Defying Crackdown, Syria Protesters Return to Streets in Stalemated Contest of Wills

 

Thousands of protesters defied a ferocious crackdown and returned to the streets on Friday, even in towns that the military had besieged only days before. But the protests seemed incapable of mustering a critical mass — as they did in Egypt and Tunisia — and, at least anecdotally, the number of demonstrators appeared to be smaller than in past weeks.

The government said it had subdued some of the most restive locales — namely Baniyas on the Mediterranean coast and Dara’a in the south — after deploying tanks and soldiers and arresting thousands. In the face of growing international condemnation and a reeling economy, though, it offered at least the facade of compromise, saying it would begin what it called a national dialogue next week.

Some dissidents in Damascus, Syria’s capital, described a deadlock in a conflict that has already shown the weakness of both the government and the opposition, dangerously exacerbated sectarian tensions in a country still struggling to forge a national identity and perhaps sown the seeds of an armed rebellion in rural regions knit by clan loyalties.

“We don’t know where we’re going,” said Louay Hussein, a prominent dissident who has met with a government adviser in a tentative dialogue that began last week. “We don’t know what’s next. If the crackdown is still in place by the end of next week, then we’re headed toward a disaster, and it will be almost impossible to overcome it.”

The death toll on Friday — six, according to human rights activists — paled before past weeks, a reflection of either government restraint or, more likely, the inability of protesters to cross red lines that the government has declared on successive Fridays. Demonstrators from the outskirts of Damascus did not try to march on the capital, a symbol of government prestige, nor were they able to gather in central locations in cities like Homs, Syria’s third largest and a center of the uprising.

“The main thing we wanted to show the world with the protest is that we haven’t stopped, that we’re not asleep and that we’ve broken the barrier of fear,” said Abu Haidar, a resident reached by phone who took part in the demonstration in Homs.

By all accounts, the protesters showed that. Even though they could not converge in the city’s center, demonstrators still gathered in five neighborhoods, despite a withering assault this week in which tanks shelled residential areas and black-clad security forces arrested so many people that they had to detain them in soccer fields. At least three people were reported killed before the protests ended in the late afternoon.

“We don’t like you! We don’t like you!” crowds chanted there, denouncing Mr. Assad in a fashion unheard of months ago. “You and your party, leave us!”

Residents fleeing to the Lebanese border spoke of clashes erupting in Homs and the hinterland this week, with men taking up arms to defend themselves.

Demonstrations were reported in at least eight towns and villages in the region around Dara’a, which is known as the Houran and is famous for its wheat and vineyards. That protests erupted even in towns like Hara, where tanks entered this week and several people were killed, suggested that the region, devastated by drought and populated by extended clans, was so restive as to be in revolt. One person was reported killed there.

Larger protests convened in towns and cities in eastern Syria, populated by ethnic Kurds. At least three small groups of protesters gathered in Damascus itself, but were quickly broken up by security forces that, in at least one locale, outnumbered marchers.

“People still have the will to demonstrate, but the security forces were prepared for us,” said one of the protesters in Damascus. “They were waiting.”

Katherine Zoepf contributed reporting from New York, and Hwaida Saad and employees of The New York Times from Beirut and Damascus, Syria.

 

Police begin seat belt crackdown

10 May 2011 Last updated at 19:44 ET  Anyone caught not wearing a seatbelt faces a fine of up to ￡500 Police across Scotland are taking part in a day of action targeting people who do not wear a car seat belt.

It comes after recent figures suggested one person in every three killed in a car accident was not wearing a seat belt.

Since April last year, Scotland's eight police forces said more than 3,700 seat belt offences had been detected.

Any motorist caught not wearing a seat belt could face a fine of up to ￡500.

The campaign, aimed at reducing casualties on the roads, coincides with the launch of the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety.

Throughout the campaign police said they would also focus on drivers who ignored speed limits.

Ch Supt Charlie Common of Lothian and Borders Police said: "Over the next 10 years we will be working towards stringent targets in relation to casualty reduction and the type of action we intend to take forms part of that work.

"Once again, extra patrols will be evident and I would encourage all road users to obey the speed limits and take the essential precaution of ensuring that seat belts are worn."

