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Journalism of Courage
The government in Syria tried to placate protesters with declarations of reform Tuesday while bluntly warning its people to end more than a month of demonstrations,a now-familiar strategy in one of the Arab worlds most repressive countries.
The mix of concession and coercion came hours after police,army and the other forces of an authoritarian state were marshalled to crush one of the biggest gatherings yet by protesters bent on staging an Egyptian-style sit-in in Homs,Syrias third-largest city. At least two people died as security forces cleared the main square,protesters said,but there were conflicting accounts on casualties.
The warning by the Interior Ministry forbidding protests under any banner whatsoever suggested that the government was prepared to escalate a crackdown,even as the promised repeal of emergency law,in place since 1963,went far in meeting at least some of the demands of protests that have mirrored uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world. The repeal must still be formally approved by Parliament or the president,but that amounts to a formality.
Even as protesters buried those killed in Homs late Monday into Tuesday,the reforms ostensibly granted civil liberties,curbed the power of police and abolished draconian courts. The reforms also legalised peaceful protests coded language for those approved by the government as the Interior Ministry warned that it would bring to bear the full breadth of the law against any other kind of demonstration. The street is in one world and the president and the regime are in another, said Wissam Tarif,executive director of Insan,a Syrian rights group.
The statements followed another government crackdown on protests,this time in Homs,an industrial city near the Lebanese border.ANTHONY SHADID,LIAM STACK
& KATHERINE ZOEPF
