Syrians turn out for unprecedented demonstration

LONDON, United Kingdom — An estimated 1,500 people took to the streets of Damascus on Thursday, after a shopkeeper's son was allegedly beaten by police.

Such a spontaneous demonstration is unprecedented in Syria. The authorities regularly allow gatherings in support of the president, or causes that the government approves of, like Palestine and Iraq. But an anti-authority protest like Thursday morning's scenes in downtown Damascus has not been seen for a generation.

As revolutionary protests sweep the region, analysts are trying to predict which domino will be next to fall. The presidents of Tunisia and Egypt have both been forced from office in the past six weeks after days of angry demonstrations. There have been riots in Libya and Algeria, while scores of people have been killed and injured in Bahrain. So far, Syria has remained protest-free.

That changed on Thursday morning.

In videos of the event posted on the internet, the protesters can be heard chanting “the Syrian people will not be humiliated," although it becomes apparent from the footage that they were not going as far as calling for political change.

The demonstrators, who had come on to the streets of the Hariqa area in the Old City of Damascus, stood their ground for three hours. In a bizarre scene, the interior minister drove into the gathering and addressed the crowd.

"This is a demonstration," he said, almost stunned as he stood among the protesters. He met the alleged victim of the attack and promised an investigation.

"It was a massive PR boost," said Serge Hamsterian, a Syrian student. "The minister went right into the middle of the audience. The symbolism of a government standing with the people couldn't have been better portrayed."

Syrian political analyst Rime Allaf, an associate fellow at think-tank Chatham House, said the political climate in Syria appeared to be changing following the events elsewhere in the region.

"I see it as an attempt to immediately turn the mood around and avoid things getting uglier — they are worried about things getting out of hand, and this wasn't the time to show force," she said.

"Had this happened before Tunisia, I doubt the minister would have bothered to interfere, leaving the usual people to disperse the people in a much less friendly manner," Allaf said.

The minister's almost surreal intervention also demonstrates the power of the workers in the city’s commercial center. It was the Damascus business elite that was apparently able to get thousands of people on to the street within minutes.

In 2007 there were plans to turn a small backstreet on the edge of the congested Old City into a highway. Hundreds of shops would have been bulldozed on the ancient Malik Faisal Road if the proposal came to fruition.

The plan was torn up a year later, in part because of lobbying efforts by the Old City's businessmen.

"The power [of these entrepreneurs] is immense," Allaf said. "And it's [because of] their acquiescence that the regime was initially able to consolidate its power and maintain it. They can be power brokers in good and bad times, and they know that they matter."

It is tempting to see yesterday's events as a Syrian uprising. But these protesters were very clear not to call for the overthrow of their government.

They peppered their chants with cries of "we are your soldiers, oh Bashar [Al-Assad, Syria's president]." The line that has been heard from Tunisia to Bahrain, "the people want the fall of the regime," was absent in Damascus.

Calls for an Egypt-style uprising in Syria fell flat earlier this month.

Organizers had been planning a demonstration outside Parliament. But not a single person turned up to the event that had been arranged on Facebook. It was suspected that the protest had been planned by Syrians outside the country, with no real understanding of what those on the inside want.

Hamsterian said that Syrian protesters want reform, rather than regime change.

"People know that the government is watching exactly what they are [on television from Egypt and now Bahrain], and they're hearing [that the Syrian people want] immediate and substantial changes," he said. "They're relying on latent power to cause the liberation they want. If the government stays on this path to reform, I see no real uprising materializing."