Under Extreme Pressure, Assad's Opponents Retain Defiance and Sense of Humor

While the ongoing bombardment of the Syrian city of Homs continues — as a report from a CNN crew in the city showed in vivid detail — there is new evidence that opposition to the Assad family dynasty in rebel-held enclaves in the north of the country also remains strong.

Jonathan Rugman, a correspondent for Britain’s Channel 4 News, filed a video report on Thursday from the town of Saraqib, not far from the Turkish border in Idlib Province, that showed the Free Syrian Army patrolling the city.

After sneaking into Saraqib, Mr. Rugman reported, “The town is surrounded by dozens of tanks and snipers loyal to President Assad’s regime — many residents live in fear of being shot at by government snipers nearby.” He added that “spirits remain high,” even though “the ramshackle militia’s hold over the town is precarious.”

There were also signs in the Syrian capital, Damascus, that there is defiance toward President Bashar al-Assad there too. Activists uploaded video that appeared to show opposition activists rallying at a funeral in the residential neighborhood of Mezze on Thursday.

Video posted online by activists, said to show a funeral in Damascus on Thursday.

Hamza Shargabi, an activist and doctor who grew up in Mezze, confirmed to The Lede on Thursday that he recognized the neighborhood from another clip, apparently showing the same rally. Dr. Shargabi posted a link to the second clip on his @ichamza Twitter feed, with the comment: “my neighborhood in Damascus! That’s where I grew up … so proud of them!”

In a clip said to have been recorded on Thursday in Damascus, activists blurred out the faces of chanting protesters.

In another part of the capital, a raid by Syrian intelligence agents on the office of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression on Thursday led to the arrest of 12 activists. Among those detained, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, were the center’s director, Mazen Darwish, and the Syrian blogger Razan Ghazzawi. The foundation reported that the raid was carried out by members of the Syrian Air Force’s intelligence division in civilian dress, who took the detainees to an undisclosed location.

I chatted with Razan yesterday. I asked her: Are u being harassed? She said, “No, I told u I’m not that important.” #FreeRazan #syria

— BSyria (@BSyria) February 16, 2012

As Hisham Almiraat of Global Voices Advocacy explained, Ms. Ghazzawi was arrested just over two months ago:

She was first detained in December 2011 at the Syrian-Jordanian border when she was about to attend a conference on freedom of expression online. Her arrest sparked an online outcry and an international campaign called for her immediate release. Razan was eventually released after spending 15 days in jail.

Ghazzawi is a U.S.-born Syrian blogger who has contributed to Global Voices Online and Global Voices Advocacy. She is one of the few courageous bloggers in Syria who writes under her real name.

#FreeRazan #FreeHussein #FreeEveryone #FreeUsFromThisHell #Syria

— Shakeeb Al-Jabri (@LeShaque) February 16, 2012

One day earlier, in another part of northern Idlib Province, activists in the town of Hass showed that the conflict had not dulled their sense of humor. The activist comedians posted a video online that they mockingly called compelling evidence that the Free Syrian Army is being armed by the United States and Israel. The video is a comedy sketch featuring actors dressed as rebels showing off their new military hardware: donkeys and farm tools.

Shakeeb Al-Jabri, a Syrian activist in Lebanon, explained on Twitter that one of the actors “calls the donkeys advanced 4-by-4’s that work on biofuel and cannot be detected by Iranian and Russian radars.”

The video was uploaded to an activist YouTube channel that featured very graphic images of the bodies of men identified as “martyrs” on Thursday, but last month another darkly comic sketch was posted there. The earlier skit poked fun at the Arab League observer mission, by dramatizing a massacre in front of actors dressed in the brightly colored jackets worn by the monitors.

According to a version of that clip with English subtitles, the sketch ended with one of the monitors holding a wad of dollar bills and telling the camera, “The situation in Syria is very good,” before denouncing by name one Arab League monitor who spoke out against the Syrian government.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 17, 2012

An earlier version of this post mistakenly attributed a report about the situation in Saraqib to Jonathan Miller, a correspondent for Britain's Channel 4 News, instead of his colleague Jonathan Rugman.

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Glimpses of a Chinese Town Under Lockdown

The GuardianA still image from a Guardian video filmed inside the town of Aba, which is under lockdown by Chinese security forces after a string of self-immolations by protesters.

