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2011年6月18日星期六

The Lede: Palestinians Record West Bank Protests With Cameras Supplied by Israelis

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While journalists have found themselves scouring the Internet in search of video from protests across the Middle East recently, one protest movement, by small groups of villagers opposed to Israel’s security barrier in the West Bank, has gotten far less attention.

Even so, there is no lack of footage of the weekly protests that my colleague Isabel Kershner described last year as a sort of slow-motion, “part-time intifada.” That’s true in part because an Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, has distributed video cameras to Palestinians to make sure the demonstrations do not go undocumented.

This week, B’Tselem released a video report made from footage shot by two Palestinian residents of the town of Nabi Saleh, outside Ramallah, showing, the rights group said, the use of “disproportionate force” by Israeli officers to disperse a protest there last month.

Yoav Gross, the director of B’Tselem’s video department, confirmed in an e-mail to The Lede that the Nabi Saleh residents who shot the video, Bilal Tamimi and Nariman Tamimi, had both been given cameras by the Israeli rights group. He added, “in addition to supplying us with footage documenting the demonstrations, they also distribute materials independently,” through Bilal Tamimi’s YouTube channel, which features extended clips of demonstrations in the village over the past year.

Sarit Michaeli, a spokesperson for B’Tselem, said that the footage of the incident last month was also used in news reports on Israeli television which questioned the use of force shown in the video. In response, a spokesperson for the Israeli Border Police called the video “one sided” because the Palestinians featured in it were “those who attacked the police officers and attempted to release an arrestee from detention.”

Ms. Michaeli said that the rights group took time to verify and cross-check the events shown in the video before issuing a formal demand for an investigation of the use of force by the officers.

An American activist, Christopher Whitman, was wounded while filming the same demonstration. He was struck in the head by what he described as a tear gas shell fired by an Israeli officer.

More footage of the same demonstration was posted on YouTube by an Israeli video blogger, Israel Puterman, who frequently films West Bank demonstrations.

Nariman Tamimi’s husband, Bassem, is currently on trial in an Israeli military court for his role in organizing the weekly protests in Nabi Saleh.

The Palestinian activists have also used the cameras provided to them by the Israeli rights group to record what they describe as a broad effort by the Israeli security forces to quash their protest movement.

In January, the activists filmed these two clips during a night-time raid on the village, as Israeli soldiers went house to house to photograph children and young adults to help them identify anyone throwing stones during clashes.

Footage of the night raids was also broadcast on Israeli television. A military spokesperson told Israel’s Channel 10 that the measures were necessary to maintain order and security.

A few days later, Nariman Tamimi filmed this video, showing the arrest of an 11-year-old boy, Kareem Tamimi, and his mother’s desperate attempts to pull him away from the security forces:

Just before that arrest, Bassem Tamimi, the protest organizer, claimed in an interview with Joseph Dana, an Israeli-American activist and blogger, that children in the village were being arrested as part of an effort to “apply pressure on our resistance.”

View the original article here

2011年5月22日星期日

Despite Ban, Protests Continue Before Spanish Vote

MADRID — Tens of thousands of demonstrators across Spain continued sit-ins and other protests against the established political parties on Saturday. They did so in defiance of a ban against such protests and ahead of regional and municipal elections on Sunday.

About 28,000 people, most of them young, spent Friday night in Puerta del Sol, a main square in downtown Madrid, the police said. They stayed even as the protest ban went into effect at midnight under rules that bring an official end to campaigning before the election in 13 of Spain’s 17 regions and in more than 8,000 municipalities.

Fueling the demonstrators’ anger is the perceived failure by politicians to alleviate the hardships imposed on a struggling population. The unemployment rate in Spain is 21 percent.

Beyond economic complaints, the protesters’ demands include improving the judiciary, ending political corruption and overhauling Spain’s electoral structure, notably by ending the system in which candidates are selected internally by the parties before an election rather than chosen directly by voters.

The protests, which started May 15, have spread gradually across Spain. Spaniards overseas have also held some protests in front of their embassies to show their support for an alternative campaign that has almost eclipsed that of the established parties.

Although some of the protest groups have called for people to vote for smaller and alternative parties, or to cast a blank ballot, the movement could lead to a decline in voter turnout on Sunday. In the elections four years ago, 63 percent of eligible voters cast ballots.

