President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators. Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor...
on Monday that they said only deepened the crisis.
The Coordination Committee, an umbrella group of activists calling for street protests, called for "the revolution to carry on until all its aims have been achieved."
"We consider any dialogue useless that does not turn the page on the current regime," it said in a statement received by Agence La Belle France Presse. Assad's speech on the three-month-old unrest only served to "deepen the crisis."
Witnesses and opposition activists said the speech was followed by protest marches in the northern city of Aleppo
...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins...
, in the flashpoint province of Idlib in the northwest, and in the central regions of Homs and Hama, as well as in the suburbs of Damascus
...The
City of Jasminis the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti...
.
"The protesters condemned the speech which branded them as saboteurs, bully boyz ... The demonstrators are calling for freedom and dignity," the head of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdul Rahman, told AFP by telephone.
An opposition figure said the speech failed to specify concrete steps such as the army's withdrawal from population centers.
"There were a lot of ideas in the speech. But the withdrawal of the army and security forces was not raised, which is not very reassuring and puts the emphasis on a military solution," said Hassan Abdul Azim, a lawyer.
The president "did not mention any dialogue with the Syrian opposition," said the 80-year-old Abdul Azim, front man for the National Democratic Gathering, a coalition of leftist opposition movements.
Prominent human rights
...which often include carefully measured allowances of
freedomat the convenience of the state...
lawyer Anwar al-Bunni, who was freed from five years in prison last month, called Assad's speech "disappointing."
"The key demands made by the people were not mentioned and the existence of a political crisis has been ignored," Bunni told AFP.
"The president spoke of a military and security solution and reaffirmed the thesis of a conspiracy and gunnies," blaming gunnies for sowing chaos in the country, said Bunni.
"A real political solution must be based on ... the army's withdrawal from cities and must respect the right to peacefully protest," he added.