Syria Broadens Deadly Crackdown on Protesters

The breadth of the assault — from the Mediterranean coast to the poor steppe of southern Syria — seemed to represent an important turn in an uprising that has posed the gravest challenge to the 11-year-long rule of President Bashar al-Assad. Though officials have continued to hint at reforms, and even gingerly reached out to some dissidents last week, the escalation of the crackdown seemed to signal the government’s intent to end the uprising by force.

Since the beginning of the uprising, Syria has barred most foreign journalists, and many news accounts have relied on human rights groups and networks of activists inside Syria. But in past days, those activists have complained that they have been almost entirely unable to speak with people in Homs and Baniyas, the most besieged places. Even satellite phones that protest organizers had smuggled across Syria were not working. “It seems that they’ve gotten better in tracking satellite mobile phones,” said Wissam Tarif, executive director of Insan, a Syrian human rights group.

The reasons for the newfound ability to sever communications were unclear, but Obama administration officials have said Iran, which faced a similar uprising in 2009, has provided the Syrian government, a longtime ally, with coercive supplies like tear gas, along with communications equipment that might help interrupt activists’ phones.

“The only country they can trust to back them to the end is Iran,” said an analyst based in Syria who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

The Syrian government’s actions against protesters, which have intensified since Friday, come at a time when the opposition remains unable to act collectively. Even as the United States and the European Union have imposed limited sanctions on government figures, though not Mr. Assad himself, many officials view the opposition as too weak to provide an alternative, a point that the Syrian government has relentlessly pressed. Its argument, either us or chaos, has found a certain resonance among minorities of Christians and heterodox Muslim sects there.

“We’re not focused on a transition right now,” an Obama administration official said in Washington. “We don’t know who we’d talk to and who we’d work with.”

At least 30 tanks were said to be in Baniyas, one of Syria’s most restive locales, which the military entered before dawn on Saturday. Activists and human rights groups complained of receiving almost no information from Baniyas, which has a population of 50,000 and is home to an oil refinery and a hydroelectric plant that serves the region, but one activist said at least 6 people had been killed and 250 people arrested since the operation began.

As in other towns, electricity and water were cut, at least temporarily.

Fighting was reported in Homs, Syria’s third largest city, which tanks entered Friday. Mr. Tarif said 14 people had been killed there; he could not confirm the casualties in Baniyas. Videos smuggled out of Homs, their authenticity undetermined, showed gunfire and crowds of people running for cover across a grassy lot. Mr. Tarif said the military also entered Tafas, in southern Syria.

“This is a campaign that’s going to more cities,” he said. “It’s escalating, and it’s very worrying because they’re also getting better at isolating these places.”

He said his group had documented 750 arrests, most of them in the Damascus suburbs, though he had no precise figures for Homs and Baniyas.

The uprising began in mid-March with protests in Dara’a, a town near Tafas and the border with Jordan. The protesters gathered after security forces arrested and mistreated high school students for scrawling antigovernment graffiti. The unrest soon spread, with successive Fridays in which thousands took to the streets in dozens of towns. The military’s presence in Tafas on Sunday suggests that the plight of Dara’a, part of a landscape knit tightly by extended clan loyalties, has roiled the region around it, a fertile but drought-stricken plateau famous for wheat and vineyards.

The military said it was withdrawing from Dara’a last week, and while armed columns were filmed departing, residents say the military remains in force. Townspeople were allowed to leave their homes Sunday from 8 a.m. to noon, activists said, and intermittent electricity and water were restored to some areas.

 

New Federal Crackdown Confounds States That Allow Medical Marijuana

As some states seek to increase regulation but also further protect and institutionalize medical marijuana, federal prosecutors are suddenly asserting themselves, authorizing raids and sending strongly worded letters that have cast new uncertainty on an issue that has long brimmed with tension between federal and state law.

How can a drug that federal drug law says is criminal be considered medicine under state law?

“It’s weird,” said Kevin Griffin, co-founder of West Coast Wellness, a medical marijuana dispensary that opened here in February. “We’re not a pharmacy. We spent a lot of time gathering information, and this is what we came up with as the most responsible, legal way.”

