DAMASCUS, (Reuters) – President Bashar al-Assad defied calls today to lift a decades-old emergency law and said Syria was the target of a foreign conspiracy to stir up protests in which more than 60 people have been killed.
Angry that their demands were not met, hundreds of protesters chanting “Freedom” marched in the port city of Latakia, where residents said security forces had fired in the air.
Speaking in public for the first time since the start of the unprecedented demonstrations, inspired by uprisings across the Arab world, Assad said he supported reform but offered no new commitment to change Syria’s rigid, one-party political system.
“Implementing reforms is not a fad. When it is just a reflection of a wave that the region is living, it is destructive,” said Assad, making clear he would not concede to pressure from mass protests which toppled other Arab leaders.
“Syria today is being subjected to a big conspiracy, whose threads extend from countries near and far,” Assad said, smiling and looking assured, without naming any countries.
Ending emergency law, the main tool for suppressing dissent since it was imposed after the 1963 coup that elevated Assad’s Baath Party to power, has been a central demand of protesters.
They also want political prisoners freed, and to know the fate of tens of thousands who disappeared in the 1980s.
The protests have presented the gravest challenge to Assad’s 11-year rule in Syria, which has an anti-Israel alliance with Shi’ite Iran and supports militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas.
He also accused foreign media, who operate under restriction in Syria, of misrepresenting the protests.
The government has expelled three Reuters journalists in recent days — its senior foreign correspondent in Damascus and a two-man television crew who were detained for two days before being deported to their home base in neighbouring Lebanon.
