President Assad sacked the governor of Hama, in northern Syria, yesterday after more than 400,000 protesters flooded the city’s central square on Friday calling for the overthrow of the Assad family’s 41-year dictatorship, the largest ever protest against the regime.
“Here we are, the germs of Syria,” said a local activist, referring to President Assad’s June 20 speech in which he characterised the uprising against his rule as like the spread of “germs.” “But we are big germs in huge numbers,” said the activist.
The sacking of Ahmed Abdul-Aziz, a former professor of International Law at Damascus University, was published on SANA, the state-run news agency, which gave no reason for his dismissal.
The governor was appointed in late February to a position often held in Syria for decades.
Following the killing of at least 67 protestors in a single day in Hama one month ago, Assad pledged an investigation, a sign of the regime’s nervousness over attacks on a city still deeply scarred by the killing in 1982 of between 20,000 and 30,000 civilians, ordered by Assad’s father, Hafez, in response to an armed uprising by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.
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But the sacking of the governor appears to have come in direct response to Friday’s massive protest, which had a carnival-like atmosphere centred around Assi Square, renamed by the mainly young protestors Freedom Square.
Surprisingly, the sacking was met with some sorrow among protesters.
“He didn’t believe in killing people and used to go door to door to meet residents,” said a second activist in Hama. “We think he was sacked because the protests are getting larger and larger and now we are afraid they will send a security guy to be governor.”
With security forces withdrawn to the edge of the city for the past fortnight, the protest passed off peacefully, with several videos of the huge crowd showing no sign of weapons nor the bearded Islamist militants the regime claims to be battling.
Instead, protestors carried a giant, homemade Syrian flag that stretched for over a kilometre from one end of the square to the other and on down the main road. The central clock tower was draped in a purple flag reading, “Long live free Syria. Down with Bashar al-Assad.”
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“The street is its own representative,” said the first activist, referring to the state- sanctioned opposition meeting in Damascus earlier in the week, which a participant said was heavily monitored by secret police.
“There can be no dialogue or reform unless the constitution is changed to remove the Baath Party’s right to rule. There is no space for any partial solution.”