Syria’s president yesterday decreed a vote on a new constitution this month, which would effectively end nearly 50 years of single party rule, state media said, as troops reportedly stormed centers of dissent.
A day after flatly rejecting UN allegations of crimes against humanity over the crackdown, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad called the ballot for Feb. 26, in a move clearly aimed at placating growing global outrage over the bloodshed.
Under the new charter, freedom is “a sacred right” and “the people will govern the people” in a multi-party democratic system based on Islamic law, Syrian state television reported.
Photo: Reuters
Al-Assad, who in April last year lifted a state of emergency in force since 1963 when his Baath Party came to power, has made repeated promises of reforms that have failed to materialise since the uprising broke out on March 15.
His latest came as activists said troops stormed the central city of Hama and stepped up their assault on protest hubs nationwide, defiant in the face of mounting Arab and Western efforts to end the bloodshed.
Further to the south, an explosion struck an oil pipeline at daybreak in the flashpoint city of Homs, with activists saying government forces bombed it from the air and state media blaming “armed terrorist gangs.”
Syria’s government on Tuesday rejected UN charges of crimes against humanity, as monitors accused Assad’s forces of launching one of their heaviest assaults yet in a 12-day onslaught on Homs.
And after Russia and China twice vetoed a resolution calling on Assad to stop the deadly attacks on civilians, diplomats said they would now seek a condemnation of the violence at the UN General Assembly today.
Rights groups say more than 6,000 people have been killed since government forces launched a brutal crackdown on protests calling for democracy, which were launched 11 months ago to the day.
The pipeline blast in Homs sent up columns of black smoke over the central city, according to footage uploaded by opposition activists to video-sharing Web site YouTube.
Activist Hadi Abdullah said it was the third such attack on the same pipeline, although this was the first time that it was targeted with aircraft.
“Around 6am, two military planes bombed a pipeline located on the edge of Baba Amr neighbourhood,” said Abdullah, of the opposition General Commission of the Syrian Revolution, citing witnesses.
The reported use of warplanes could not be immediately verified.
The General Commission said in a statement that the pipeline runs through Baba Amr, which has born the brunt of a sustained assault on Homs by regime forces since Feb. 4.
Syria’s government has attributed several similar attacks to foreign-backed “terrorists,” but the opposition accuses it of destroying energy infrastructure to punish dissenters.
Assad’s forces appear to have refrained from using air power to crush armed rebels to avoid a no-fly zone being imposed over the country.
On the ground, however, troops launched an assault on the city of Hama, just north of Homs, where loud blasts could be heard in the Hamidiyeh and other neighborhoods, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based monitoring group, said ongoing clashes had killed 20 people, including nine civilians, in the town of Al-Atareb, northwestern Aleppo Province.
In Damascus, dozens of young Syrians gathered in front of the Russian embassy to thank Moscow and Beijing for their support, state television reported.
“We are here to thank Russia and China,” one woman said.
She called on Assad to deploy the army throughout Syria to rid the country of what she called gangs.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese