Syrians Are Fatally Shot At Funeral for Protesters

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian security forces fired at mourners in the central city of Homs during a funeral procession on Saturday for eight protesters who died the previous day, killing at least five people and wounding several others, witnesses and human rights activists said.

The fresh round of violence came as the death toll from Friday’s protests reached 44, according to the Syrian National Organization for Human Rights. More than half of the victims on Friday died in Idlib Province, where tanks had been deployed on Friday as part of the attempt to crush antigovernment protests by sending troops into restive towns and cities. The bloodshed on Saturday followed the pattern in recent weeks in Syria, in which killings on Fridays — the Muslim holy day, when some of the largest demonstrations of the Arab Spring have been held — have led to more protests and deaths.

One witness said the shooting began as mourners were chanting “Rest in peace, martyr, we will continue on the same path” as well as “The people want to topple the regime” and “Freedom, freedom.”

“A lot of people were injured. There was blood everywhere,” said the witness, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “They were firing at us directly.”

Ammar Qurabi, who leads the Syrian human rights group, said he too had been told that the shooting began as the funeral turned into a protest. “The neighborhood is now under fire and completely surrounded,” he said.

Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, has blamed the protests against his 11-year-old rule on armed Islamist groups. The government said Saturday that Islamist militants had killed 17 people, including civilians, police and security forces, in Idlib and Homs, the city that is emerging as a locus of the challenge to Mr. Assad’s authority, on Friday.

The Syrian state news agency, Sana, said the killings occurred after armed groups exploited specific instructions given to security forces “not to shoot, to preserve the lives of civilians.” The agency did not provide details on how the deaths occurred. Human rights activists said that nearly 900 people had been killed in the past nine weeks in the Syrian uprising and that 10,000 protesters and activists were in jail.

The United States has begun taking a harder stand against Mr. Assad. The Obama administration imposed sanctions on Mr. Assad last week, and the president used some of his strongest language yet to denounce the crackdown, saying Syria’s leader should lead a transition to democracy or “get out of the way.”

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Syrian Security Forces Fire on Funeral Processions Causing More Bloodshed

 Edward Yeranian | Cairo ?April 23, 2011

A still image taken from an amateur video purportedly taken on April 22, 2011 shows a protester being carried by a group of other protesters during a demonstration in the city of Homs, Syria

Casualties, including at least 12? people dead, are being reported in at several Syrian cities Saturday as witnesses say government security forces opened fire on thousands of funeral goers. The bloodshed comes as U.S. President Barack Obama condemns the use of force against peaceful protesters and accuses Iran of helping in the repression. ?

Funeral goers in the Damascus suburb of Barzeh carry victims of Friday’s violent clashes between security forces and protesters on their shoulders, as the crowd chants slogans against the regime. Videos on Facebook show hundreds of mourners in a tumultuous procession.

Al Jazeera TV showed videos of mourners in Barzeh fleeing as shots were fired near them.?? It also reported that security forces fired indiscriminately on mourners near Izraa, outside the southern city of Diraa, as their procession crossed a highway overpass.

Syrian state media, meanwhile, is claiming that "Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are lying about events in the country."? The Syrian news agency SANA? insists that "outside forces" are waging a "misleading media campaign" and exaggerating about the size of protests. Opposition protesters, for their part, carried banners calling the government press "liars."

Some mourners on Saturday chanted anti-government slogans and repeated their calls for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to resign immediately.

Syrian state TV is reporting that "armed men" fired on the army and security forces in Diraa and elsewhere. It showed funerals of policemen and soldiers it claimed were killed by protesters. The Syrian-government reports accused outside agents of carrying petrol bombs and bottles of blood to "create fictitious stories of violence."? According to the reports, the agents also set fire to buses and attacked fire engines.

Two members of parliament from Diraa resigned to protest the government violence. The mufti of Diraa told al Jazeera TV that the shootings were "unacceptable" and announced he was resigning his post, as well.

Fahd al Masri of the Syrian opposition group Justice and Development says that security forces fired on protesters both on Friday and Saturday.

He said people were killed Saturday in the cities of Diraa, Homs and a Damascus suburb.? He adds that many people were killed and injured and thousands were arrested by state security forces on Friday.? He notes that the government’s announcement it was lifting martial law appears to have changed nothing and that security forces continue to fire on people.

Fouad Ajami, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution in the U.S. western state of California and Director of Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. He told VOA that he thinks it was inevitable that the wave of Arab revolutions finally hit Syria.

"This revolution was bound to come to Syria. It was just that it would come to Syria. It was proper to come to Syria. Syria could not be spared. The revolution was bound to come to Syria, because it was in Syria where the terrorist state, the way we know it in the Arab world,? basically took shape in the '70s. So, everything about this revolution perfectly fits Syria," he said.

Ajami points out that unlike Egypt and Tunisia, or even Libya, the presence of many different religious factions in Syria is raising the specter of sectarian violence:

"Once (the revolution) came to Syria, it had to be Syrian. It can't be Egyptian or Tunisian and thus it has to be violent and thus the hidden menace of sectarianism that could devour this revolution. That, at the very end when it's all fought,? it would become what it always was destined to become: a war where (the regime) would rally the Alawis and their allies among the Christians and the Druze and the Ismailis etc. against the vast Sunni middle class," he said.

Ajami also notes the secret police that supports the regime makes the equation in Syria even more volatile than in Libya. Opposition reports say that members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been seen attacking protesters alongside Syria’s secret police. The reports have not been independently confirmed.

U.S. President Barack Obama condemned Syria Friday for using "outrageous force" against anti-government protesters, and said it "must come to an end, now." He also criticized President Assad for "seeking Iranian assistance in repressing Syria’s citizens."

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Widow of Bus Crash Victim Receives Visa for Funeral

 Gilles Sabrie for The New York TimesLin Yaofang, the widow of Wang Jianhua, at home in China. Mr. Wang’s body has been in a New York funeral home since last month.

In the days after a bus traveling from a Connecticut casino crashed last month in the Bronx, the bodies of 14 victims were laid to rest. But the body of the 15th and final victim, Wang Jianhua, has lain in a funeral home in Chinatown while his widow, in China, has sought permission to come to the United States for his funeral.

On Wednesday, the widow, Lin Yaofang, said American consular officials had granted her a visitor’s visa. “There are so many emotions; I can’t describe them,” said Ms. Lin, reached by telephone at her home in Gui’an, a rural village in Fujian Province. “I am so relieved. I get to see his face one last time.”

Ms. Lin said she hoped to fly to New York next week. It would be her first trip out of China; the farthest she has ever traveled from home, she said, was to Guangzhou, in Guangdong Province, for the visa interview at the American Consulate.

The hard life of Mr. Wang, 40, was described last month in an article in The New York Times. He and Ms. Lin grew up poor in Fujian Province, and they met and married about 10 years ago.

They had two children, a boy and a girl, though Mr. Wang struggled to support his family working odd jobs and driving a taxi. In January 2008, he left China and, with the aid of smugglers, was brought to New York, where he found work as a restaurant deliveryman and lived in small, crowded apartments on the Lower East Side and in the Bowery.

Mr. Wang’s years in New York were marked by long days of toil, stress and deep longing for his family. He regularly wired money to China to support his wife, children and sick mother, and to pay off his smuggling debt. His friends said he had hoped to bring his family over to join him; he had petitioned for asylum on the basis of his opposition to China’s family-planning policies, a justification commonly used by Chinese asylum-seekers.

Ms. Lin said the past several weeks — from her husband’s death to the visa approval — had been dizzying and upsetting. On Wednesday, the visa interview, which took place two days earlier, was a blurry memory.

“My head felt huge and swollen the entire time,” she recalled. “Tears kept falling down my face. I just remember they asked quite a lot of questions. My mind was just very chaotic. I was so nervous.”

Grace Meng, a New York State assemblywoman, said her staff and the office of Representative Nydia M. Velázquez had helped to facilitate the process for Ms. Lin. “We just wanted to at least be able to give her that opportunity,” Ms. Meng said, adding that in her experience, consular officials had been “very understanding” in such situations.

In New York, Lin Changshui, a friend of Mr. Wang’s, said he and other friends planned to receive Ms. Lin and to care for her during her visit; they had found a place for her in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Ms. Lin said she had not yet given much thought to the funeral ceremony but hoped to cremate her husband’s body. “No matter what happens,” she said, “I will bring his ashes back, back to China.”

Kirk Semple reported from New York, and Xiyun Yang from Beijing. Jeffrey E. Singer contributed reporting from New York.