Easter cancelled in Syria

Good Friday and other Easter processions and festivals have been cancelled across Syria as street unrest boils over into violence.

Protesters in the town of Homs Photo: AFP By Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent 9:30PM BST 21 Apr 2011
The country’s Christian population has been forced to abandon its usually colourful and exuberant commemorations because of the number of “martyrs” who have died and the “bad situation”, a senior church official told The Daily Telegraph.

The whole country is braced for a wave of protests on Friday, despite an announcement that President Bashir al-Assad had signed a decree lifting the 48-year state of emergency, a key demand.

Government promises of reform combined with violence by armed plain-clothes security forces have only served to bolster the opposition, who are planning more demonstrations after regular Muslim Friday prayers.

But today these will clash with Good Friday services, which would normally see processions and public gatherings by Syria’s Christian minority, estimated at between 1-2 million, or around five per cent of the population.

“We are not receiving official congratulations,” Bishop Philoxenos Mattias, Assistant to the Syriac Orthodox Church Patriarchate in Damascus, the country’s biggest Christian denomination, said

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/8466697/Easter-cancelled-in-Syria.html