Citing the account of an unnamed activist in the Syrian city of Hama, The Associated Press reports that protesters “hurled stones and set roadblocks of burning tires” to block government forces as they tried to regain control of the opposition stronghold on Thursday.
While restrictions on independent reporting inside Syria make it difficult to say for certain what is going on in Hama, video posted online in recent weeks appears to show that Hama, Syria’s fourth-largest city, has emerged as a center of the current uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
A generation ago, in 1982, before YouTube and ubiquitous camera phones, Mr. Assad’s father, Hafez, also used military force to crush an uprising in Hama, away from the world’s eyes. Before journalists were eventually allowed into Hama that year, after the bombardment was complete, at least 10,000 people are thought to have been killed.
That history makes every video clip showing tens of thousands of protesters packed into Hama’s central Assi Square somewhat remarkable. Among those clips is this video, said to have been filmed in the square two weeks ago, as a singer named Ibrahim Kashoush led the crowd in a rendition of his protest anthem, “Yalla Erhal Ya Bashar,” or, “It’s Time to Leave, Bashar.”
As the Web site Now Lebanon reported on Wednesday, activists said Mr. Kashoush was killed this week as Syrian forces tried to reassert control of the city. An extremely graphic video, said to show his body after his throat was cut, was posted on YouTube on Wednesday to support that claim. In the graphic clip, Mr. Kashoush is described as a martyr.
In this clip, apparently shot on another recent night in Hama, after his song, Mr. Kashoush can be heard leading the crowd in a chant of “the people want to topple the regime!”
While several clips posted on YouTube in recent days appear to offer glimpses of the security forces moving into Hama, a chilling clip filmed in another restive city, Homs, last week appears to illustrate that the security forces are well aware of the threat posed to them by activists with video cameras.
According to the blogger who writes the Anonymous Syria Twitter feed, this disturbing clip (which appears to includes upsetting audio of a wounded person), filmed last weekend in Homs, shows a member of the security forces raise his gun and then shoot and kill an activist with a video camera:
Remarkably, in another clip, said to have been filmed the same day in Homs, protesters appeared to play a game in which they baited the security forces, by poking a stick with a hat on it around a corner. The recording shows that, after they succeeded in getting an officer to fire shots at their scarecrow, the protesters dropped it and broke out laughing.
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