Demonstranterne kræver reformer, løsladelse af politiske fanger og ophævelse af den årelange nødretstilstand. Angry Arab rapporterer, at sammenholdet i den syriske regering er begyndt at slå revner: “The brutality of the regime is digging a bigger hole for itself“.
På al-bab.com skriver Brian Whitaker, at Syrien meget vel kan være på vej mod den kant, regimerne i Tunesien og Egypten (og til dels Libyen) faldt ud over:
The “fear barrier” is an important consideration for both protesters and Arab regimes. The regimes’ basic calculation is that at any given time only a relatively small number of people are likely to cause trouble – because the rest will be too afraid. So long as the fear barrier remains, they can be reasonably confident of dealing with the situation.What we saw in Tunisia and Egypt was that once the fear barrier was broken large-scale protests erupted in numerous places and the security forces were no longer able to cope. One sign of the fear barrier breaking is when people start openly destroying images of the president – and this is now happening in Syria.
Syria, at the moment, appears to be on the cusp. It’s probably fair to say that the fear barrier has been well and truly broken in Deraa, and it is cracking but not quite broken in other parts of the country.
Considering that it is little more than a week since the first serious stirrings against the regime occurred in Syria, events seem to be moving quite fast.
At styret er ved at miste det greb, som folks frygt har givet det over situationen, antydes blandt andet af scener som denne, hvor præsident Bashar Assads billede bliver angrebet:
Jeg håber det bedste for befolkningen i Syrien. De fortjener bedre end de sidste mange års diktatur og ufrihed, og de fortjener også at komme fredeligt ud på den anden side af det her.