Sunday’s election is expected to result in a countrywide sweep by the Popular Party, the main center-right opposition, at the expense of the governing Socialists, whose popularity has plummeted because of the economic crisis. The most recent opinion polls suggest that the Socialist Party may lose in regions and municipalities where it has been in power since Spain’s return to democracy in the late 1970s, notably Castilla-La Mancha.

Whatever the outcome, Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero announced in April that he would not seek a third term, paving the way for the selection of a new Socialist leader before the general election, which is expected in March 2012.

As the campaign ban came into force at midnight, many of the Madrid protesters stuck tape across their mouths to signal that they would continue the demonstration, even if ordered to be silent. “The voice of the people can never be illegal,” read some of the banners, while others argued, “We are not against the system but the system is against us.”

Still, the government suggested that it would not order the police to use force to break up any protests and sit-ins in Madrid and elsewhere over the weekend, especially given that protests this week have not generated any violence. Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, speaking during a visit to the Murcia region, said that “the police are there to solve problems and not create new ones.”

View the original article here

2011年5月15日星期日

The Lede: Video of Protests and Clashes in Syria

Video said to show a late night demonstration in Zabadani, outside the Syrian capital of Damascus, on Friday.

As my colleague Anthony Shadid reports, despite a brutal crackdown in Syria, protesters took to the streets in at least five neighborhoods in Homs, Syria’s third-largest city and a center of the two-month uprising. Activists said protests ranged in numbers from hundreds to thousands, and at least two people were killed when security forces opened fire.

Faced with continuing restrictions on independent reporting inside Syria, activists there again posted video online of what they described as new protests and clashes on Friday.

This video, uploaded to YouTube on Friday, is said to have been filmed during a demonstration in the Khalidiya district of Homs earlier in the day:

Although the security forces were reportedly more restrained than on past days, this video, uploaded to the activist Ugarit News channel on YouTube, is said to have been filmed in Khalidiya on Friday as tear gas was fired at protesters:

This video, uploaded to another Syrian activist channel on YouTube, Sham News, is also said to show a clash on Friday in the same neighborhood:

Protests were also reported in the eastern Kurdish city of Qamishli, where this video is said to have been filmed:

Meanwhile in Baniyas, an oil industry town that was assaulted by the Syrian military last week, a resident told The Times that crowds at Friday prayers were smaller than usual and that there were no demonstrations afterward.

“People are extremely scared,” said Abu Obada, a resident there reached by phone. “They’re worried about snipers and they’re worried about the security forces.”

“Most of the people prayed at home,” he added.

Two very graphic clips posted online on Thursday, which are said to have been filmed just after female protesters in Baniyas were killed by the security forces last Saturday, make the source of that fear quite plain:

2011年5月14日星期六

The Lede: Video of Protests and Clashes in Syria

Video said to show a late night demonstration in Zabadani, outside the Syrian capital of Damascus, on Friday.

Faced with continuing restrictions on independent reporting inside Syria, activists there again posted video online of what they described as new protests and clashes on Friday.

This video, uploaded to YouTube on Friday, is said to have been filmed during a demonstration in the Khalidiya district of Homs earlier in the day:

This video, uploaded to another Syrian activist channel on YouTube, Sham News, is also said to show a clash on Friday in the same neighborhood:

Protests were also reported in the eastern Kurdish city of Qamishli, where this video is said to have been filmed:

“People are extremely scared,” said Abu Obada, a resident there reached by phone. “They’re worried about snipers and they’re worried about the security forces.”

“Most of the people prayed at home,” he added.

Huge Protests in Yemen as Talks Drag On

Tens of thousands of protesters poured into the streets of Yemen’s capital, Sana, and cities across the country on Friday, keeping alive their efforts to drive President Ali Abdullah Saleh from office, according to activists and news reports from Yemen.

As the protests erupted, a plan that would allow Mr. Saleh to leave office in exchange for immunity from prosecution continued to languish. The plan, brokered by the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, had been approved by the mainstream opposition and Mr. Saleh, but not by the street protesters who are leery of any promises made by the president.

As the two sides bickered over details, one of the council’s members, Qatar, announced on Thursday that it was “compelled” to pull out of the talks “because of procrastination” and continued confrontations, according to a statement published by the official Qatari news agency.

Qatar and Yemen have long had a troubled relationship. In a statement Friday, the Yemeni government said it “warmly welcomed” Qatar’s withdrawal from negotiations. Saudi Arabia, Yemen’s largest international donor, is considered to be the gulf council’s most influential member.

Protesters reported being attacked by government forces in the cities of Ibb and Taiz on Friday.

In Ibb, a small city south of the capital, snipers opened fire on protesters after noon prayers, killing three of them, according to a local doctor who spoke by phone. In Taiz, a hub of opposition to Mr. Saleh, a doctor said by e-mail that government forces had fired on the crowds, wounding two protesters.

At a demonstration in the western port city of Hodeidah, protesters raised a Qatari flag, according to a video posted on YouTube, apparently showing their appreciation that Qatar had pulled out of the talks on the gulf council deal.

In the capital, Mr. Saleh remained defiant, lashing out at his critics in front of a crowd of tens of thousands of supporters in what has turned into a Friday ritual. “What we built in 22 years, you spoiled in three months,” he said.

“The military is obliged to protect its institutions with all its might,” he said, in what appears to have been a warning to protesters in the capital who have been mainly confined to an area outside Sana University but have promised to bring their demonstrations to government buildings.

Earlier this week, at least 10 protesters in Sana were killed when they tried to march on government buildings.

2011年5月4日星期三

Inquest Faults London Officer in 2009 Death During Protests

Now, two years later, a jury in an official inquest has reached a damning conclusion. After hearing five weeks of evidence contradicting the original account, it determined on Tuesday that Mr. Tomlinson had in fact been “unlawfully killed” by the “excessive and unreasonable” behavior of the police officer who hit him, Police Constable Simon Harwood.

As a result of Constable Harwood’s attack, the jury said, “Mr. Tomlinson suffered internal bleeding, which led to his collapse within a few minutes and his subsequent death.”

The case has been a cause célèbre since the death of Mr. Tomlinson, a newspaper vendor whose fatal encounter with an angry army of police officers took place as he tried to make his way home during the sometimes-violent protests against a Group of 20 meeting on April 1, 2009. The verdict was a huge embarrassment for the police, which have been repeatedly accused of using excessive force against peaceful demonstrators and of being unable to control violent protesters, and who seemed to be doing their best to avoid taking responsibility for Mr. Tomlinson’s death.

Mr. Tomlinson, an alcoholic who had liver disease, had a number of peaceful encounters that evening with the police, who stopped him repeatedly as he walked, slowly and not very steadily, through London’s financial district.

One officer, Police Constable Andrew Brown, said that he encountered Mr. Tomlinson “shuffling” toward a police cordon against a backdrop of fires, smoke and rocks being thrown by the protesters. “He was staring vacantly towards the demonstration,” Constable Brown told the inquest. “I explained why he could not get through. He said he needed to get to West Smithfield where he lived — he needed to work in the morning.”

A few minutes later, Mr. Tomlinson was standing with his hands in his pockets when a line of police officers clearing the area of protesters told him to get back. It was then that Constable Harwood, who told the inquest that he was panicking at the mounting violence and who had already had several altercations with people in the crowd, ran forward.

Mr. Tomlinson had already begun to move away when Constable Harwood hit him in the left thigh with his baton and then pushed him hard on his shoulder. Mr. Tomlinson fell to the ground. He got up and wandered unsteadily for a short time before collapsing again, unconscious. He died soon afterward.

The police at first said that their only contact with Mr. Tomlinson involved trying to help him. But the push was captured on video by a bystander, Chris La Jaunie, an investment banker in New York. Six days later, he released the video to The Guardian, which posted it online.

A police pathologist — who has been suspended twice for failings in other postmortem examinations — concluded that Mr. Tomlinson had had a fatal heart attack. But several experts testified at the inquest that he had in fact died from internal bleeding.

Rose Fitzpatrick, deputy assistant commissioner for the Metropolitan Police, called the verdict a “matter of deep regret” and said the department would begin misconduct proceedings against Constable Harwood. But Mr. Tomlinson’s family said the officer should face criminal prosecution.

“We’ve been let down for two years,” Paul King, one of Mr. Tomlinson’s nine children, said after the verdict. He said that the verdict was “a bit of closure,” but that “we’d like to go to court and continue with the manslaughter charges.”

The Crown Prosecution Service, which originally declined to prosecute anyone in the case, said Tuesday that it would review its decision in light of the inquest.

Constable Harwood denied that he had intended to harm Mr. Tomlinson. The officer “did not intend, or foresee at the time, that his push would cause Mr. Tomlinson to fall over, let alone that it would result in any injury,” Constable Harwood’s lawyer said in a statement.

