DAMASCUS: Syria’s opposition called protests Thursday to mark the 30th anniversary of the Hama massacre, as Arab and Western countries moved closer to agreement on action to halt a regime crackdown on dissent.
Demonstrations were to be held in various cities in memory of the estimated 10,000 to 40,000 people who perished in February 1982 when then president Hafez Al-Assad, father of the current president Bashar, launched a fierce 27-day assault on the central town to crush an Islamist revolt.
Commemoration events were also scheduled in France, Britain, the United Stats, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and a number of other countries.
The anniversary is taking place as the regime in Damascus battles to crush an unprecedented revolt that has left more than 6,000 people dead since mid-March, according to estimates of human rights groups.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that a general strike was also being observed on Thursday in Hama, one of the focal points of the current repression.
International efforts to stop the bloodshed have failed, with Russia, a key all of Syria, firmly opposed to an Arab- and Western-backed UN Security Council resolution condemning the violence.
But diplomats hinted in New York on Wednesday that a compromise to overcome Russia’s objections was possible.
"We have made some progress today," Britain’s UN ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told reporters after a three-hour meeting of council members.
Russia’s envoy Vitaly Churkin for his part said there was a much better understanding of what needed to be done to reach a consensus.
"I think it was a pretty good session," he said.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Russia had a "less negative" attitude towards the resolution and a vote could take place "perhaps" next week.
"For the first time, the attitude of Russia and the BRICS (China, India and South Africa on the Security Council) is less negative," Juppe told MPs.
The draft resolution, introduced by Morocco, calls for the formation of a unity government leading to "transparent and free elections."
It stresses that there will be no foreign military intervention in Syria as there was in Libya, which helped to topple Moammer Qaddafi.
A new draft was expected to be prepared following Wednesday’s talks and submitted to Council members later Thursday for new discussions, diplomats said.
The diplomatic wrangling is taking place amid warnings that Syria was slowly heading to civil war as the largely peaceful revolt that began in March increasingly takes on a sectarian tone and moves closer to the capital Damascus.
The number of dead has mounted in recent weeks with the central cities of Homs and Hama suffering heavy losses.
Activists said the 1982 massacre of Hama, which went largely unnoticed by the international community when it took place, had now come back to haunt the Assad clan.
"On this 30th anniversary, another massacre is taking place today but on a larger scale and led by the son of Hafez Al-Assad," the Local Coordination Committees, an umbrella opposition group said.
"We pledge to commemorate this anniversary with the hope that we will be victorious," it added. "We will resist until we gain our freedom."
The group called for activists to release red balloons in memory of those who died in what many describe as the worst atrocity in Syria’s modern history.
It urged demonstrators to burn portraits of the late leader Hafez Al-Assad and his younger brother Rifaat, who supervised the assault and aerial bombing on Hama. Rifaat Al-Assad now lives in exile in London.
The opposition also called for "the trial of the regimes of Hafez and Bashar Al-Assad for massacres against humanity committed against the Syrian people."
"The silence of the Arab and international community in the face of the crimes committed by Hafez Al-Assad and his cronies 30 years ago is largely responsible for the continuation of daily crimes and atrocities committed by Bashar," it said in a statement.