In the latest of a string of self-immolation protests against Chinese policies, a 19-year-old Tibetan monk set himself on fire on Monday in the rugged western Chinese town of Aba, the advocacy group Free Tibet said in an e-mailed statement. It was the 23rd self-immolation by a Tibetan since last March and the second by a teenager in three days, according to the group.

Chinese security forces standing nearby quickly doused the flames before hauling the monk, Lobsang Gyatso, away from the scene, the group said. Neither the severity of his burns nor his current whereabouts were immediately known.

His protest followed that of an 18-year-old nun, Tenzin Choedon, who died on Saturday after lighting herself on fire.

The town of Aba, or Ngaba in Tibetan, and the wider area of the northwestern Sichuan province where it is located have been locked down for months by Chinese security forces who have thrown up a series of checkpoints along the roads leading into the area and prevented nearly all foreign journalists from entering, The Guardian’s Jonathan Watts reported. The authorities have also blocked Internet and mobile phone communications, preventing the type of activist and citizen journalist reports that have allowed information to escape to other restive areas around the world.

Despite the lockdown, some reporters managed to get inside the area to document the heavy security presence, especially on the streets of Aba, where many of the self-immolations by monks from the Kirti monastery have taken place. The first of the recent wave of self-immolations occurred in the town during the spring of 2009 to protest China’s repression of Tibetan culture and religion.

Mr. Watts from The Guardian was the latest to sneak inside, posting furtive video filmed from a moving car of the dense concentrations of security forces and barricades in the city. The video also captured fire trucks as well as security officers carrying fire extinguishers or batons. Mr. Watts reports that “the authorities are trying to extinguish dissent with fire trucks and riot police.”

According to his report:

Aba has road blocks, spot checks and a security presence reminiscent of conflict zones in the Middle East or Northern Ireland.

But the violence here is, for the most part, self-inflicted. And the battle is not for territory, but for hearts and minds and beliefs.

Last October, a reporter from Agence France-Presse filmed similar scenes in Aba out the window of a moving car. That video included scenes of security officers in fatigues and riot gear patrolling in the streets as if the city were under occupation. The patrols also include officers carrying fire extinguishers.

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Recalling the Start of the Uprising in a Syrian City Now Under Fire

Watching the raw footage of rocket fire and tanks in the streets posted online by Syrian activists on Tuesday — said to show government forces shelling neighborhoods in the city of Homs, defended by army defectors — it is easy to forget that only 10 months have passed since protesters there tried to force the Assad family dynasty from power by just setting up a protest camp in a central square.

But on April 18, photographs and video uploaded to the Web by activists in Homs showed very different scenes: of demonstrators filling the city’s New Clocktower Square, sitting in front of tents and chanting the revolutionary slogan from Tunisia and Egypt: “The People Demand the Fall of the Regime.”

Confronted with that apparently peaceful show of strength by protesters, just hours later the security forces responded by opening fire on the thousands of demonstrators who tried to remain in the square through the night.

The memory of that thwarted attempt to establish a protest camp in Homs was brought to mind by an offhand remark from Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations on Monday. During a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Ambassador Bashar Jaafari ridiculed the idea of deploying international peacekeepers to end the violence in Syria by saying, “We in Syria could not imagine sending soldiers to defend Occupy Wall Street protesters.”

That attempt to minimize the use of violence against protesters in Syria by suggesting that it was similar to the force employed to clear the Occupy Wall Street camp in New York did not come entirely out of the blue. According to the text of a leaked e-mail published last week, Syria’s press attaché in New York, Sheherazad Jaafari — a k a the ambassador’s daughter — advised President Bashar al-Assad to mention the police tactics against Occupy protesters in the United States during his interview with Barbara Walters of ABC News.

In her memo to the president’s press adviser, Ms. Jaafari wrote:

It is hugely important and worth mentioning that “mistakes” have been done in the beginning of the crises because we did not have a well-organized “police force.” American psyche can be easily manipulated when they hear that there are “mistakes” done and now we are “fixing it.” It’s worth mentioning also what is happening now in Wall Street and the way the demonstrations are been suppressed by police men, police dogs and beatings.

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Under pressure, BOJ may edge near Fed-style price target

TOKYO (Reuters) - Pressure is mounting on the Bank of Japan to set a Fed-style explicit inflation target, and the central bank may respond by using stronger language to describe its commitment to beating deflation in a two-day rate review that kicks off on Monday.

Further monetary easing, via an increase in asset purchases, also cannot be ruled out with financial markets vulnerable to any sudden worsening of developments in Europe's debt crisis.

Data released on Monday showed Japan's economy shrank more than expected in October-December, underscoring the pain from slowing global growth and a strong yen.

But with Sunday's approval of a key austerity bill by Greek lawmakers and the yen pulling back from record highs, the BOJ may find it hard to justify loosening policy now and instead debate setting a clearer price goal in response to growing political calls for one.

"The BOJ is likely to stand pat on monetary policy for the time being barring a sudden rise in the yen, as it has already taken into account the economy's underlying weakness," Yoshiki Shinke, senior economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute, said after the data.

The central bank may tweak its wording to clarify that it will aim to achieve consumer inflation of 1 percent, or signal that a major revision to its price commitment is under way, analysts say.

"At this meeting, the BOJ may clarify its phrase defining the median (desirable consumer inflation) at 1 percent so that it becomes close to a price goal," said Takahide Kiuchi, chief economist at Nomura Securities in Tokyo.

While that would hardly be enough to please politicians demanding bolder action, it is probably the least it can do for now to prevent them from following through on their threat to revise the BOJ law to give the government more room to intervene in monetary policy, analysts say.

BOJ Governor Masaaki Shirakawa was grilled in parliament last week by lawmakers who may face a snap election, and the government is worried that growth may not be robust enough to stomach tax increases proposed to fix stretched public finances.

Economics Minister Motohisa Furukawa weighed in, saying on Sunday he hopes the central bank examines a way to make its price commitment easier to understand. He repeated his calls for more action on Monday, a rare move by a cabinet minister on the day the bank's board was meeting.

"It's clear that the government and the BOJ need to work even harder than before to put a stop to deflation, and I expect the BOJ to take firm monetary policy measures when needed," he told a news conference.

MORE EASING?

The BOJ pledges to keep ultra-low interest rates until an end to deflation is in sight, and defines desirable long-term price growth as consumer inflation of 2 percent or lower with the median for the nine-member board at 1 percent.

It has described this as the board's "understanding" of desirable inflation rather than an explicit price target, for fear of binding its hands on policy.

But this has drawn criticism from lawmakers as too vague compared with the Fed's 2 percent inflation target and its extended commitment to near-zero rates announced last month.

The BOJ is due to review the loose price goal in April as a regular practice. It may move forward this schedule in the face of political pressure. But the consensus-favoring board may lack time to agree on Tuesday to any substantial changes such as setting a higher price target or a deadline to achieve it.

That means it may try to appease lawmakers by modifying its language, which could disappoint markets and further heighten political calls for bolder action.

Growing political pressure amid signs of economic weakness means that even if the BOJ refrains from action on Tuesday, it may loosen policy in March.

The BOJ has expressed its readiness to act if Europe's debt crisis, slowing overseas growth and a strong yen threatened Japan's fragile economic recovery.

But with rates virtually at zero, central bankers also want to save ammunition in case Europe's crisis flares up again, spilling over to global credit and financial markets.

If the BOJ were to ease policy, the most likely step would be to further top up its 55 trillion yen ($708 billion)asset buying and lending scheme, under which it buys government and private debt and lends cheap funds against various types of collateral.

(Additional reporting by Stanley White; Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Joseph Radford)

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Under fire, Obama adjusts his birth control policy

WASHINGTON (AP) — Under fierce election-year fire, President Barack Obama on Friday abruptly abandoned his stand that religious organizations must pay for free birth control for workers, scrambling to end a furor raging from the Catholic Church to Congress to his re-election foes. He demanded that insurance companies step in to provide the coverage instead.

Obama's compromise means ultimately that women would still get birth control without having to pay for it, no matter where they work. The president insisted he had stuck by that driving principle even in switching his approach, and the White House vehemently rejected any characterization that Obama had retreated under pressure.

Yet there was no doubt that Obama had found himself in an untenable position. He needed to walk back fast and find another route to his goal.

The controversy over contraception and religious liberty was overshadowing his agenda, threatening to alienate key voters and giving ammunition to the Republicans running for his job. It was a mess that knocked the White House off its message and vision for a second term.

Leaders from opposite sides of the divisive debate said they supported the outcome — or at least suggested they probably could live with it. Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, the head of the nation's Roman Catholic bishops and a fierce critic of the original rule covering hospitals and other employers, said the bishops were reserving judgment but that Obama's move was a good first step.

