Dozens of people stormed and looted the provincial governor’s office in Sweida, southern Syria, on Sunday to protest against the country’s president Bashar al Assad, accused of being responsible for rising prices and generally worsening economic conditions in Syria. There were violent clashes with the police, who shot at some demonstrators to quell the protest: two people were killed, a demonstrator and a policeman, and seven others were injured.
Sweida’s protest is notable not only for its violence: the city is in fact located in the Syrian territories still controlled by the state, and therefore by the Assad government, where anti-government protests are very rare and very little tolerated: 11 years after the he beginning of the war, in fact, Syria is essentially divided into many portions of territory controlled by different groups and in varying degrees of hostility between them.
Furthermore, Sweida is a city where the majority of Druze live, that is, the followers of a religious minority of Shiite Muslim derivation, who have always managed to keep away from the conflict since the beginning of the war in Syria in 2011: the Druze religious leaders, for For example, they have always refused to allow their followers to join the army.
The protest began Sunday morning with the gathering of a few hundred demonstrators in the city centre, around the government building of the province of which Sweida is the capital: the demonstrators sang many chants calling for the overthrow of Assad and his government, to which blame the worsening of their living conditions. They then forcibly entered the building and looted and set it on fire, before setting a fire in front of the entrance with some of the things they had taken inside: among other things, videos were circulated of protesters trampling and burning paintings depicting Assad .
The Syrian Interior Minister said that the demonstrators also tried to attack the city’s police stations: in one of the clashes that followed these attempts, a policeman is said to have died. The slain protester died under police gunfire as he entered the provincial government building with others, he told the agency. AFP extension Rami Abdel, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights association (SOHR, “Syrian observatory for human rights”).
If you missed unprecedented Suwayda (Syria) protests today against living conditions:– Governorate Building burned down– Assad’s portraits turned down– Protesters shot by Assad’s forces– 2 killed & several wounded.Thread👇 https://t.co/eHr9M8ld0X pic.twitter.com/Ma21A1X5Ft
— QalaatM (@QalaatM) December 4, 2022
In general, the repression by the forces of order was particularly violent, and the local television station Suwayda 24 published video which appear to show police shooting towards fleeing demonstrators.
