Tag: Crackdown
Surprise recall of US ambassador to Syria spurred by threats
Quote in the Christian Science Monitor:
“World leaders and Syrian opposition leaders should face the fact that the Syrian situation now requires international intervention and that the Assads need to be stopped by any means necessary,” Ammar Abdulhamid, a prominent Syrian opposition activist based in the US, wrote in his daily newsletter Monday.
U.N.: Syria death toll tops 3,000
“What we have unfolding in Syria now is a two-tiered revolution: an armed insurrection and nonviolent protest movement, and the champions of both are morally justified in their position and they need our support,” said Ammar Abdulhamid, a U.S.-based exiled Syrian dissident. He said external military intervention, including logistical and material support to the defectors, is a must to avoid a return to the status-quo. “Yes, we should fear civil war, we should fear the bloodshed resulting from militaristic adventurism, but we should fear a return to the status quo even more,” he wrote in his blog Friday.
Syrian Thugs Try to Intimidate the U.S. Media
Quoted by Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post
The embassy’s clumsy, almost cartoonish, effort to intimidate its critics only serves to highlight the nature of the regime. Ammar Abdulhamid of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies had this take on the embassy’s cloddish attempt to silence dissidents: “The only element of déjà vu involved in this situation is the willingness of Syrian officials and diplomats to lie and distort facts with impunity. Embassies run by Assad officials have served for decades as centers of intimidation of exiled dissidents and their families and friends. Their increased activities in this connection at this stage comes as a cynical and desperate act to stem the tide of change. To no avail. Soon, the justice system of a free Syria will have its say in the matter, and this impunity will come to an end.”
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 