Jenny Jones, a member of the London Assembly from the Green Party, referred to several cases in which unarmed civilians were killed by police officers, including that of Jean Charles de Menezes. Mr. Menezes, a Brazilian man, was shot dead days after the subway bombings of July 2005 by officers who mistook him for a terrorist after a series of blunders. No officer was prosecuted in the case.

“Ian Tomlinson’s death must not join that list,” she said.

2011年4月26日星期二

Protests Continue in Yemen After Saleh Accepts Exit Plan

VOA News ?April 24, 2011

Yemeni army officers lifted by anti-government protestors gesture as they join a demonstration demanding the resignation of of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in Sanaa, Yemen, April 24, 2011

Anti-government protesters in Yemen's capital continue to demand the president's immediate departure, a day after President Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed to a Gulf Arab initiative for him to transfer power and resign within 30 days of signing a formal agreement with the opposition.

A coalition of seven opposition parties has said it accepts the deal but refuses to join a proposed unity government while Saleh is still in office. Protesters in Sana'a on Sunday remained skeptical of the agreement, with some saying they do not feel represented by the opposition coalition.

Protesters also demanded that Saleh and his family face trial, while the deal brokered by the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council would grant the president and his family immunity from prosecution.

Yemen has been shaken by more than two months of widespread protests seeking the ouster of Saleh, who has been in power 32 years.

The United States on Saturday welcomed the announcements that Yemen's government and opposition had accepted the GCC-brokered deal.? A White House spokesman urged both sides to move swiftly to implement the terms of the agreement.

The GCC plan calls for President Saleh to transfer power to a deputy, who would then call presidential elections. It requires the opposition to stop demonstrations and would set up a power-sharing government in which ruling party members would control half the seats. The opposition coalition would hold 40 percent and unaffiliated parties would make up the rest.

GCC Secretary-General Abdullatif al-Zayani presented the plan to Saleh on Thursday.

In other unrest Sunday, police say fresh clashes between soldiers and tribesmen in the country's south killed five people, including four soldiers.

information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

2011年4月19日星期二

The Lede: April 15 Updates on Mideast Protests and Libyan War

On Friday, The Lede is following the war in Libya and protest movements across the Middle East and North Africa. Updates below mix alerts on breaking news with reports and observations from journalists and bloggers in the region. For a summary of the latest developments in Syria, read the frequently updated main news article from my colleagues Liam Stack and Katherine Zoepf.
Video posted online by Syrian activists is said to show protests continuing in Damascus, the capital, on Friday night.

Despite the fact that Internet use is monitored and limited in Syria, activists again managed to upload dozens of video clips of protests to Facebook and YouTube on Friday.

On Thursday, one of the activists involved in the effort to document the demonstrations told Reuters that a network of citizen journalists in Syria has been using secure connections and satellite telephones to get the video out. The activist, who goes by the name Abu Adnan, explained in an interview from Syria that the work was extremely dangerous: “Four friends of mine died. One was in Douma [a Damascus suburb], filming with me. A sniper on rooftop chose him. He could have chosen me. One was executed after he refused to stop on his motorcycle. One was arrested and released dead and one was shot in Dara’a.”

Still, the activist argued, the work he and his friends are doing is necessary because Syria’s state-controlled media is “fabricating what is happening in Syria.”

While interested observers outside of Syria are paying quite a lot of attention to the video of protests and clashes appearing on YouTube and Facebook, the 80 percent of Syria’s population without Internet access is more likely to be hearing Syrian state television’s very different explanation of what is happening in the country.

On Thursday, the man in charge of Syria’s state media, Adnan Hassan Mahmoud, was named President Bashar al-Assad’s information minister.

Under his guidance, Syria’s state media has continued to insist that the unrest has been entirely generated by a foreign conspiracy.

On Wednesday, as the state news agency’s English-language Web site reported, Syrian state television broadcast what it called confessions from members of a terrorist cell. Three Syrian men featured in the report said that they had been paid to sow unrest in Syria by a Lebanese politician, Jamal al Jarra, who also supplied them with weapons and told to shoot demonstrators in order to frame the Syrian security forces.

Mr. Jarra, who immediately denied the allegations, is a member of the Lebanese Parliament and of a party led by former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, whose anti-Syrian father, Rafik Hariri, was assassinated in 2005.

Syrian state television reported this week that these three men had confessed to receiving weapons and instructions to cause unrest in Syria from a Lebanese political party.

Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Syrian state television claimed this week that these three men had confessed to receiving weapons and instructions to cause unrest in Syria from a Lebanese politician.

The purported leader of the terror cell claimed that an intermediary for the Lebanese politician had agreed “to provide us with a car resembling that of the security forces, in addition to highly sophisticated telephones. We assigned someone with the task of taking photos [of] the injured and the killed people and sending the photos directly to the so-called al-Thawra Web site (Revolution) on Facebook.” He added that his “armed group” was instructed “to appear as police officers or security members when we will attack … and we must kill people.”

Another member of the group, who said that they had also been tasked with stirring up protests, said that they did so by paying people to attend, insisting that, “most people who are going out for demonstrations are doing so, because they are paid money.”

The Lede is signing off for the evening but will continue to cover the protest movements sweeping the Middle East and North Africa in the days and weeks ahead. In the meantime, please visit the home page of NYTimes.com to read reports from my colleagues in the region. Thanks for your comments and tips.

Video posted online by Syrian activists appears to show protesters fleeing in the coastal city of Latakia on Friday as the security forces opened fire.

This clip, which ends with graphic images of a man who appears to have been shot and killed, begins with marchers suddenly scattering as gunshots are heard:

In this clip, also said to have been filmed in Latakia on Friday, protesters appear to take cover as gunshots are fired:

The daughter of a prominent human rights activist in Bahrain wrote on Friday that she will not stop a hunger strike she began this week.

As The Lede reported on Tuesday, Zainab Alkhawaja, whose father, husband and brother-in-law were all arrested in a predawn raid last week, began a fast on Monday. She reiterated on Friday that she intends to eat nothing until her family members are released from custody.

Ms. Alkhawaja, who has documented the protest movement in Bahrain on her Angry Arabiya Twitter feed, posted a series of updates on the social network on Friday in which she explained that she been feeling “dizzy and weak and having a lot of pain.” She added that, under pressure from her family, she would start “be drinking 1 glass of sugar water a day,” but would continue not to eat until her family members are released by Bahrain’s government.

That Ms. Alkhawaja’s strike has caught the attention of the foreign media – earlier this week she was interviewed by several news organizations, including The Guardian and The Associated Press – has clearly upset some supporters of Bahrain’s monarchy who use the Web to make their case. After The Lede communicated with her via Twitter this week, several users of the social network posted nearly identical messages attacking this blog’s author. Some of the same people posted similar attacks on Robert Booth, a Guardian journalist who has been writing about Ms. Alkhawaja.

Another Bahraini blogger even resorted to the tactic of setting up an “AngryArabyia” Twitter account, which is a parody version of Ms. Alkhawaja’s Twitter feed, using the same cartoon icon as the original and a slight misspelling her user name. That mock feed is a stream of vicious attacks on the hunger striker, mixed with obscene and off-color jokes implying that Ms. Alkhawaja is a phony. It also employs a backdrop of hamburgers to taunt the hunger striker.

As my colleagues Liam Stack and Katherine Zoepf report, protest marches in several parts of Syria on Friday were reportedly met with tear gas, beatings and gunfire.

These video clips are said to have been filmed as the security forces fired shots to prevent protesters from crossing a bridge into Abasseyeen Square in the heart of Damascus:

This video is said to show a large number of protesters heading into Damascus from a suburb earlier in the day:

This video is said to have been filmed in Darayya, another Damascus suburb on Friday:

This video, which Syrian activists said was filmed on Friday in the coastal city of Latakia, appears to show the security forces on the streets, as protesters chant; “Peaceful! Peaceful!”

According to the activist who uploaded this clip, which begins with graphic images of a dead or badly wounded man, it was filmed in Latakia on Friday as protesters were dispersed by gunshots:

At the end of this clip, which is said to show the body of a dead protester being carried from a street in Latakia on Friday, a man in plan clothes who appears to be with the protesters is carrying a rifle:

Video of more peaceful protests was also posted on Facebook and YouTube by Syrian activists on Friday.

This clip appears to show a large protest in the southern city of Dara’a, where dozens of protesters have been killed since the unrest began:

This video is said to show a large rally in the town of Jassem, outside Dara’a:

These clips are said to show a large number of protesters on the streets of Homs, in central Syria:

According to the activist who writes on Twitter as Anonymous Syria, this video shows protesters destroying the country’s biggest statue of Hafez al-Assad, the father of Syria’s current president, in Al Rastan, outside Homs:

These two clips are said to show protesters in the village of Bayda, in northwestern Syria – in the second, they chant: “The people want to topple the regime!”

