By John Ballard
Via Blake Hounshell and many others, this grim description of events in Syria deserves wide exposure.
I have come to believe that second-generation despots like Bashar Assad may appear civilized on the surface, but beneath the facade lies a numbness to human suffering that most people never know.
Cal Perry is currently Al Jazeera English's Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem. He joined AJE in January of 2011. In 2006, Perry received the prestigious Edward R. Murrow award for his reporting on the Israel-Lebanon War. Perry has also garnered several Emmys and he was the recipient of the CINE Award as the creator, director and producer of the film �Combat Hospital.� Perry is a graduate of Skidmore College.
Syrian protesters 'cut down like weeds'
Every other journalist is trying to get into Syria, but on Saturday I was trying to get out. The government had made it perfectly clear: My visa was expiring and unless I left on April 23, I would "face the full force of the law".
I had agreed the night before with my cameraman, Ben Mitchell, over a drink that neither of us wanted to discover what "full force of the law" meant. So the debate was really whether I should fly out from Damascus or drive to Amman, Jordan, and fly from there.
The decision was made that he would fly out from Damascus, the Syrian capital, with the gear and I would drive to Amman. I had left my second passport there with a friend. One for Arab countries and the other for Israel. Welcome to 21st century diplomatic relations.
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About 50 metres from where we pulled over was an overpass that connected Daraa to Izraa. I could see clearly a crowd of people marching from my left to my right over the bridge.
Suddenly gunfire rained into the crowd. The truck drivers dove for cover. And, for what seemed like an eternity, I sat there in the car, stunned and frozen. People were falling on top of each other, being cut down like weeds in a field by what I think must have been a mix of both small arms fire and machine gun fire. I saw at least two children shot. They fell immediately. People were screaming. Gunfire rattled on.
Two cars tried to gun it under the overpass and continue down the highway, even with the gunfire continuing to cut people up. One of the cars got hit immediately before it passed under the bridge and ended up slamming into the embankment on the right side of the road. Someone fell out of the passenger side and scrambled under the bridge and crawled into a ball ... just hoping for survival, I suppose.
I've been playing it through over and over again in my head for the past 16 hours and I still do not know where the gunfire was coming from. It seemed to be coming from a field that lay off to my right � on the Izraa side of the bridge. I could see some muzzle flashes, but I've never in my life seen people walking, and just shot at indiscriminately.
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Ironic that a place where I've seen a war and many clashes break out before was suddenly a seven-hour refugee for me as I waited for the first flight to any European city so I could then connect home to see my elderly and sick grandfather on Easter.
As I sit at this airport in Paris, writing this piece, watching people come and go, I am haunted by two thoughts: The first is a question I cannot answer. How can you shoot people like that? Just watch a crowd march towards you; sit in a firing position, wait ... watch; then fire directly into a crowd of civilians.
I did not see a single shot fired from the crowd in the few minutes we sat there watching people flail without any place to hide � a gut wrenching pink mist spraying strait in the air.
More details and a photo at the link.
Have a Happy Easter.
Assad is trying to expiate the ghost of his father by proving he can be just as brutal.
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