President Bashar al-Assad made a rare public pledge to look into granting Syrians greater freedom today as anger mounted following attacks by security forces on protesters that left at least 37 dead.
Syrian opposition figures said the promises did not meet the aspirations of the people and were similar to those repeated at regular Baath Party conferences, where committees would be formed to study reforms that do not see the light of day.
"The leadership is trying to absorb the rage of the streets. We want to see reform on the ground," said a protester in the southern city of Deraa.
A hospital official said at least 37 people had been killed in the southern city of Deraa on Wednesday when security forces opened fire on demonstrators inspired by uprisings across the Arab world that have shaken authoritarian leaders.
While an aide said Assad would study a possible end to 48 years of emergency rule, a human rights group said a leading pro-democracy activist, Mazen Darwish, had been arrested.
Announcing promises for reform in a manner that would have seemed almost unimaginable three months ago in Syria, Assad adviser Bouthaina Shaaban told a news conference the president had not himself ordered his forces to fire on protesters.
"I was a witness to the instructions of His Excellency that live ammunition should not be fired, even if the police, security forces or officers of the status were being killed."
The Baath Party, which has ruled Syria for half a century, would draft laws to provide for media freedoms and allow other political movements.
The party will also study drafting of a law for political parties "to be presented for public debate", would strive above all to raise living standards by increasing the salaries of public workers and look at "ending with great urgency the emergency law, along with issuing legislation that assures the security of the nation and its citizens".
Security forces opened fire on hundreds of youths on the outskirts of Deraa yesterday said, after nearly a week of protests in which seven civilians had already died.
The main hospital in Deraa, in southern Syria near the Jordanian border, had received the bodies of at least 37 protesters killed yesterday, a hospital official said. That brings the number killed to at least 44 in a week of protests.
Around 20,000 people marched today in the funerals for nine of those killed, chanting freedom slogans and denying official accounts that infiltrators and "armed gangs" were behind the killings and violence in Deraa.
"Traitors do not kill their own people," they chanted. "God, Syria, Freedom. The blood of martyrs is not spilt in vain!"
As Syrian soldiers armed with automatic rifles roamed the streets of the southern city, residents emptied shops of basic goods and said they feared Assad's government was intent on crushing the revolt by force.
Assad, a close ally of Iran, a key player in neighbouring Lebanon and supporter of militant groups opposed to Israel, had dismissed demands for reform in Syria, a country of 20 million.
Faced with violence, some Syrians recalled the 1982 massacre in Hama, when Mr Assad's father sent troops to the conservative religious city to crush the armed wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Human rights groups say at least 20,000 died.
"If the rest of Syria does not erupt on Friday, we will be facing annihilation," said one resident in Deraa, referring to Friday prayers, the only time citizens are allowed to gather en masse without government permission.
Mr Assad, who promised reforms when he became president in 2000, has ignored mounting demands to lift emergency law, allow freedom of speech and assembly, free political prisoners, make the judiciary independent, curb the control of the pervasive security apparatus and end the Baath Party's monopoly on power.
Mr Assad and the elite of the Alawite religious minority to which he belongs have presented themselves as a source of stability in a mainly Sunni country made up of many sects and ethnicities including Shi'ites and Christians. The Baath Party's founding ethos is secular and socialist.
The protesters in Deraa, a mainly Sunni city, have shouted slogans against the government's alliance with Shi'ite Iran, breaking a taboo on criticising Syrian foreign policy.
But the protesters in the predominantly tribal and religiously conservative society, have however also emphasised the unity of Syria.
The city is dominated by big families and earns significant income from remittances from Syrians working abroad. Both the Baath Party and the army have recruited heavily from Deraa.
The army has so far taken a secondary role in confronting protesters, mostly manning checkpoints. Secret police and special police units wearing black have been more visible in Deraa since the protests erupted last Friday.
Reuters
Reuters