Amman - Hundreds of Syrians have been charged with “degrading the prestige of the state”, a Syrian rights group said, in President Bashar al-Assad's drive to crush pro-democracy protests against his 11-year autocratic rule.
The charge, which carries a three-year prison sentence, was lodged on Tuesday against hundreds of people detained this week ahead of the Muslim day of prayer on Friday, when the largest demonstrations calling for Assad's overthrow are typically seen.
“Mass arrests are continuing across Syria in another violation of human rights and international conventions,” said Rami Abdelrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The campaign intensified after a tank-backed army unit, led by Assad's brother Maher, last week shelled and machinegunned into submission the old quarter of Deraa, cradle of the six-week-old uprising.
Wissam Tarif, executive director of the Insan human rights group, said 2 843 detainees had been verified by family members and the actual number could be as high as 8,000. More than 800 of them had been taken from Deraa.
Those detained across the country include activists, community leaders, people seen taking videos or pictures on mobile phones and people suspected of uploading videos on the Internet, Tarif said. But security forces were also randomly detaining people in Deraa and Douma, Tarif said.
The demonstrations began with demands for political freedom and an end to corruption, but after a heavy security crackdown, protesters now want Assad to leave.
Assad belongs to the minority Alawite Shi'a sect whose family has ruled majority Sunni Muslim Syria for 41 years.
Security forces have killed at least 560 civilians in attacks on demonstrators since the protests erupted in Deraa on March 18, human rights groups say.
US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said on Tuesday the use of tanks, arbitrary arrests and power cuts in Deraa was “...quite barbaric and amounts to the collective punishment of innocent civilians”.
Amnesty International said protesters told the rights group they had been beaten with sticks and cables and were subjected to harsh conditions, including a lack of food.
“The use of unwarranted lethal force, arbitrary detention and torture appear to be the desperate actions of a government that is intolerant of dissent and must be halted immediately,” Amnesty official Philip Luther said.
Residents of Damascus suburbs, where many were arrested, said roadblocks and arrests had intensified this week in areas around the capital. One resident said she saw security forces in plain clothes putting up sandbags and a machinegun on a road near the town of Kfar Batna on Tuesday.
A government official from a neighbouring Arab world state said the security campaign seemed intended to prevent protests after Friday prayers, the only time Syrians are allowed to gather en masse though security forces prevented thousands from praying in mosques last Friday.
At least six people were arrested on Tuesday after security forces took control of the coastal city of Banias, another urban centre where demonstrators are challenging Assad.
“They moved into the main market area. The army has sealed the northern entrance and security forces (sealed) the south,” protest leader Anas al-Shughri told Reuters on Tuesday.
“They armed Alawite villages in the hills overlooking Banias and we are now facing militias from the east,” he said.
But around 1 000 protesters marched in the Sunni district of Banias, just south of the main market, carrying loaves of bread to symbolise solidarity with the people of Deraa, a rights campaigner who provided photos of the demonstration, said.
Deraa resident Abu Muhammad said: “They are still dragging anyone who is less than 40 years of age to the Deraa stadium where they have held hundreds, including several women, in the last week without shelter.”
About 1 000 students demonstrated in the University of Aleppo on Tuesday and thousands marched in the eastern, mostly Kurdish, city of Qamishli, carrying candles and chanting freedom slogans.
International condemnation of the violent repression has intensified since the Deraa assault, which revived memories of the 1982 repression of an armed Islamist uprising in the city of Hama by Assad's father, late President Hafez al-Assad.
Germany and Britain said they were seeking the imposition of European Union sanctions against Syrian leaders - after a US announcement of sanctions last week - and France said Assad should be among the targets of sanctions.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told A-TV, a Turkish news channel, that Assad had failed to act on his advice to carry out democratic reforms and release political prisoners.
In a sign that the violence has damaged economic activity, the chairman of the Union of Arab Banks told Reuters on Tuesday that up to eight percent of Syrian pound deposits in Syria had been converted to dollars since the unrest began. - Reuters