Posters featuring Pink Floyd and Tupac Shakur lined the white walls of the office, in the back of a bland building just inside Seattle’s northern boundary. Glass pipes decorated a shelf. And then there was the medicine, available by “donation only,” which included less expensive “medibles” like lollipops and “pot” pies and the traditional smoked dosages at about $280 an ounce. Questions? Just ask the “budtender” — while you still can.

“I’m worried,” Mr. Griffin said. “We might lose something we put a lot of money into.”

West Coast Wellness, one of scores of new dispensaries in the state, opened just as Washington appeared ready to approve one of the nation’s most expansive medical marijuana policies, broadening its original 1998 law to include licensing growers and dispensaries. The Legislature passed the measure last month. Yet while Gov. Christine Gregoire had initially expressed support, she instead vetoed most of the bill, specifically citing new concerns about federal opposition.

“The landscape has changed,” said the governor, a Democrat.

Letters so far have gone out to governors in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, prompting some states — including Rhode Island and Montana, in addition to Washington — to revise or back away from plans to make the medical marijuana industry more mainstream.

In Washington, Ms. Gregoire asked for guidance from the state’s two United States attorneys, Mike Ormsby and Jenny Durkan. In a reply to the governor last month, they said the federal government would prosecute “vigorously against individuals and organizations that participate in unlawful manufacturing and distribution activity involving marijuana, even if such activities are permitted under state law.”

The changes have angered supporters of medical marijuana, who say the federal government is sending mixed signals, even as they argue that it has not technically changed its position.

“How they’re obviously coming across is saber rattling,” said Alison Holcomb, director of drug policy for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington. “If there has been a shift, then somebody needs to own up to that. We have a very clear memo from 2009.”

In October 2009, the Justice Department said in a memorandum drafted by David W. Ogden, then the deputy attorney general, that it would not focus on “individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.”

The memo did not allow farms and dispensaries or the buying and selling of marijuana. In many states that allow medical marijuana, state law does not specify that dispensaries are also legal. The Washington State Department of Health’s Web site specifically says that dispensaries are illegal, as is buying and selling marijuana. It says that people who qualify for medical marijuana are allowed to grow their own.

Yet with some states and even the federal government appearing to look the other way, farming collectives and dispensaries flourished. And law enforcement officials at various levels took notice. In Spokane, Wash., federal agents recently conducted searches of seven dispensaries, though no one was arrested.

“There didn’t seem to be a recognition that the use and sale of marijuana is against federal law,” said Mr. Ormsby, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Washington.

When the Legislature was drafting the bill it passed in its most recent regular session, Mr. Ormsby said, “No one consulted with me about what I thought of what they were going to do and did I think it ran afoul of federal law.”

Of the state’s current medical marijuana law, he added, “We believe, of course, under federal law no part of the state law is legal.”

Mr. Ormsby and other prosecutors say they agree that the federal position has not changed, and they say they have been given no new directive from the Justice Department (Mr. Ormsby’s and Ms. Durkan’s letter to Ms. Gregoire said they had “consulted with the attorney general,” Eric H. Holder Jr.).

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Jessica Smith, said: “This is not a change in policy. It’s a reiteration of the guidance that was handed down in 2009 by the deputy attorney general.”

Ms. Smith noted that the 2009 memo “says definitively that distribution continues to be a federal offense.”

Some federal prosecutors say states have simply let medical marijuana get out of hand. Many supporters of medical marijuana agree.

“Seeing storefront dispensaries advertise with neon pot leaves is inconsistent with the idea most people have of medical marijuana,” said Ms. Holcomb, of the A.C.L.U. “But until you let states regulate these dispensaries, you have no way to control that.”

Some people on each side say the issue could quickly be solved if the federal government reclassified marijuana from a Schedule 1 drug, a category that includes heroin and cocaine, to a Schedule 2 drug, which includes medicines that can be prescribed.

“I think the onus is on the federal government,” said State Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles, a Democrat from Seattle who sponsored the bill that Ms. Gregoire vetoed. “Whether the Obama administration is signaling that it’s going to be more aggressive or back off from what’s in that Ogden memo, I don’t know.”

