Demonstration som "supportar" Al Assad? (Jönköping)

As Saudi Arabian arms and money bolster the opposition, the 80,000 Christians who’ve been “cleansed” from their homes in Hamidiya and Bustan al-Diwan in Homs Province in March by the Free Syrian Army have gradually given up the prospect of ever returning home.

The rebels’ conduct has prompted at least some Sunnis who had supported the rebels and once-wavering Syrians to pledge renewed loyalty to Assad. Many who once regarded the regime as a kleptocracy now view it as the best guarantor of Syria’s endangered pluralism.

A Sunni shopkeeper in the impoverished suburb of Set Zaynab, which was partly destroyed in the clashes last week, no longer supports the rebellion. “I wanted Assad to go because he is corrupt,” he said. “But what happened here, what they did, it scared me. It made me angry. I cannot support the murder of my neighbors in the name of change. You cannot bring democracy by killing innocent people or by burning the shrines of Shiites. Syrians don’t do that. This is the work of the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia,” he added, referring to the ultra conservative Sunni sect.

Repeated attempts by Free Syrian Army fighters to destroy a shrine to Sayyida Zeinab, the granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad revered by Shiites, have not yet caused the area’s Sunni minority to flee — many Shiites here have refused to blame their Sunni neighbors for the rebels’ crimes.

Christians desperate to flee the besieged Syrian city of Homs are caught in the crossfire; they are not even safe in their own homes as fighters invade and plunder their properties.

Homs is the third largest city in Syria; its population is around 17-18% Christian

The rebels, who are increasingly influenced by Sunni Islamists, go from house to house, taking whatever they want – even the doors – to resource their campaign against government troops. To avoid being captured, the intruders make their escape by knocking holes through the walls between the properties.

Of the more than 80,000 Christians who lived in Homs prior to the uprising, approximately 400 remain today.

A churchgoing Syrian told me that he used to see himself primarily as “Syrian” and that religious identity, in political terms, was an idea that never occurred to him — until an opposition gang attacked his family earlier this year in Homs. “It’s a label they pinned on us,” he said. “If their revolution is for everyone, as they keep insisting it is, why are Christians being targeted? It is because what they are waging is not a struggle for freedom, and it’s certainly not for everyone.”

As Saudi Arabian arms and money bolster the opposition, the 80,000 Christians who’ve been “cleansed” from their homes in Hamidiya and Bustan al-Diwan in Homs Province in March by the Free Syrian Army have gradually given up the prospect of ever returning home.

Should the armed opposition manage to oust Assad, it would try to impose a Sunni regime, which would immediately lead to the persecution of Alawites, who comprise a significant part of the population,” he said adding that everyone who does not share the opposition’s religious views would face repression.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2...ula-hoaxsters/

The massacre at Houla was reported to be just such a moment: Syria’s security forces stand accused of killing 32 children under ten years of age, and more than 60 adults, by bombing the rebel-held village of Houla. Photos of the massacre soon appeared on Twitter: and on YouTube, videos of the slaughter, uploaded by anonymous “activists,” appeared on cue. There was just one problem with this “evidence” of a massacre committed by the Syrian government – much of it was completely made up.

Take the photo the BBC used to illustrate the atrocity: it showed a young boy jumping over piles of corpses neatly laid out in preparation for burial. Very dramatic, and very disturbing – except it wasn’t a photo of anything that happened in Houla. Instead, it was a photo taken by Marco Di Lauro in Iraq, in 2003, and appropriated from his web site. The stolen photo was accompanied by a caption that read:

“Photo from Activist. This image – which cannot be independently verified – is believed to show bodies of children in Houla awaiting funeral.”

“Somebody is using illegally one of my images for anti [S]yrian propaganda on the BBC web site front page,” Di Lauro says, “I almost fell off my chair when I saw it.” When confronted by Di Franco, BBC editors took it down, and, by way of explanation, pointed to the caption as somehow exonerating.

