Syrian government response to the Syrian revolution

On 15 February under pressure from human rights organizations, the Syrian government released Ghassan al-Najar after he went on a hunger strike following his arrest for calling for mass protests.

[8] On 29 April Dorothy Parvaz of Al Jazeera arrived in Damascus and was not heard of for several days[9] The Syrian government later confirmed that she had been detained, she had attempted to enter the country illegally with an expired Iranian passport.

Many news outlets reported that a prominent LGBT anti-government blogger called Amina Arraf was allegedly arrested by Syrian authorities, but questions arose of whether she was a real person in the first place.

In August 2011, Syrian security forces attacked the country's best-known political cartoonist, Ali Farzat, a noted critic of Syria's government and its five-month crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators and dissent.

Relatives of the severely beaten humorist told Western media the attackers threatened to break Farzat's bones as a warning for him to stop drawing cartoons of government officials, particularly Assad.

[19][20] Syrian activists have accused government forces of abducting and raping women in rebellious parts of the country, possibly using sexual violence as a means of terrorising the population and quelling dissent.

An opposition campaigner supplied The Globe and Mail with details about six previously unknown cases of violence against women, saying that more such incidents remain hidden as Damascus struggles to contain the uprising.

[27] On 24 March, Assad's media adviser, Buthaina Shaaban, said that the government will be "studying the possibility of lifting the emergency law and licensing political parties".

Assad also set up a judicial committee tasked with investigating the circumstances that led to the death of Syrian civilians and security forces in the cities of Daraa and Latakia.

[46][47] On 24 July, a draft law was created, to be debated by parliament, to allow more political parties, under the conditions that they were not based on religious, tribal or ethnic beliefs and does not discriminate against gender or race.

Protesters have dismissed the law as superficial, as Article 8 of the Syrian Constitution, which grants the Ba'ath Party the role of leader of the state and society, would need to be repealed.

[50] On 8 March, Syria's deputy oil minister Abdo Hussameldin announced his defection and resignation on a YouTube video, denouncing Russia and China for backing the government and advising his colleagues to abandon the "sinking ship".

[58][59][60] State television reported that two million people attended to express Syrian national unity and Syria's rejection of foreign interference in its internal affairs.

[58] The day after Assad addressed the nation on 20 June, Syrian state television claimed that over one million people gathered in Umayyad Square in Damascus, and there were demonstrations in Homs, Aleppo, Sweida, Latakia, Deraa, Hasaka, Tartous, and elsewhere to express support for the reforms the president said he would carry out.

[68] On 23 March, a column was published in The Daily Telegraph by Con Coughlin, the newspaper's executive foreign editor, calling for the creation of a no-fly zone over Syria to protect innocent protesters.

[69] Since international news media was banned in Syria, the main source of information - and disinformation - has been private videos usually taken by mobile phone cameras and uploaded to YouTube.

As with many second-hand reports, such videos are difficult to verify independently, and several TV stations have shown older footage from Iraq and Lebanon, which was claimed to have been filmed in Syria.

[72] Hours later, Syrian authorities released Haitham al-Maleh, an 80-year-old former judge, one of Assad's most outspoken critics, under an amnesty marking the anniversary of the 1963 coup which brought the Ba'ath Party to power.