“Deadly protests may force Syria’s Assad to choose,” says the Christian Science Monitor, with a quote from me among others:
“After Friday and Saturday we can now say that what the Assad regime is facing is a grass-roots uprising for democracy,” says Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian democracy activist based in the United States. “Momentum has spread.”
After weeks of appearing immune to Arab world protests, Syria faces escalating unrest as soldiers opened fire on demonstrators. Jeffrey Brown discusses the protests with former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Theodore Kattouf and democracy activist and blogger Ammar Abdulhamid, who was exiled in 2005. Continue reading “Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Corleone Correlations”
An interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. (Note: They confuse Maher Assad with his late Majd below. Majd has passed away of a drug over doze two years ago. In the audio interview I clearly say Maher).
MARK COLVIN: Well you heard Mr Rudd outline some of the background there about a country where the Ba’ath Party dictatorship has lasted for over 40 years. President Hafez al-Assad ruled over the country for most of that time, and in 1982 faced with an uprising in the town of Hama, he ordered one of the bloodiest crackdowns in the modern history of the Middle East. It may be one reason why Syrians have been slow to rise up. But after an attack on protesters in the town of Daraa this week, that’s expected to change later tonight; Friday, Syrian time. The President, Hafez al-Assad’s son Bashar, has made big promises, including dropping the restrictive 48-year-old emergency law. But that’s unlikely to be enough for the many who are expected to protest tonight. And the fast changing situation has emboldened exiled democrats like Ammar Abdulhamid. I asked him whether he wanted Bashar al-Assad and his family out of the country and if so where would they go? Continue reading “Syrian protestors want a regime change”
The Christian Science Monitor thinks I might be going too far for many Syrians by insisting on Assad’s departure. Admittedly such a call might be too early for some, but, knowing Assad and the nature of his regime, I am reading ahead:
But for many Syrians, any compromise that keeps Assad in power is not enough. Exiled Syrian dissident and activist Ammar Abdulhamid said that after numerous human rights abuses, the current Syrian regime has lost all legitimacy, and it has failed to deliver on its promises of reform for more than a decade. Continue reading “Syria’s Assad willing to lift emergency law”
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 