal point for protests in Egypt that eventually toppled former President Hosni Mubarak. Some pitched tents to show they intended to occupy the area for a prolonged period.

The stand-off followed a mass funeral in Homs for at least 12 people who died in the city on April 17 after soldiers fired on crowds demonstrating against the death of a tribal leader who died in custody.

Mourners at the funeral chanted slogans calling for Assad's overthrow. "We are going to heaven in our millions," they shouted, according to Reuters.

The Homs clashes appeared to represent a significant intensification of the unrest that has plagued one of the Middle East's most authoritarian regimes over the past month and which human rights campaigners say has killed at least 200 people.

The Interior Ministry, in a statement aired on state television, said Homs -- about 160 kilometers from the Syrian capital, Damascus -- was one of two cities being terrorized by armed Salafists, a group adhering to a strict form of Sunni Islam that many Arab governments often associate with militant groups like Al-Qaeda.

The official Sana news agency reported that "armed criminal gangs" had killed three army officers in Homs on April 17 and mutilated their bodies.

Pushing Assad To Reform

Leading Syrian officials, including Assad, have also blamed the unrest on "foreign plots."

"The Washington Post" reported on April 17 that the U.S. State Department had funded Syrian opposition groups, including a London-based satellite television channel that transmitted directly into Syria.

However, State Department spokesman Mark Toner denied that this amounted to an attempt to undermine the Assad regime.

"We're not working to undermine that government. What we are trying to do in Syria, through our civil-society support, is to build the kind of democratic institutions, frankly, that we're trying to do in countries around the globe," Toner said.

Citing his own experience in Poland in the 1990s, Toner said that "we worked enormously with civil society and nongovernmental organizations. The difference here is that the Syrian government perceives this kind of assistance as a threat to its existence."

He said aiding opposition groups was aimed at pushing Assad -- who has been described as a "reformer" by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- toward democratic change.

"Trying to promote a transformation to a more democratic process in the society is not undermining necessarily the existing government," Toner added. "What we're trying to do -- and what President Assad is facing right now -- is a push by his very own people to move in a more democratic direction."

with agency reports

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/syria_forces_fire_on_protesters_in_homs/9498313.html

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Reports: Syria's Government Passes Bill To Scrap Decades-Old Emergency Law