BEIRUT, Lebanon — The government in
Syria tried to placate protesters with declarations of reform Tuesday while
bluntly warning its people to end more than a month of demonstrations, a
now-familiar strategy in one of the Arab world’s most repressive
countries that has so far failed to blunt the most serious challenge to
its 40-year rule.
The mix of concession and coercion came hours after police, army and the
other forces of an authoritarian state were marshaled to crush one of
the biggest gatherings yet by protesters bent on staging an
Egyptian-style sit-in in Homs, Syria’s third-largest city. At least two
people died as security forces cleared the square, protesters said, but
there were conflicting accounts on casualties.
The warning by the Interior Ministry — forbidding protests “under any
banner whatsoever” — suggested that the government was prepared to
escalate a crackdown, even as the promised repeal of emergency law, in
place since 1963, went far in meeting at least some of the demands of
protests that have mirrored uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world and
reverberated across a region where Syria’s influence outstretches its
relative power. The repeal must still be formally approved by Parliament
or the president, but that amounts to a formality.