Syria’s president, who has resisted calls for political freedoms and jailed critics of his regime, said in an interview published Monday that his nation is immune from the kind of unrest roiling Tunisia and Egypt.
In a rare interview, Bashar Assad was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as acknowledging that the toppling of Tunisia’s longtime ruler and the protesters that have left Hosni Mubarak’s government teetering in Egypt signaled a “new era” in the Middle East.
But he said Syria, which has gradually shed its socialist past in favor of the free market in recent years, was insulated from the upheaval because he understood his people’s needs and has united them in common cause against Israel.
Opposition movements in Syria are using social networking sites to mobilize for mass protests this weekend against the rule of President Bashar Al-Assad, taking inspiration from Egypt and Tunisia, in the latest sign of how dissent is spreading through the region.
Protest groups are organizing on social networking websites Facebook and Twitter, with several pages calling for “day of rage” protests in the capital Damascus, the northern city of Aleppo, and other regions on Friday and Saturday. It is unclear how many people will attend the protests but one of the groups–Syrian Revolution 2011–has gathered 8,958 members, although a significant amount are likely outside Syria.
Like Egypt and Tunisia, Syria suffers from unemployment, poverty and corruption, although the one-party political system and government-controlled media widely inherited by President Assad from his late father Hafez al-Assad in 1999 is seen by many as more rigid.
That has stoked speculation in Western capitals over whether Syria could also face unrest, with some diplomats and analysts considering it could serve as a barometer for the direction of the broader Middle East.
Meanwhile, if some of the photos at the Facebook group The Syrian Revolution 2011 express the sentiment of a significant number of Syrians, there are some rocky times ahead for the Dorktator.
