Hundreds took to the streets in rare southern Syria protest
February 12, 2022, 8:04 am

Hundreds took to the streets in rare southern Syria protest

Hundreds took to the streets of a southern Syrian city on Friday to demand better living conditions and democracy in a rare protest inside regime-held areas/Facebook page

The Arab News reported, citing the AFP, a war monitor said that hundreds took to the streets of a southern Syrian city on Friday to demand better living conditions and democracy in a rare protest inside regime-held areas.

According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 300 protesters, gathering for a fifth consecutive day in Sweida after authorities cut off 600,000 families from its subsidies program, staged their biggest rally yet.

“We want a civil, just, democratic state,” a young man told a cheering crowd of demonstrators in video footage broadcast by local media network Suwayda24.

The footage shows protesters raising the flag of the Druze, a religious minority whose heartland is Sweida.
In one video, an elderly man in traditional Druze costume lamented price hikes.

Renewed protests have swept Syria’s southwestern governorate of As Suwayda/Facebook page

He told the crowd: “We cannot live or get our rights, we don’t have any gas or diesel," adding that “We want to live in a homeland that guarantees our dignity and our rights.”

The rally went ahead despite a heavy deployment of security forces, who sealed off main roads.

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Earlier this month, the government excluded a large number of people from its subsidies program, in a country where 90 percent of the population is poor.

Those who were cut off lost access to lower-priced food and oil, a move that triggered rare protests and criticism from within government-held areas of Syria.

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Nour Radwan of Suwayda24 told AFP that most protesters took to the streets for the first time in their lives to demand better living conditions, while others demanded democracy.

Smaller protests over similar issues were held in Sweida in 2020.

Source: arabnews

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Upon arriving to participate in the summit of the European Political Community, which includes around forty heads of state in Budapest, he said, "I look forward to sitting with the elected U.S. president and seeing how we will collectively ensure we meet challenges, including the threats from Russia and North Korea." He also noted that the strengthening of ties between Russia and North Korea poses a threat to the United States as well, according to reports from Agence France-Presse.

Before Trump's victory, Rutte expressed confidence that a united Washington would remain part of the defensive alliance, even if Trump became the 47th president of the United States. In an interview with German public broadcaster ZDF last Monday night, he stated that both Republicans and Democrats understand that NATO serves not only the security of Europe but also that of America. He added that both candidates are aware that the security of the United States is closely tied to NATO.

On Wednesday, NATO congratulated Trump on his victory but did not address the Ukrainian issue.

It is noteworthy that the relationship between the elected U.S. president and the defense alliance was not the best during his first term in the White House. Trump criticized NATO member states multiple times and even hinted at withdrawing from the alliance unless they increased their financial contributions.

Additionally, the issue of the Russian-Ukrainian war is one of the matters that complicate relations between the two sides, especially since Trump has repeatedly stated that he can end this ongoing conflict, which began in 2022, quickly. He implied that he had a peace plan between Kyiv and Moscow, while his vice president, JD Vance, revealed aspects of that plan, which stipulated Ukraine's commitment not to join NATO, thereby sending reassuring signals to the Russians.

Furthermore, many NATO member states in Europe fear that Trump might halt military aid to Ukraine after he previously criticized the U.S. for pouring funds into supporting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.