Don’t miss a new report from Misurata by my colleague C.J. Chivers, which begins:

Military forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, who have surrounded this city and vowed to crush its anti-Qaddafi rebellion, have been firing into residential neighborhoods with heavy weapons, including cluster bombs that have been banned by much of the world and ground-to-ground rockets, according to the accounts of witnesses and survivors and physical evidence on the ground.

Such “indiscriminate” weapons, which strike large areas with a dense succession of high-explosive munitions, by their nature cannot be fired precisely, and when fired into populated areas place civilians at grave risk.

Mr. Chivers, a former soldier who has written extensively about weapons, has been posting images of the arms used in Libya on his own Web site, CJChivers.com.

This video, showing some of the physical destruction to Misurata caused by weeks of shelling by government forces, was posted online by Libyan activists this week:

As we noted in our previous update, Tarek Shalaby, an Egyptian activist and blogger, has been documenting a protest by Coptic Christian in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Bambuser, a video-streaming site.

Mr. Shalaby, who was among the activists who camped in the square during the protests against Hosni Mubarak, explains on Twitter that he is observing the Copts’ protest in good revolutionary company. He is accompanied by his sister, Nora Shalaby, another Egyptian revolutionary, their cousin Muhammed Radwan, an Egyptian-American who was detained in Syria last month while observing a protest there, and a friend, Adel Abdel Ghafar, who drove to Libya to deliver medical supplies to the eastern city of Benghazi in the first days of that uprising.

All four of the activists have been posting updates on the march on their Twitter feeds.

Tarek Shalaby, an activist and blogger, is transmitting live video of a new protest by Egyptian Christians taking place right now in Cairo’s Tahrir Square from his phone using the video streaming service Bambuser:

Other clips of the protest, shot within the past hour, are archived on Mr. Shalaby’s Bambuser channel.

As my colleagues Liam Stack and Katherine Zoepf report, “Protesters gathered again in large numbers in cities across Syria on Friday to demand reforms, defying a nationwide crackdown in which dozens of demonstrators have been killed in regular rounds of gunfire from security forces.”

Although severe restrictions on independent reporting in Syria have limited the number of foreign observers of the unrest there, Syrian activists have become adept at recording and posting video of the protests online. Dozens of clips, all said to have been shot in cities and towns across Syria on Friday, have already been posted on Facebook pages and YouTube channels maintained by opponents of President Bashar al-Assad’s ruling Baath Party.

Given the restraints placed on journalists by Syria’s government, The Times cannot confirm the authenticity of this video, but we invite readers who are familiar with Syria to help us annotate these clips by posting comments in the thread below. If you see a landmark that you can identify, hear a chant that is interesting, or see any detail that might suggest that a clip was not recorded on Friday, please let us know.

According to Wissam Tarif, a Syrian human rights activist, thousands of protesters from suburbs of the capital, Damascus, tried to march to the city center, but were dispersed by the security forces.

This video, posted on the Sham News YouTube channel, is said to show protesters outside a mosque in Damascus, following Friday prayers:

This video is said to show marchers from two suburbs, Harasta and Douma, meeting up:

This clip is said to show protesters in Harasta destroying an image of Syria’s president on a billboard:

This video is said to have been shot during a march in Erbeeen, outside Damascus:

According to the activists who run the Sham News Network YouTube channel, this video was filmed on Friday in Hama, a Syrian city where at least 10,000 people were killed in 1982, during an uprising against the rule of Hafez al-Assad, the current president’s late father:

Another YouTube blogger, who uses the name Abobakersyria, posted this video , described as a protest in the northern city of Aleppo, with a message asking fellow activists to bring it to the attention of journalists:

This video, said to show protesters at a funeral in the northwestern city of Baniyas on Friday, was one of two dozen clips uploaded to the Syrian Free Press YouTube channel:

As The Lede reported on Wednesday, women and children from a village outside Baniyas, Bayda, marched to the main coastal highway outside the city that day to demand the release of hundreds of the town’s men, who had been detained in connection with unrest in Baniyas.

On Thursday, Mr. Tarif, the Syrian rights activists, posted a link on Twitter to this video, said to show the brutal treatment of the men of Bayda by Syrian security forces on Tuesday: