Daraa: The spark that lit the Syrian flame

[tabatha]

(CNN) -- Syria is burning -- scorched for nearly a year by tenacious political resistance, a merciless security crackdown and cries for democracy.

The spark that lit the flame began about a year ago in the southern city of Daraa after the arrests of at least 15 children for painting anti-government graffiti on the walls of a school. The community's blunt outrage over the children's arrests and mistreatment, the government's humiliating and violent reactions to their worries, and the people's refusal to be cowed by security forces emboldened and helped spread the Syrian opposition.

Daraa soon became a rallying cry across the country for what began as a rural and provincial-driven uprising.
Reports of major army assault on Homs Getting supplies in, hurt out of Syria Who are the key players in Syria? Syrian crisis continues as UN fails

Syrians compare the dramatic dynamics in the rural city to the moment Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi torched himself in December 2010. Bouazizi's act and death spawned demonstrations that led to the grassroots ouster of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and fueled other protests across the Arab world.

Mohamed Masalmeh -- a Halifax, Nova Scotia-based Syrian activist whose family hails from Daraa -- said Daraa residents broke the people's "wall of fear" by defying what he and others call a police state and taking to the street.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/01/world/meast/syria-crisis-beginnings/index.html

Someone posted that the Syrian crackdown is justified because of "armed gangs", and Cameron would do the same if it happened in the UK. Here are some errors in the claim:

a) The UK did see not only peaceful protests but riots and burned buildings, and the police did put them down, but they did not attack unarmed protesters with tanks and heavy weapons. There is no civil war in the UK because of these violent riots where buildings were looted and set on fire.

b) Syria is a police state and an autocracy. If people do like like Cameron they can vote him out in the next election. They cannot do that in Syria. The only avenue they have is via peaceful protests, which they have done hundreds of times. Please note - there were no burned and looted buildings by Syrian protesters! Some of these peaceful protests (hey, a socialist paper even claims peaceful protests) were fired upon by regime forces.

c) It was only after the brutal crackdown of peaceful protests, that the opposition took up arms to defend themselves. If peaceful protests happened in the UK and were met by tanks and brutality, you could rest assured that citizens would arm themselves. Riots and burned and looted buildings DID happen in the UK. Where are the massacred-by-the-UK-government bodies in the thousands?