{"id":1730,"date":"2011-09-23T15:15:16","date_gmt":"2011-09-23T15:15:16","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-09-23T15:15:16","modified_gmt":"2011-09-23T15:15:16","slug":"six-months-later-syrian-activists-more-than-ever-determined-to-uprising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/six-months-later-syrian-activists-more-than-ever-determined-to-uprising\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Months Later: Syrian Activists More than Ever Determined to Uprising"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: rgb(128, 128, 128);\"><strong>Opposition figures form &lsquo;National Council&rsquo; as anti-regime protesters vow to hit streets again.<\/strong><\/span><strong><\/p>\n<p>ADO-World.org<br \/>\n<\/strong>15-September-2011<\/p>\n<p>DAMASCUS &#8211; As Syria marked six months since anti-regime protests erupted, opposition figures announced a list Thursday of people forming a &quot;National Council,&quot; as protesters vowed to hit the streets again, undaunted by a brutal crackdown in which more than 2,600 people have died.<\/p>\n<p>With 60 percent of the council&#8217;s 140 members living inside Syria, organisers released the names of only 72 of them for security reasons, council member Abdel Basset Sidah told journalists.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;After completing the first level of consultative meetings, groups of revolutionary youth, political movements and personalities, activists and technocrats decided to found the Syrian National Council,&quot; spokeswoman Basma Qadmani said.<\/p>\n<p>Looking to Friday, the Muslim day of weekly prayer when demonstrations tend to be the heaviest, people were called to turn out under the slogan &quot;we advance toward the fall of the regime.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Six months. More than ever determined to (continue) the March 15 uprising,&quot; activists wrote on Facebook page The Syrian Revolution 2011, one of the main engines of the revolt.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We have been massacred and we are more determined than ever; we have been thrown in prison and are more determined than ever,&quot; the page said. &quot;The revolution has burst forth and will not stop until the regime is overthrown.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;A new generation has been born in Syria during the six months of the revolution, a generation that refuses to be servile and to prostrate itself before images of the tyrant,&quot; the page added.<\/p>\n<p>The latest events follow another day of killings, with human rights activists saying security forces shot dead eight people, including a child, in a huge sweep on Wednesday against anti-regime protesters in northwestern Syria.<\/p>\n<p>Armed with heavy machine guns, the forces cut off roads leading to the Jabal al-Zawiya villages of Baliun, Marayan, Ihsem, Al-Rami and Ibleen, setting up checkpoints and arresting several people, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.<\/p>\n<p>Four people were killed and dozens more wounded in the operation, it said, and 100 people were arrested, including the family of Riad al-Assad, a soldier who defected.<\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere, a child was killed when security forces opened fire to disperse a demonstration in the village of Janudiya near the Turkish border, and three people were shot dead in the central provinces of Hama and Homs, the Observatory said.<\/p>\n<p>And a Red Crescent ambulance driver wounded recently as he was rescuing people in Homs died on Thursday, said the Local Coordination Committees (LCC), an opposition group with people on the ground.<\/p>\n<p>In other violence, state news agency SANA reported a bus driver was ambushed in the city of Hama by an &quot;armed terrorist group,&quot; while five soldiers and a guard shot dead by a similar group were buried in Aleppo and Homs.<\/p>\n<p>And there were shootings and arrests in the Damascus suburbs of Harasta, Zabadani and Madaya, the LCC said.<\/p>\n<p>Ibleen is the hometown of Lieutenant Colonel Hussein Harmush, the first military officer to publicly declare his desertion in early June in protest against the repression of the protest movement.<\/p>\n<p>Harmush managed to leave Syria and had been leading the &quot;Brigade of Free Officers,&quot; a group of dozens of officers who have deserted the regime.<\/p>\n<p>According to opposition sources in Damascus, he was recently captured in Turkey by Syrian intelligence agents and brought back to Syria.<\/p>\n<p>State television said it would broadcast the colonel&#8217;s &quot;confession&quot; at 1730 GMT on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>A week ago, three other military defectors were killed in Ibleen when security forces raided the home of the colonel&#8217;s brother, Mohammed, the Observatory said.<\/p>\n<p>Mohammed Harmush was abducted during the raid and &quot;his body was returned to his family,&quot; said the Observatory&#8217;s head, Rami Abdel Rahman.<\/p>\n<p>The United Nations estimates the Syrian government crackdown on protests has killed 2,600, mostly civilians, since March, while rights groups say thousands of people have been arrested in the crackdown.<\/p>\n<p>The Observatory&#8217;s Rami Abdel Rahman says more than 70,000 people have been arrested since the protests began, with more than 15,000 still in custody, with &quot;schools and sports grounds turned in to detention and torture centres.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>When it was formed on August 23, the National Council rejected foreign intervention or the rule of any one ethnic group and emphasised the national character of the &quot;revolution.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>The &quot;coming together of all groups is a must despite all dangers. This delegation will bring different groups together,&quot; a statement said at the time.<\/p>\n<p>Damascus has consistently maintained the protests are the work of &quot;armed gangs,&quot; rejecting reports by Western embassies and human rights groups that the great majority of those killed have been unarmed civilians.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.middle-east-online.com\/english\/?id=48061\"><em>Middle East Online<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Opposition figures form &lsquo;National Council&rsquo; as anti-regime protesters vow to hit streets again. ADO-World.org 15-September-2011 DAMASCUS &#8211; As Syria marked six months since anti-regime protests erupted, opposition figures announced a list Thursday of people forming a &quot;National Council,&quot; as protesters vowed to hit the streets again, undaunted by a brutal crackdown in which more than &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-syria"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2011\/09\/1730_syria-protest.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}