Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

The world has changed! | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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There is a conspiracy, there are spies and saboteurs opening fire in Syrian cities and there are people trying to establish a Salafist Islamic emirate in Daraa. All the pictures and video clips being shown on social networking sites of demonstrators being suppressed and shot and victimized is nothing more than a pack of lies. If you believe that what you are seeing is nothing more than popular protests demanding the ousting of a regime, you are dead wrong!

If you believe that those who have taken to the streets in Damascus are peaceful protestors who have come out to demonstrate against the government, as the “seditious and misguided” media is trying to portray, then you are wrong…these are just simple people who have come out to celebrate the rainfall!

If you believe that the column of tanks that entered Daraa was sent to suppress or repress its residents, and that this only signalled the overture to even bloodier deeds; please think again. These tanks only entered the city at the request of the residents of Daraa, for their own protection!

More than that, the policy of banning media coverage and preventing journalists from reaching Daraa and other cities experiencing unrest in Syria will continue! Indeed, such journalists might even be arrested or expelled, and we will not publish the images of these spies and saboteurs who have been arrested.

All we have to do in order to ensure that we are not taking part in the “conspiracy” and the “foreign plot” hatched against Syria is to believe these stories that are being repeated in the Syrian media, and by the politicians who are affiliated to the regime. We have not seen any signs of an inclination to correct or dilute such stories despite the fact that more than six weeks have passed since the outbreak of the protests.

Reason says: these claims of a “conspiracy” and “groups of saboteurs” do not make any sense. What has been reported to us does not satisfy any logic. In fact, such reports can be described as frenzied ravings, especially when they are connected with conspiracy theories alleging that Lebanese politicians could be pulling the strings!

Even if we set logic and reason aside, how can we explain the images and footage of protestors being ruthlessly fired upon? Nevertheless, the Syrian regime continues to describe the deluge of images, footage, and eye-witness accounts pouring in from the streets of Syria as being part of a “foreign conspiracy.” Weeks have passed since the protests first erupted, however the Syrian regime continue to use the same out-dated language to address its people and the outside world.

Everyone is observing the situation today, not just the people of Syria. The images and footage we are viewing on social networking sites represent the only weapon left for the protesters. One can only imagine the danger that those who took such pictures put themselves in to record the reality on the ground, posting entire collections of images on the internet for all to see, although this could take a day or two [since the pictures were taken] due to the curfews and shutting down of communication networks.

The Syrian regime will no longer be able to utilize the same repressive methods or propagandistic rhetoric that it has adopted for decades. Saying that tanks have entered Daraa to carry out operations only means that the city’s residents would be subject to cruel repressive and suppressive measures, which is indeed what happened.

Some believe that massacres, like the ones perpetrated in the city of Hama in the early eighties, are looming on the horizon. But the world that we are living in today is not the world of the 1980s, particularly following the communication revolution…the world has changed!