Syria Puts On Mass Rally in Support of Assad

The state had ordered people to show up for work on a national holiday — Teachers’ Day — that fell on Thursday, the one-year anniversary of mass demonstrations centered in the southern city of Dara’a that turned sporadic protests against the government into a national uprising. The government threatened punishments for truants in what anti-Assad activists called a transparent move to make it easier to bus in state employees and students to attend the rally.

Men jumped up and down, cheering, as the flags of Russia, Syria’s main international backer and arms supplier, and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group that has been a stalwart supporter of Mr. Assad, whipped in the wind alongside the black, white and red Syrian tricolor. Syrian television channels continuously broadcast the scenes from Umayyad Square.

“I am ready to go one and two and a thousand times for the sake of Bashar,” a woman attending the rally told the Syrian TV channel Addounia. Another woman dressed in a military uniform told the channel: “We’re here to say we won.”

In elaborately produced advertisements, Addounia said the pro-government demonstrations would last through Saturday and exhorted viewers to “join us in the global march for Syria.”

Not all the support for Mr. Assad is manufactured. Some Syrians back him out of worry that his departure could usher in sectarian revenge against his Alawite sect and the Christian population, which is wary of rule by the Sunni Muslim majority — fears that Mr. Assad’s government has stoked by portraying itself as a bulwark of protection for minorities. Others simply want to see an end to instability and economic hardship brought on by a year of unrest.

A Syrian soldier reached by telephone, who gave his name as Samer, said no one had forced him to attend the rally, along with his wife and sons. “We danced the dabkeh,” a traditional celebratory dance, he said. “I would shoot in the air if they allowed me.”

To him, the rally celebrated victory over traitors instigated by Qatar, a supporter of the uprising, and other countries. “We defeated the traitors,” he said. “We won over the conspiracy.”

Mr. Assad received more public support from Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the powerful Shiite militant group that is part of Lebanon’s ruling parliamentary coalition, shares Mr. Assad’s hostility toward their common enemy Israel, and is believed to depend on Syria as an arms supplier and conduit for weapons from Iran. In a speech, Mr. Nasrallah called for all antagonists in the Syria conflict to reach a simultaneous cease-fire, and he struck back at others who have criticized Hezbollah for supporting Mr. Assad. “Who said that the Syrian people are the ones you’re standing with and not the ones we’re standing with?” he said in the speech carried on Hezbollah’s al-Manar channel.

While Mr. Assad’s government has been increasingly isolated internationally, it has appeared to gain confidence in recent days, driving rebels from strongholds in the north and sweeping through Dara’a as international efforts to stop the violence appeared to stall and public strife erupted among exile opposition leaders.

Anti-Assad activists reported shelling in the city of Homs on Thursday and said they had discovered the bodies of 23 people in the city of Idlib who apparently had been summarily executed. The bodies were handcuffed and blindfolded, each with a bullet to the head, and no identifications, according to the Local Coordinating Committees, an activist network.

Members of the Free Syrian Army, the main armed opposition group, killed five members of the security forces in an ambush in Tafass, on the outskirts of Dara’a, said Yazid al Baradan, an activist reached by telephone. Other activists reported via email that government forces retaliated with a tank assault.

In Aleppo, the government reported large pro-Assad demonstrations, while activists said security forces fired on an antigovernment protest there.

Claims and counterclaims of fighting and casualties in the Syria conflict are impossible to corroborate because of government restrictions on outside press access.

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting..

View the original article here