DAMASCUS, 26 March 2003 — Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators again took to the streets of Middle East capitals yesterday to protest against the war on neighboring Iraq, burning US, British and Israeli flags. “We will sacrifice ourselves for Iraq,” they chanted in Damascus as they marched from the Hijaz train station to Parliament.
“Bush, Blair, Sharon, the triangle of international terrorism,” read their placards, referring to US President George W. Bush, Britain’s prime minister, Tony Blair, and Ariel Sharon of Israel. The demonstrators, mostly civil servants, students and members of Syria’s Baath party-led ruling coalition, also carried portraits of Syrian President Bashar Assad and his Iraqi counterpart Saddam Hussein.
Syria has been a strong critic of the ongoing war. “The Iraqi cause is inseparable from the Palestinian cause,” read banners carried by young protesters, in what was the first major demonstration held in Syria since last Thursday’s launch of the US-led war on Iraq. Anti-riot police posted around the US Embassy prevented the demonstrators from approaching the mission.
Elsewhere in the Arab world, thousands of Libyans as well as other Arab and African nationals demonstrated in Tripoli, where they burnt effigies of war allies Bush and Blair.
“With our blood, we will sacrifice ourselves for you, Iraq,” chanted the crowd estimated to number 30,000 outside the Iraqi Embassy.
Police cordoned off roads leading to the embassies of Britain and Kuwait, where a Kuwaiti flag was torn down on Sunday by protesters angry at the emirate’s support for the war on its neighbor Iraq. The bulk of the quarter of a million US and British troops waging war have used Kuwait as a springboard.
In Egypt, thousands of students kept up their daily pro-Iraq demonstrations held around the country since the start of the war aimed at toppling Saddam, organizers said. “Open the borders, let us go fight,” students chanted in Kafr Al-Sheikh, north of Cairo. “Bush, Blair, Sharon, go to hell.” More than 3,000 students at Menufiya University, also north of Cairo also demonstrated, as did 2,000 from the women’s section of Al-Azhar Islamic university in the capital.
In Egypt’s southern neighbor Sudan, a crowd estimated at 30,000 by an AFP reporter marched in the capital Khartoum, burning US and British flags, effigies of Bush and Blair and coffins bearing the words “UN” and “democracy” outside the Iraqi Embassy.
They shouted slogans against the United States, Britain and Israel, and some brandished pictures of Saddam Hussein and also Osama Bin Laden, leader of the Al-Qaeda terror network. The secretary-general of the ruling National Congress Party, Ibrahim Ahmed Omar, told the crowd, which the official SUNA news agency put at one million, “the Sudanese people are in the same trench as Iraq against invaders and aggressors.”
Opponents of the war against Iraq rallied outside US embassies in Asia yesterday, keeping up a barrage of criticism of Bush and urging a boycott of US movies and music. Protests were held in the Muslim-majority countries of Bangladesh and Malaysia. In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, there were calls to boycott Western movies and music.
Nearly 2,000 anti-war protesters scuffled with security forces in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka as they broke through police lines set up to guard the US Embassy. Police chased and dispersed the protesters, who stormed through the barbed wire barricade set up several blocks away from the embassy, witnesses said.
In Malaysia, about 100 ruling and opposition party supporters protested together outside the US Embassy in a rare show of unity, demanding an immediate end to the attack on Iraq. It was the first street protest in the capital Kuala Lumpur since the war began and came a day after the parliament of the mostly moderate Muslim country passed a motion condemning the attack.
In neighboring Indonesia, a youth wing of the vice president’s party called on cinemas in a major city to stop showing movies from the United States, Britain and Australia, a radio reported. The Muslim-oriented group also called on radio stations to stop playing songs from the three countries, said Jakarta-based Radio Elshinta.
Most Thais disapprove of the US-led war on Iraq, a poll in Bangkok found yesterday, while a separate survey found that a majority of military officers believe the kingdom should remain neutral in the ongoing war. Some 60.0 percent of 1,192 Bangkok residents polled by the privately-run Bangkok University from March 21 to 23 disapproved of the war on Iraq, while 59.7 percent did not support either side.
Just over a third of respondents believed the war would worsen the Thai economy through higher oil prices while others feared it would result in inflation or a fall in tourism, exports or investment.
Anti-war demonstrators thronged the streets of San Francisco on Monday, blocking entrances one of the city’s top landmarks as part of a dogged campaign against the US war on Iraq, police said. The protests were among scores that have erupted across the United States since US-led forces attacked Iraq last week.
Police said they had arrested 130 people in the city’s downtown financial district for failing to disperse as hundreds of demonstrators waged a civil disobedience campaign launched last week to protest the war.
