Growing public anger | Regime forces still hold Kanaker’s female detainees for nearly three weeks

Rif Dimashq Province – Syrian Observatory for Human Rights: Regime security services have been still holding in their prison the three women from Kanaker, in western Ghouta in Rif Dimashq, for nearly 20 days. Meanwhile, regime security services are still imposing their tight security siege on Kanaker town, preventing civilians from traveling between the town and Damascus, with the exception of school and university students and some residents.

 

Reliable SOHR sources in Kanaker town have confirmed that the town’s dignitaries and a prominent figures, who are used to mediating reconciliation deals between opposition fighters and regime security services, are seeking to defuse the tension. However, the town’s gunmen, whose number approximates 200 fighters and who have settled their security situation, refuse to struck new reconciliation deals unless their demands are met and the three women and all Kanaker’s detainees arrested in the past years are released.

 

Meanwhile, tension is growing in the town, as the regime security services are still holding the women and keep sending threats to the local gunmen to storm the town militarily and arrest all suspicious and those individuals who refuse to struck new reconciliation deals.

 

On September 26, SOHR sources reported that regime forces continued imposing its tight security siege over Kanaker town in western Ghouta, amid public protests throughout Syrian provinces, demanding the lifting of this siege.

 

Demonstrations and vigils were staged daily in various Syrian provinces, expressing solidarity with the people of Kanaker, amid growing fears that the regime authorities may prove their threats of unleashing a large-scale security campaign and arrest hundreds of the town’s people.

 

A day earlier, reliable sources informed SOHR that regime forces, backed by tanks and heavy weapons, cordoned off the town of Kanaker in eastern Ghouta in Rif Dimashq, along with running daily military patrols, which paralysed civilians’ movement in the town.

 

Regime forces also threatened, through the town’s elders and dignitaries, to storm all houses in the town unless nearly 150 suspicious people were handed over. These people were wanted for “taking arms against the state”, as regime forces say, in addition to others for “participating in demonstrations and setting fire to a poster of the Syrian regime’s president” a few days earlier.

 

These security procedures coincided with preventing civilians from traveling between Kanaker town and Damascus. However, government employees and school and university students were exempted.

 

A few days earlier, the town of Kanaker experienced several protests, as residents blocked the town’s roads by rubber tires and set fire to a poster of the head of the Syrian regime “Bashar al-Assad”, after regime forces arrested three women from the town for unknown reasons.

 

While on September 22, reliable SOHR sources confirmed that unknown gunmen opened fire on the head of the “military security detachment” in Al-Quneitra city, who is from Banyas city, while he was traveling on Al-Salam highway near Kanaker town in western Ghouta, Rif Dimashq.

 

According to SOHR sources, the attack resulted in the death of one of the regime security official’s escorts, while the official himself sustained moderate injuries.

 

On the other hand, tension was growing in Kanaker town in the wake of arresting three women from the town in the previous day by the regime’s security services for unknown reasons.

 

A day earlier, Observatory eyewitnesses monitored several young men taking down a huge picture of the head of the Syrian regime “Bashar al-Assad”, setting it on fire in Kanaker town, following the arrest of three women from the town for unknown reasons. According to SOHR sources, the town was witnessing rising tension and deployment of local gunmen from the town on the main roads.