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Anastasia Balezdrova

While over 200 000 people were marching in their homeland and chanting slogans for the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad, about 30 Syrians in Athens held their own procession to the embassy of their country.

They were holding the national flag, posters with slogans against the regime and large pictures of Syrians tortured by the police and army reading, "Your silence is killing our children."

Hazem Dakel, who is a member of the European organization, supporting the revolution in Syria told GRReporter about the situation in his homeland and urged the European Union to declare openly against the regime, as it did in the case of Libya.

"We protest in support of the revolution of the people in Syria against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Our goal is to send away our ambassador here in Greece through protests and processions. We asked the two major Greek parties PASOK and New Democracy to recognize the National Council, which was formed by the opposition in Syria and Athens to break all connections with this tyrannical regime. At the same time, we demand from the government to give a status to the refugees from Syria because we learned that threats are being made from the Embassy to some activists, who are in the country."

"The European organization, supporting the revolution in Syria is a group of Syrian communities from 13 European countries. We support the people in Syria with funds and medicines, while at the same time, we are trying to give voice to the true situation of the people in Syria. Thus, we are fighting against the regime with them."

He said that the riots in Syria have not started for some particular reason. "We have been living in a state of emergency since 1963. The father of Bashar al-Assad was ruling for 30 years. Then, his son took over the power and has been ruling for 12 years now. In the Syrian constitution, there is an article stipulating that only the Baath Party can rule. Imprisonment or exile threatens the people who are against it. A slaughter was committed in 1982 by order of Hafez Assad in order to quell an anti-government rebellion in the city of Hama. Since then, the party of the movement of Muslim brothers has been banned.

After the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, 15 children wrote on the wall of the school slogans against the regime and its removal. The children were captured and tortured in a cruel manner. When their parents went to take them from the police station, they were told "forget about them". Only 13 children were returned after the beginning of the revolution, 2 were killed. The rest arrived home beaten to death, bruised and with their nails pulled out. This case gave great impetus to the people. The Syrians began protesting even more when they saw how the innocent children, who had just followed what was happening in Egypt and wrote on the wall that they wanted the removal of the regime, were treated.

Instead of condemning the acts of the police and beginning reforms, Assad preferred to quell the protests and chose this solution. He started talking about reforms only when the number of dead people exceeded 2,000. He promised that he would allow the formation of other parties to participate in elections, changes in the constitution by a new parliament, change of the president. So far, however, the dead are about 6,000. Now, it is not possible to accept this proposal for reforms. It is not fair to hold a dialogue with this man, after so many people have lost their lives for this."

Hazem fears that the support by Russia and China and their veto in the Security Council on the United Nations ban on flights in the airspace over Syria has given great impetus to the regime of Bashar al-Assad to continue the same actions. "Those two countries, Iran and the Hezbolah party in Lebanon are on his side and Hamas, the offices of which are located in Damascus, remain neutral at present. We heard only yesterday the news that Russia has prepared a proposal that it would submit to the Security Council in order to find a solution. So far, they have thought that there is a problem with those of different thinking, that there is no revolution in Syria.

Assad's regime forcibly compels students and civil servants to participate in demonstrations in support of the government, namely to prove that there is no revolt and no demonstrators, who want changes in the country. "

"This power, which has lasted over 40 years, made mass arrests. We have thousands of political prisoners, 42,000 people were killed during the massacre in Hama. Then, there were no journalists, no Internet, no social networks. Therefore, the rest of the world did not know what was happening in Syria. Now we have many ways to communicate. Facebook, Twitter, TV stations like Al Jazeera, BBC, France 24, etc. The regime claims that foreign broadcasters do not tell the truth and exaggerate things. They say that only Syrian television stations only show reality. And they say that the protesters are groups of terrorists, traitors and that they received money from Qatar to protest. This means that they still refuse to recognize that a revolution is being held in Syria and they continue to seek a dialogue. I do not know with whom Assad could hold a dialogue once he calls traitors the opposition members who are abroad and accuses them of having been bribed by the United States, the European Union, etc. Accordingly, the protesters inside Syria are Islamists and bandits. He says that only 1,100 people have been killed so far - members of the police and army, and he does not recognize the victims among citizens."