The Assyrian Democratic Organization
ADO-World.org
DAMASCUS – Protesters poured onto Syria’s streets in a mass show of support for the Syrian National Council hours after the powerful opposition grouping was officially launched in Istanbul, activists said Monday.
"Demonstrations of support" were held late Sunday in Syria’s main protest hubs, including Hama, Homs, Idlib, Daraa, Deir Ezzor and the province of Damas, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Protests were also held in the capital’s Al-Qadam neighbourhood despite a heavy deployment of security forces, the Observatory said.
The SNC, aimed at presenting a united front against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, was officially launched on Sunday in Istanbul.
"The Syrian National Council reunites the forces of the opposition and the peaceful revolution," Paris-based academic Burhan Ghalioun told reporters at the launch.
Uniting groups across the political spectrum, "it represents the Syrian revolution both inside and outside the country," he said.
"It works to mobilise all categories of people in Syria and give the necessary support for the revolution to progress and realise the aspirations of our people for the overthrow of the regime, its symbols and its head," he said.
Videos posted on Facebook page "Syrian Revolution 2011", one of the motors of the protest movement against Assad, showed demonstrators at Zabadani, 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Damascus, chanting their support for the new group: "Syrian National Council, our sole and legitimate representative."
They also demanded that Assad step down.
In Daraa, the southern flashpoint province where the revolt against Assad’s regime began in March, protesters carried banners reading: "We support the Syrian National Council, the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian revolution."
The SNC is to hold a general assembly of 190 members at the beginning of next month, where delegates will elect a president as well as a 29-strong general secretariat representing seven Syrian opposition factions.
In Doha, a former leader of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood, Ali Sadreddine al-Bayanouni, said the group wants a "democratic" Syria not an Islamic state to replace Assad’s regime.
Speaking at a conference organised by the Brookings Doha centre in the Qatari capital, Bayanouni said the Brotherhood was "not imposing itself on the opposition or on the people of Syria."
"We support the establishment of a modern, civil, democratic state," he said on Sunday.
Bayanouni said the newly formed SNC represents "80 percent of the Syrian opposition."
The Istanbul meeting came as violence raged in Syria, where according to the UN at least 2,700 people have been killed in a brutal crackdown on the uprising.
The Observatory said the army had Sunday "taken complete control" of the central city of Rastan in Homs province, 160 kilometres (100 miles) north of Damascus, where fighting had raged between army deserters and Syrian forces.
"Many houses have been destroyed there and the humanitarian situation is very bad," the rights watchdog said.
"We have information that dozens of civilians were killed and buried in the gardens of houses as the army shelled the town," it added.
The Observatory said security forces also pursued military operations on Monday in the city of Douma, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) west of Damascus, in which an unknown number of people were arrested.
Similar operations, part of a relentless crackdown on dissent, were carried out at Deir Ezzor in the east and at Saraqeb in Idlib province, where on Sunday Saria Hussein, a son of Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, Syria’s chief Sunni religious figure, and history professor Mohammed al-Omar were killed.
State news agency SANA said the two men were killed "by gunfire from a group of armed terrorists."
Assad’s regime blames the violence raging for more than six months in Syria on "armed groups."
Source: Middle East Online
