Solidarity across Syria: Idlib activists show support for southern regions

Activists in northwestern Syria stood in solidarity on Wednesday evening with residents of two southern governorates, after a recent escalation of protests amid the country’s deteriorating socio-economic crisis.

The vigil in the opposition-held city of Idlib addressed "all the Syrian people throughout Syrian territory, in all their religious sects."

وقفة تضامنية تأكد على مطالب الشعب وحقه في تقرير مصيره وخلاصه من عصابة الاسد "المكان ساحة الحرية " #إدلب#Rise_up_to_restore_her_first_biography#انتفضوا_لنعيد_سيرتها_الأولى pic.twitter.com/77f8kceAVL

— علي سوارقسطيني 3 (@B9kuzoQim2gL3Sz) December 28, 2022

"Injustice in Syria has reached a great extent, under the rule of the [President Bashar] Assad regime and those who support it internationally," the attendees said in a statement.

"And [because of] our belief in our great Syria and its national revolution, and its continuation until it achieves its goals by overthrowing the Assad regime, and building a state of citizenship that guarantees freedom, dignity, coexistence and justice for all the Syrian people, we, the people of Syria, declare our support and solidarity with the legitimate movement of our people in Suweida and Daraa, who are calling for freedom and political change."

Anti-regime protests this week spread across the southern province of Daraa, the birthplace of the 2011 Syrian revolution. Protesters called for the overthrow of the regime and the release of detainees from government prisons, as well as the expulsion of regime-allied Iranian militias from the province.

In the neighbouring Suweida province, a number of protesters were shot dead and others were injured during anti-government protests earlier this month.

Druze-majority Suweida has largely guarded itself from the devastating effects of the war, but it has seen periodic unrest, including anti-corruption protests, in recent years.

"The Syrian regime sought to turn the [protest] movement into a civil war to tear the Syrian people apart, but this stance confirms that the Syrian people are one, and that this security regime and the captagon regime must go," activist Radwan al-Atrash told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, The New Arab’s sister site.

Since the start of the conflict in 2011, Syria has become a major hub for the production and export of the amphetamine stimulant captagon, primarily at the hands of the regime.