First things first, let me apologize to anyone that’s been checking the site for new content in the recent past, I’ve been dealing with some personal stuff that has distracted me from the blog. Good news is I’m back and I’ll try to keep the posts more regular in the future. Anyway…

“It goes without saying, Anonymous can, will and must support the demands and the revolt of Syrians. We will use the means at our disposal to support these demands, this struggle in any way possible. We stand in solidarity. Syrians, know this, YOU ARE NOT ALONE! And as long as Anonymous exists, as long as we still breathe, we will support you. We may be separated by distance, by borders and miles, but we are together. Your fight, is our fight.”~statement from participants in Anonymous’ #opsyria

So it seems the next country to be hit by the spreading unrest is Syria. I’ll try to give some backstory for those unfamiliar with the situation there. By now the story should sound familiar. Syria is another country which outwardly is a “republic” but in all reality is a dictatorship. Syria has had an emergency law in place for 48 years! This law has allowed the government to abuse its power and deny Syrian citizens their constitutional rights and protections. To put this in perspective, Egypt’s state of emergency under Mubarak was in place for 30 years, and Algeria’s emergency law has been in place for 19 years.

It is fairly well documented that Syria has a terrible record on human rights. There is the censorship and total ban on much of the media, the torture and arbitrary detention of citizens, mass jailing of dissidents and activists as well as discrimination in the law against women. To add to this Syria doesn’t allow multi-party elections. The country is under authoritarian rule by any reasonable standard.

Back to the present day. After Mubarak left Egypt, some demonstrations were called in Syria but didn’t amount to too much. What seems to have set off this more recent and intense agitation was the arrest of schoolchildren in Dara’a and the use of live ammunition on demonstrators in many places. The Assad government has tried to diffuse the situation by offering some strategic concessions and most likely empty promises to the Syrian people. Somehow I find it hard to believe that after 48 years of an emergency law, after the detention and torture of dissidents, after the arrest of schoolchildren, and after the murder of protesters with legitimate demands, somehow I find it hard to believe after all of that that this unrest will be quelled by anything less than a total revolution in Syria. By the way, here are the protesters demands, taken from the Syrian Day of Rage facebook page:

Our Demands are:

1. Suspend all the emergency laws in Syria. And convert the nation to a modern civilian country.

2. A modulation in the main constitution that Guarantees a transition to a pluralistic democratic country .

3. Immediate Cancellation of the theory of one-governing-party.

4. A formation of a national government that reflects the different shades to achieve all the demands of our people.

5. Make a free and fair elections to the parliament in which includes all the races of the Syrian people.

6. Prosecute who done all of the massacres against the Syrian people in the past.

7. General amnesty for all the prisoners of conscience and political views.

8. The eradication of poverty and unemployment in the Syrian community.

9. Lifting the ban on all media types and the Internet. To allow all the partisan and political forums to express their views freely.

How People Are Trying to Help:

To bring media attention to all of this, there have been solidarity demonstrations at Syrian embassies (full list of Syrian embassies here). And, as you may have expected, Anonymous has an operation dedicated to supporting the Syrian revolt, Operation Syria (based in channel #opsyria). Here is the full statement from participants in #opsyria:

“To the people of Syria, & all the other free citizens of the world:

The time is long overdue for the government of Syria to recognize the legitimate demands of its people. When a government abuses its power to keep an “emergency law” in place for 48 years, something becomes abundantly clear: The only emergency here is the state itself. The emergency being the torture of citizens, the censorship of anything resembling a free media, the use of live ammunition on protesters who are only calling for rights and freedoms that they deserved to have long ago, rights and freedoms that never should have been denied to them, ever.

Bashar Assad and all those who are collaborating with him are starting to realize one thing, to be sure: No amount of torture, bullets, propaganda, strategic concessions, fear, counter-information and other despicable tactics will ever be able to stop people from demanding what is rightfully theirs. Ben Ali realized that in Tunisia, Mubarak realized that in Egypt, Gaddafi is realizing this in Libya, and all other governments must take notice. There is nothing more powerful, nothing more beautiful, and most of all nothing more unstoppable than people who have come together despite all odds to change things. How things are is not how they must be. And no government, no matter how oppressive, will ever be able to prevent people from realizing that, and acting on that.

 

It goes without saying, Anonymous can, will, and must support the demands and the revolt of Syrians. We will use the means at our disposal to support these demands, this struggle in any way possible. We stand in solidarity. Syrians, know this: YOU ARE NOT ALONE! And as long as Anonymous exists, as long as we still breathe, we will support you. We may be separated by distance, by borders and miles, but we are together. Your fight, is our fight.

 

To everyone out of Syria:

 

You may think this doesn’t concern you. You may live in a country that has “freedom”, you may wonder how a free Syria could benefit you. In the words of Thomas Paine: “The world is my country”. The world is our home, and everyone, EVERYONE, has a stake in making it better, in keeping it free. What happened in Tunisia, didn’t end with Tunisia, What happened in Egypt didn’t end in Egypt and what’s happening in Syria certainly won’t end there either.

 

Connect to IRC server irc.anonops.ru, channel #opsyria to find out how to help.

 

Freedom is not something you’re given, and it’s not something that can be taken away for very long.

 

Freedom is something you exercise.

 

We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
We don’t stop.
Expect Us.”

As far this operation goes, it isn’t as popular as the other operations yet. There has been talk of a DDOS protest against some Syrian government sites.

“We need help! Syrian Gov. are attacking us everywhere because of our Day of rage call. the syrian gov. is making a HUGE Efforts to attack us in all media types.

We are more than 27,000 ppl that gathered for our freedom…many syrian agents are posting such a insulting comments on our page…we delete them all the time..No problem!

 

they come along again..more than 200 syrian agents get an ass kick every 2-3 hours..

 

This is Serious!!!!

here is 2 Syrian Gov. websites that we neeed to take’em down!!! if we succeed..it’s gonna be a breaking news on all National & arab websites. http://www.parliament.gov.sy…”~statement from Syrian activists

 

If this is going to be effective #opsyria is going to need more support. Those who are so inclined to try and support should log on to the AnonOps IRC server. The webclient over at AnonOps.in is down for the moment but it is still possible to connect to the chat by connecting directly to one of the server that are online. You can find out which servers are still running at the moment by going to http://www.anonops.in/index.php?id=servers