Conceding he wanted a resolution, Obama ordered advisers to find a middle ground in days, not within a year as had been the plan before the uproar. He said he spoke as a Christian who cherishes religious freedom and as a president unwilling to give up on free contraceptive care.

"I've been confident from the start that we could work out a sensible approach here, just as I promised," Obama said. "I understand some folks in Washington may want to treat this as another political wedge issue, but it shouldn't be. I certainly never saw it that way."

Under the new plan, religious employers such as charities, universities and hospitals will not have to offer contraception and will not have to refer their employees to places that provide it. If an employer opts out of the requirement, its insurance company must provide birth control for free in a separate arrangement with workers who want it.

"Very pleased," was how Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, reacted in a statement distributed by the White House. Her trade group represents Catholic hospitals that had fought against the birth control requirement, and Keehan said the new arrangement addresses the concerns it had.

Planned Parenthood, a prominent women's health organization, said Obama had reaffirmed his commitment to birth control coverage. The group's president, Cecile Richards, added, though, that it would be monitoring for "rigorous, fair and consistent" enforcement so women get the promised coverage.

Before announcing his decision to reporters, Obama telephoned Keehan, Richards and Dolan.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, many shrugged and said the rewrite did not change anything.

"It's an accounting trick," said Mike Gonzales of the Heritage Foundation. "Do they think people are stupid?"

The debate within the White House was intense even before the Jan. 20 decision was announced to exempt only churches and other houses of worships from the requirement that employers must cover free contraception. Other religious organizations were given an extra year to comply, but that concession didn't do enough.

First in a rumble, and then in a roar, critics formed a movement to overturn what they considered to be an egregious violation. Bishops assailed the policy in Sunday Masses and Republican leaders in Congress pledged to push a legislative repeal.

The White House seemed to be caught flatfooted.

"The past three weeks have witnessed a remarkable unity of Americans from all religions, or none at all, worried about the erosion of religious freedom and government intrusion into issues of faith and morals," said Dolan, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The turmoil, in turn, prompted advocates from other sides to get vocal in the battle for public opinion. They defended the rights of women and the need for preventive health care, including contraception, to be provided without fee for people of all faiths, no matter where they work.

Officials said Obama has the power under his health law to compel insurance companies to provide free contraception coverage directly to workers.

The health insurance industry voiced concern that putting the burden on them could set a precedent of shifting cost its way. The insurance companies will weigh in later as Obama's new policy undergoes review, said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for the America's Health Insurance Plans trade group.

Administration officials say providing birth control won't cost insurers any more in the long run, because it's less expensive than the costs of maternal care and delivery. But insurers say they'll have to pay drug companies for pills and doctors for prescriptions, so it won't be free to them. The costs probably will be passed on to policy holders, as is happening already with other requirements of the health care law, such as allowing young adults to stay under their parents' coverage until age 26.

By keeping free contraception for employers at religious workplaces — but providing a different way to do it — Obama was able to assert he had found "a solution that works for everyone." Unclear was why the White House had not come up with the idea in the first place.

While Obama in 2008 won the total Catholic vote, 54 percent to Sen. John McCain's 45 percent, he lost the white Catholic vote, 52 percent to 47 percent, according to exit polls. Once reliably Democratic, Catholics are now swing voters, with white Catholics making up the majority of the group.

The Rev. Joel C. Hunter, a moderate evangelical leader and a spiritual adviser to the president, said he thinks Obama responded quickly enough to heal the rifts with many of his religious allies. "I think it's simple enough that most people will say, 'Oh good, we can get to other things now,'" said Hunter.

Yet the change just led to more criticism from some of Obama's opponents.

Texas Republican Rep. Kevin Brady said the revamped rule marked a "full scale retreat by a disconnected president who now knows that Washington shouldn't force American to abandon their religious convictions."

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner said that that initial response indicated church leaders were not yet convinced the mandate respected religious freedom. Boehner has said he believes the original measure violates First Amendment rights, and his office said Friday that he would seek legislation.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., an ardent support of the original measure, offered a restrained response. Focusing on the benefits of health care, she said: "I appreciate the president's unifying approach."

___

Associated Press writers Julie Pace, Erica Werner, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Jim Kuhnhenn, Laurie Kellman, Rachel Zoll and Jay Lindsay contributed to this story.

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