Noting that Ms. Gregoire cited concerns that state employees could face legal action for licensing growers and dispensaries, and that prosecutors had insisted that state employees “would not be immune” from prosecution, Ms. Kohl-Welles said: “I keep trying to visualize federal agents going into a state building, the Department of Health, and hauling people off.”

She continued, “I can’t conceptualize that.”

View the original article here

Syria Crackdown Could Signal Brutal New Phase

。

The Syrian Army stormed the restive city of Dara’a with tanks and soldiers and helped detain dozens nationwide Monday in an escalation of the counter offensive against Syria’s five-week-old uprising, according to residents and human rights activists. They said at least 25 people had been killed in Dara’a, with reports of bodies strewn in the streets.

Such was the alarm in the West about developments in Syria, a critical regional player adjacent to Israel and a close ally of Iran, that the United States State Department urged American citizens not to visit the country and said Americans already there should leave immediately.

An official travel advisory late Monday said the State Department had instructed the evacuation of diplomats’ families and some personnel not essential to the functioning of the American embassy in Damascus — measures similar to those taken in Egypt as the uprising there unfolded earlier this year. Britain also urged its citizens with “no pressing need” to remain in Syria to leave.

The British foreign secretary, William Hague, said on Tuesday that moves were underway at the United Nations Security Council. the European Union and among some Arab countries to send a “strong signal” to the Damascus authorities. “This violent repression must stop,” he said in a statement. But he did not specify what measures might be taken to restrain the Syrian military and security services.

Earlier, the United States called the violence “completely deplorable.” Tommy Vietor, a National Security Council spokesman, said the Obama administration was considering sanctions against Syrian officials to “make clear that this behavior is unacceptable.”

At the United Nations, European and American officials circulated a draft Security Council statement condemning the crackdown and calling on the government to respect human rights and freedom of expression. The draft endorses a call by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, released last Friday, urging an independent investigation into the mounting death toll.

Until Monday, the Syrian government had been hewing to a mix of concessions and brute force, but its latest actions indicate that it has chosen the latter, seeking to crush a wave of dissent in virtually every province that has shaken the once uncontested rule of President Bashar al-Assad, 45.

“The government has decided to choose the path of violence and repression,” said a Syrian analyst in Beirut, who asked to remain anonymous for his safety. “How far can they go in this repression? That is the question.”

As in 1982, when it crushed an Islamist revolt and killed at least 10,000 people in Hama, the military again showed its willingness to use force to repress its own people. Though there were rumors of discord among soldiers, the leadership is still dominated by Mr. Assad’s minority sect, and its deployment to Dara’a illustrated that a crucial bastion of government support remained loyal — in stark contrast with Egypt, where the military’s refusal to fire on protesters proved decisive in President Hosni Mubarak’s fall.

The official Syrian news agency said Monday night that the military had entered the town at the request of citizens to hunt what it called “extremist terrorist groups.”

Dara’a, a town of low-slung buildings with 75,000 inhabitants, has become almost synonymous with the popular revolt that has posed the greatest challenge to four decades of rule by the Assad family. Protests erupted there in March after security forces arrested high school students accused of scrawling anti-government graffiti on a wall, galvanizing demonstrations that have spread from the Mediterranean coast and eastern regions dominated by Kurds to the steppe of southern Syria, where Dara’a is located.

Residents said at least eight tanks drove into the town before dawn, with 4,000 to 6,000 troops, though some estimates put the numbers far lower, in the hundreds. Water, electricity and phone lines were cut, making firsthand accounts difficult and the numbers impossible to verify, and nearby border crossings with Jordan were reported sealed. Snipers took positions on the roofs of mosques, residents said, and a mix of soldiers and armed irregular forces went house to house to search for protesters.

“There are bodies in the streets we can’t reach; anyone who walks outside is getting shot at,” said a resident of Dara’a who gave his name as Abdullah, reached by satellite phone. “They want to teach Syria a lesson by teaching Dara’a a lesson.”

A handful of videos posted on the Internet, along with residents’ accounts, gave a picture of a city under broad military assault, in what appeared to mark a new phase in the government crackdown. Tanks had not previously been used against protesters, and the force of the assault suggested that the military planned some sort of occupation of the town.