It isn’t just the photos purporting to show the massacre, it’s the “reporting” that is also thrown into doubt: after all, these accounts are all coming from the very same “activists” who have no compunctions about supplying fake photos to the very same media who report their every word as gospel. It is claimed the Syrian army bombarded Houla, and yet the photos shows people with their throats cut, and shot in the head at very close range: this seeming contradiction required a revision of the “activist”-supplied narrative, which was duly changed to depict government-controlled “militias” coming into the village after the bombardment. Yet even this hasty revisionist version didn’t cover all the bases: for example, one of the victims was a candidate in Syria’s recent elections who had refused to stand down at the demand of opposition “activists.” He, too, was brutally murdered, and the question is – by whom?

The BBC’s falling for – or enabling – “activist” fakery is hardly the only such incident: there was the case of “Syria Danny,” whose on-camera antics were exposed in flagrante delicto as he staged a Syrian army “attack” for the benefit of CNN. And don’t forget the fake “blogger” who purported to be “Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari,” a 35-year-old lesbian living in Damascus, supposedly kidnapped by the Syrian regime and abused. “Amina” turned out to be a middle-aged married American schmuck and “Middle Eastern activist,” one Tom MacMaster, studying for a degree at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland. The cause of “Amina” was taken up by those ubiquitous Syrian “activists” and trumpeted by their online propaganda apparatus – which has sprung up with weed-like rapidity. That’s what a healthy infusion of money from Western governments will buy you.

Speaking of running wild with enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars, the rebels – already receiving cash, arms, and other emoluments from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the Gulf sheikdoms – have already handed a $12 billion bill for “post-Assad development” to the Western “Friends Group,” led by Germany.

Jaramana neighborhood (north of Damascus) not far from the place where he was kidnapped, on October 19, by unidentified armed group (see Fides 24/10/2012). This was confirmed to Fides by Fr. Haddad’s greek-orthodox confrere, who asked for anonymity. “His body was horribly tortured and his eyes gouged out,” he told Fides. “It is a purely terrorist act. Fr. Haddad is a martyr of our church. ”

With regards to the responsibilities of the terrible act there is an ongoing rebound of responsibilities between the opposition forces and government authorities, that accuse the armed gangs of armed rebellion in the army. According to Fides sources, the kidnappers had asked the priest’s family and his church a ransom of 50 million Syrian pounds (over 550 thousand euro). It was, however, impossible to find the money and meet this exorbitant demand. A source of Fides condemns “the terrible practice, present for months in this dirty war, of kidnapping and then killing innocent civilians.”

Beirut-Aleppo bound bus was stopped on Monday by armed masked men who stormed the bus and after letting women and children free kidnapped 11 people, seven of whom Armenians, sources in Aleppo reported.

The bus, part of the regular service operated by “Zeitoun Tours” left Beirut for Aleppo at 7:30 a.m. Just before 6 p.m. in Sarakeb, Syria, half hour away from Aleppo, the masked men stormed the bus kidnapping the 11. Aside from the seven Armenians, two are Arab Christians and another two Kurds, who were moved to a van that drove away from the site of the incident.


The Armenian Foreign Ministry released the name of five of the kidnapped. The Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tigran Balayan released the following names: Garo Bambelian, Arsen Aroian, Levon Zeitunian, as well as Bashar and George Rabat.

Aleppo Prelacy spokesperson Jirayr Reyisian stated that a sixth passenger named Koko, whose last name has not been confirmed yet, is also among the victims of this attack.

Reyisian denied reports that individuals have been contacted about a possible ransom.

This incident occurred on the same day as the St. Kevork Armenian Church located in the Nor Kyugh neighborhood of Aleppo was set ablaze.

“The inside of the church, including offices and artifacts have been badly burned,” said spokesman of the Syrian Prelacy Reyisian, who spoke by telephone with the Beirut-based Aztag newspaper.