BEIRUT, Lebanon — Thousands of Syrians took to the streets on Friday, urging the Arab League to suspend the membership of the Syrian government, which they say has violated an initiative the league brokered to end the armed crackdown on the eight-month-old political uprising.
Page A7 SYRIANS PROTEST VIOLATIONS Thousands of Syrians took to the streets, urging the Arab League to suspend the membership of the Syrian government, which they say has violated an initiative the league brokered to end the armed crackdown on the political uprising.
The opposition maintains that the Assad regimes continues to label all opponents as terrorists to justify its armed crackdown and to prevent any nonviolent protest movement from jelling that could bring about the government's downfall.
HONG KONG — Chen Xitong, the mayor of Beijing during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, died on Sunday, two days before the 24th anniversary of the armed crackdown he had championed.
Mr. Ahmed is a Kurd, member of a restive ethnic group that has suffered grievously in armed crackdowns by Mr. Hussein, and who now, under the protection of American and British warplanes, and to the fury of Baghdad, rule three provinces of northern Iraq as an autonomous mini-state.
Iran has defied United Nations Security Council resolutions to halt its uranium enrichment and has strongly supported the Syrian government's sharp repression of an armed uprising, a crackdown that Mr. Ban has repeatedly condemned.
Other local officials aligned with Beijing have gone further, claiming that no one died during the crackdown, or that an armed response was warranted because student leaders were planning to kill government soldiers.
A1 Several Iranians set themselves on fire to protest a sweeping crackdown by France against an armed organization whose goal is the overthrow of the Iranian government.
Syria's uprising began with peaceful protests in March 2011 but escalated into an armed revolt when government forces launched a sweeping crackdown on dissent.
The Syrian news agency, which has portrayed the crackdown as the response to an armed uprising, said two soldiers were killed and nine were wounded in Homs and Dara'a.
