Syria: Has the regime turned a corner against manifestations?

As days of brilliant spring gradually turn hot and muggy, Damascus consensus is that the protest movement was seriously burned. The Facebook group activist Syrian revolution 2011 extinguish an order for a general strike across the Syria Wednesday for "mass demonstrations" and the closure of all schools, universities, shops and restaurants, "not even taxis." But no there was no strike apparent Wednesday morning in central Damascus.

The mucky market was filled with veiled women grocery and intrepid boys tattered jeans yelled out price for their goods. The battered yellow taxis swiveled past big green bus brimming with children in school uniform, their sweaty brows and eyes filled with boredom. Damascus resumed his life regular, apparently unconscious of the Syria has been the subject of the attention of the world for more than two months. (See the photos of these events in Syria).

The Syria government fiercely occurred after demonstrators - reinforced by the eviction of two long despots - to called Egypt and Tunisia - power at the end of the regime of President Bashar Al Assad. On Wednesday, after long insistence, the United States slapped sanctions on the Government dEl-Assad for the human rights violations. Shares of Washington may be too late - if sanctions had no chance of success at all.

Events in Egypt and the Tunisia have been strengthened after the sympathy of brutality increased police and army for the demonstrators, source of inspiration for thousands more flocking to the cause. It is not the same in Syria. Even as the Suppression of the Government grew more threatening, most of the sources reached by the ratio of time that the rate of participation in street demonstrations is significantly smaller than in the past few weeks. Fear in anti-Government supporters is that the violence in Syria seems to work. In an interview with the Syrian newspaper al-Watan published on Wednesday, Al-Assad stated that the Syria has now "out of the crisis." In the streets of Damascus, many observers believe that they are suitable.

Indeed, many activists are in prison or too afraid to assemble. Stages and public buildings using improvised prisons as police arrested thousands of demonstrators, according to Syrian human rights organizations. A Syrian student, who said that two of his classmates have disappeared, said time than anyone else to protest or documenting the arrest of risk of torture and demonstration. "You could walk along the street and never go where you go,", launches slightly, as if the horror of his statement was tolerable in a joke. (See how public places helped to mold the Arab spring.)

Omnipresent secret service of the Syria has always succeeded in tapping calls, using neighbors to spy on each other and reading of emails. A Korean student who studied Arabic here, explains that during a long telephone call that he had with his parents in Korea the dead line and voice of a gruff man slaughter po "To speak in English, please," the mysterious voice asked politely.

Observers here that the regime has fostered a culture of paranoia to deter people more civil disobedience, contributing to the failure of the Wednesday strike. During the recent tumult, an unprecedented number of people disappeared - about 8,000 according to local defence of the human rights - and militant groups are petrified to communicate by telephone.

Fear made it impossible to judge the mood among the Syrians. To speak of politics is taboo and denounce the regime can lead to prison. Many people said they fear that unrest could cause sectarian strife, as in the neighbouring countries in the Lebanon and Iraq. Some Syrians of middle class say they fear losing prosperity brought by the President, who opened the country to foreign investment when he came to power in 2000. If the President fled, they say, the economy would be paralyzed by populist socialist political demands. (See "the rebellion of hunger: brutal tactics of the Syria.")

A Syrian journalist, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, said that pro-Government rhetoric is primarily the lies told by people to protect themselves. "Everyone hates the Government, throughout the world." They are simply too afraid to say, "she said when asked why people continue to say that they support the Government." She believes that the anti-Government movement, now battered and bruised, is weighing it is possible to continue to protest when the army is prepared to use real bullets constantly against demonstrations. "I think the President will leave soon, but no one wants what happens now.".

For those who still have the demonstration, violence is guaranteed. Armed with assault rifles, wooden clubs, the civilian secret police, or mukhabarat, have established positions in areas around the capital key, preventing the same from the numerous protests and increased security measures confined people to their neighbourhoods, or even their homes.

Radwan Ziadeh, Syrian dissident and researcher Washington-based invited to the Institute of studies of the Middle East at George Washington University, said State security is much more brutal than that of Hosni Mubarak, the President stripped of the Egypt. "[The Assad Government] a lot of experience with brutality," he said in time. Western observers in Damascus agreed that the intensive use of indiscriminate violence since the start of the insurgency in Syria has managed to discourage many join the demonstrations. Groups say between 700 and 850 human rights people have been killed so far. (See the Syria video rebel).

Residents of Homs, one of the cities most restive of the Syria, said that the army is using parts of the city shell tanks and that the police is entered breaking into homes the. Percolate similar rumors in other cities throughout the country, but the Government's refusal to allow the majority of foreign Syria journalists and imposed communication failures make virtually impossible corroborate the reports. Ziadeh insists that the army is now all the cities in Syria. He said that the Duma, a suburb on the outskirts of Damascus, more than 100,000 people were demonstrating a few weeks ago. "Now you see someone," he said.

To justify the brutal repression, the Syrian Government casts recent disorders as an uprising by criminal gangs and "terrorist extremist groups" rather than a popular movement for a vast change against an authoritarian regime. The news agency, SANA, regularly publishes articles appoint "rioters", which themselves have turned the authorities in exchange for amnesty.

The machine gun in Homs reports and the bombing of the nearby city of Tel Kelakh filtered Wednesday, at least evidence that, despite the repression, that the Government still had to impose order on the Syrians, who have not given up for protest. "There less large number," dissenting Ziadeh admits, but every day, they continue to protest. ?