“It’s an attempt to occupy Dara’a,” Abdullah said.

He said soldiers had taken three mosques, but had yet to capture the Omari Mosque, where he said thousands had sought refuge. Since the beginning of the uprising last month, it has served as a headquarters of sorts for demonstrators. He quoted people there as shouting, “We swear you will not enter but over our dead bodies.”

He said residents had also tried to block roads with cement blocks and cars. “We didn’t pay such a high price to quit now,” he said.

For weeks, organizers have managed to circumvent the government’s attempt to black out news from Dara’a and cities like Homs. But it appeared to have more success Monday.

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, employees of The New York Times from Beirut and Damascus, Syria, and Alan Cowell from London.

 

A Day After Crackdown in Syria, Activists Regroup

 

Despite promises of reform, Syrian security forces arrested Mahmoud Issa, a prominent opposition figure and former political prisoner, on Tuesday hours after the cabinet approved a bill to rescind emergency rule.

“The city is still mourning its dead,” said a political activist who gave his name as Abu Haydar, speaking by telephone from Homs. “There are security forces everywhere, in ever corner of the city and it is not clear what is going to happen, but we are preparing for demonstrations on Friday.”

On Tuesday, the government tried to placate protesters with declarations of sweeping reform while also issuing harsh threats of reprisals if demonstrations did not come to an end, as one of the Arab world’s most repressive countries struggled to blunt the most serious challenge to the 40-year rule of the Assad family.

The mix of concession and coercion came hours after the police, army and the other forces of an authoritarian state were marshaled to crush one of the biggest gatherings yet by protesters bent on staging an Egyptian-style sit-in in Homs, Syria’s third largest city. At least two people died, protesters said, as the government cleared the square.

The events punctuated a tumultuous day in a monthlong uprising that, like Egypt’s, has the potential to rework the arithmetic of a Middle East shaken with dissent. While Syria lacks Egypt’s population or even Libya’s wealth, its influence has long been strong in the region, given its location, its alliance with Iran and its status as kingmaker in Lebanon.

The complexity of its standing means that the government of President Bashar al-Assad finds advocates in the most divergent of places — from the Shiite Muslim movement of Hezbollah in Lebanon to some quarters in Israel.

The reforms were promised Saturday by Mr. Assad, but had yet to be articulated until Tuesday, when the government announced the repeal of an emergency law in place since the Baath Party seized power in 1963. The repeal must still be approved by Parliament or Mr. Assad, but that amounts to a formality. So does its true impact: the government has yet to show any real sign of easing its relentless grip.

Since the uprising began, the government has vacillated between crackdown and suggestions of compromise, a formula that proved disastrous for strongmen in Tunisia and Egypt. But the combination Tuesday was most remarkable for how divided it was.

Even as protesters buried those killed in Homs, the long-promised reforms ostensibly granted civil liberties, curbed the power of the police and abolished draconian courts. They legalized “peaceful protests” — coded language for those approved by the government — as the Interior Ministry warned in a statement, carried by the official news agency, that it would bring to bear the full breadth of the law against any other kind.

Echoing Egypt and Tunisia, the reforms, on paper at least, went far in meeting protesters’ original demands, which have only grown in depth and scope as the bloodshed has worsened.

“The street is in one world and the president and the regime are in another,” said Wissam Tarif, executive director of Insan, a Syrian human rights group, who was reached by phone.

The announcements followed another government crackdown on protests, this time in Homs, an industrial city near the Lebanese border and location of a famous Crusader castle.

For days, organizers in Syria have sought to replicate the experience of Tahrir Square in Cairo, where hundreds of thousands gathered to demand the end of the three-decade rule of President Hosni Mubarak. The square became a symbol and an instrument of the demonstrations that eventually forced him to resign in February.

Organizers envisioned as its equivalent Abbassiyeen Square, a crucial artery in the capital, Damascus, but were thwarted by security forces. Some organizers said they turned instead to Homs, where funerals on Monday for 14 demonstrators killed a day earlier drew thousands.

Some protesters said the security forces seemed taken aback by the crowds, which grew through the day in both numbers and anger. “A sit-in, a sit-in, until the government falls!” some shouted. “Please go,” a banner implored of Mr. Assad. Mr. Tarif cited witnesses who said protesters had served tea and sandwiches as a chilly night fell, and organizers said mattresses and tents were carted in so protesters could serve in shifts.

