Fifty thousand in the square in Damascus

NGO: “Tortured protesters”

DAMASCUS– Another Friday to challenge the regime in power for almost half a century in Syria. At least fifty thousand people came to the center of the capital from different marches, despite the intervention of the security forces with tear gas charges. The crowd launches slogans such as: “The people want to bring down the regime” and is tearing posters with the effigy of President Assad. About 1,500 people returned to the streets in Banias, in the north-west. At the end of the prayer, thousands of demonstrators gathered near the main mosque of Deir az Zor, the main city in the eastern Euphrates region. Thousands in the streets also in Homs, 180 kilometers north of Damascus. Procession in Qamishli, a center with a Kurdish majority. A Daraa between 2,500 and 3. 000 people have created a demonstration in the most important square of the city, symbol of the protest chanting slogans like “Better death than humiliation”. These demonstrations take place the day after the creation of a new government and the announcement of the release of hundreds of citizens arrested during the protests that began a month ago.

According to international and Syrian humanitarian organizations, in recent weeks the repression has caused more than one hundred deaths in Daraa alone. And hundreds of protesters have been arrested. In this regard, the human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) accuses the security and information services of having tortured numerous protesters. The charges are based on the testimony of 19 people arrested by the Mukhabarat intelligence service in Damascus, Daraa, Duma, Al-Tal, Homs and Banias. Among the detainees there are two women and three teenagers. The NGO claims to have seen a video on which prisoners released in Daraa “show signs of torture on the body … All the detainees arrested during the demonstrations, with the exception of two, told Human Rights Watch that Mukhabarat officers had them beaten during arrest and detention, and saw dozens of other prisoners beaten or heard shouts of people being beaten “. Some said they were tortured “with electric-shock devices, cables and whips”. They were locked up in overcrowded cells and many of them were deprived of sleep,

(April 15, 2011)