Arab Revolutionary Fist (source)
Syrian police and troops shot down dozens of anti-government protesters Friday, as a wave of demonstrations against the regime of President Bashir Assad swept through more than a dozen cities. The movement has been sparked by revulsion over the massacre of protesters Wednesday in the southwestern city of Daraa, in which as many as 100 people may have died.
A funeral procession of 20,000 people commemorated the victims of Wednesday's shootings on Thursday in Daraa, and an even larger protest took place Friday, bringing an estimated 100,000 people into Assad Square in the center of the city. Demonstrators carried Syrian flags and chanted "Freedom, freedom." They burned photographs of Bashir Assad and tore down a bronze statue of his father, longtime president Hafez al-Assad.
Hafez al-Assad ruled Syria for 30 years, after taking power in a military coup in 1970. After his older son Basil died in a crash, the younger son Bashir was groomed for the dynastic succession, becoming president on his father's death in 2000.
The military dictatorship has ruthlessly suppressed democratic rights and social opposition for four decades, and social contradictions have worsened under the economic liberalization policies of Bashir Assad, which have enriched a new layer of Syrian capitalists while living standards for the great mass of working people have stagnated.
Eyewitnesses to Friday's massacre in Daraa said armed men came out on the roofs of building around the central square and opened fire on the crowds, killing as many as 50 people.
According to one report, the crowd scattered after the gunfire began, but thousands returned to the center of the city after nightfall, seizing control of the al-Omari mosque, the focus of the weeklong protests, overpowering a small number of soldiers who had been left on guard, and seizing their weapons.
Reuters reported that the Daraa demonstrators mocked the president's brother, Maher Assad, head of the Republican Guard, the regime's elite fighting force, because troops were being used against the Syrian people, not against Israeli forces occupying Syrian territory on the Golan Heights. "Maher, you coward. Send your troops to liberate the Golan," was the chant taken up by thousands.
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