Security forces made some attempts to disperse the crowds, but relented until after midnight. Then, protesters said, a mix of soldiers, security forces and police officers surrounded the square and attacked the demonstrators with tear gas and live ammunition after the crowds had dwindled to about 2,000.

Nada Bakri and Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Katherine Zoepf from New York, and employees of The New York Times from Damascus, Syria.

 

Church 'sham marriage' crackdown

 12 April 2011 Last updated at 05:03 ET  Rev Brown married hundreds of African men to Eastern European women to help them stay in UK The Church of England is to issue new guidance to clergy in an attempt to reduce the number of sham marriages.

In future, couples will have to apply for a licence if either the bride or groom is from a non-European country.

Members of the clergy are also being urged to report any suspicions they have that the marriage is not genuine.

Over the past nine months, 155 people have been arrested in the UK as a result of investigations into both church and civil ceremonies.

The new guidance advises clergy not to publish banns - where a couple's intention to marry is read out in church - for marriages involving a man or a woman from a non-European country.

Instead, it says couples should apply for a "common licence", which involves the swearing of affidavits and classes.

The guidance issued by the House of Bishops - one of three houses in the General Synod - has UK Border Agency agreement.

It says if a member of the clergy is not satisfied that the marriage is genuine, he or she must make that clear to the person responsible for granting the licence.

Clergy should "immediately" report a couple to diocesan legal officers if they insist on having banns read rather than applying for a common licence under the guidance.

'Right direction'

The Church said clergy who refuse to conduct a wedding as a result of the guidance would not be considered guilty of misconduct.

Continue reading the main story

It's very difficult for a priest some times to say no to people when you feel intimidated”

End Quote Reverend Tim Codling CofE vicar Vicars have also been urged to contact the police immediately should they feel they are being threatened or pressured to carry out a marriage.

The Right Reverend John Packer, Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, said: "The House of Bishops is clear that the office of holy matrimony must not be misused by those who have no intention of contracting a genuine marriage.

"The purpose of this guidance and direction from the bishops to the clergy and to those responsible for the grant of common licences is, therefore, to prevent the contracting of sham marriages in the Church of England," he said.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said while the exact numbers were not known, "some clergy, in some parishes in cities" were being asked on a "fairly frequently basis" to conduct suspected sham marriages.

The new rules would protect the clergy from being "conned" and those couples who were "genuinely seeking marriage", he added.

Reverend Tim Codling had to call in the police and immigration officials after his church - St John the Baptist CoE in Tilbury, Essex - was targeted by a Nigerian gang from 2007.

He said it was a "production line", with the number of weddings tripling from 10 to 30 a year.

"It's very difficult for a priest sometimes to say no to people when you feel intimidated," he said. "I felt threatened on many occasions."

Father Codling told BBC Panorama's My Big Fat Fake Wedding programme that the sham marriages were the work of crime gangs involved in prostitution, drugs, money laundering and people trafficking.

In some cases, he added, the fake brides were "absolutely frightened".

Loopholes

Immigration minister Damian Green, who has backed the guidance, said the UK Border Agency already worked "very closely" with the Church to investigate and disrupt suspected sham weddings but the new advice was "another step in the right direction".

"Increasing enforcement action has resulted in 155 arrests across the country, and would-be fraudsters should remember that a marriage itself does not equal an automatic right to remain in the UK," he said.

Criminal gangs behind sham marriages had in the past exploited the ease with which the Church would marry people, he said.

But the new guidance made it necessary for vicars to take action, and removed easily exploitable "loopholes", he added.

Last September the Reverend Alex Brown, 61, was jailed for four years for his part in a sham marriage fraud which helped hundreds of illegal immigrants stay in Britain.

He abused his position to marry hundreds of African men to Eastern European women at the Church of St Peter and St Paul in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex.

A Church of England spokesman said no more than a "handful" of clergy were currently suspended pending police investigations into alleged sham marriages.

"The vast majority of the 155 arrests mentioned by the immigration minister are of couples and their facilitators," he said.