“Long live Syria and down with Bashar al-Assad”. This is one of the many slogans hostile to the authoritarian regime chanted during the latest demonstrations in one of the southern provinces of Syria. In recent days, hundreds of Syrians have demonstrated in southern Syria against the deterioration of living conditions and the hyperinflation that the country is currently experiencing. In Soueida, in southern Syria under the control of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, anger is brewing.
As we can read in an article of the BBC, this is the first time that protesters have chanted such anti-Assad slogans. A direct affront to the head of state. The protests have taken place since the government lifted fuel subsidies last week, dealing yet another blow to a population already strained by 12 years of war.
cry of despair
“The Syrian people are suffocating,” an activist from Soueida told AFP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, adding that hundreds of demonstrators had gathered without the security forces repressing them. “My only hope is that this movement spreads […] and make our voice heard,” he added. Another protester demanded that “everyone take to the streets across Syria”, reports the BBC. “We are here against poverty and humiliation. […] Everyone should be out to protest. »
Recurring protests have taken place there and in December a protester and a policeman were killed in the province when security forces suppressed a protest. “A member of the security forces said to me: ‘I wish I could join you […]I cannot provide for my family”,” said the witness from Soueida.
“A mafia”
On Saturday, dozens of people also demonstrated in the neighboring province of Deraa, some displaying the opposition flag and demanding the departure of Assad, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), an NGO based in the UK and has an extensive network of sources in Syria. Other demonstrations also took place on Sunday evening, another activist told AFP, on condition of anonymity.
The lifting of fuel subsidies comes as more than 90% of the population lives below the poverty line, according to the UN. Dissatisfaction with the high cost of living briefly spread to the suburbs of Damascus, where residents have demonstrated in recent days against chronic power cuts, according to a witness.
The rise in fuel prices comes after years of inflation, unemployment and “general exhaustion of the population”, according to Jihad Yazigi, director of the online economic site The Syria Report. “The regime, which operates almost like a mafia, is unable to offer long-term solutions,” he told AFP. If it is difficult to predict how far the movement will extend, “the key will be to look at what is happening in the loyalist areas and in Damascus”, according to him.