Syria expats vote in controversial election

Expatriates cast their ballots at the Syrian embassy in Beirut yesterday.

AFP/Beirut

Syrian expats streamed to their embassy in Beirut yesterday to vote in a controversial presidential election as war raged at home and bombs killed more than 40 people in the city of Aleppo.

With expats around the world voting in advance of the June 3 election, Beirut’s Yarzeh district was festooned with Syrian flags and portraits of President Bashar al-Assad, who is expected to cruise to victory.

An estimated 3mn Syrians live abroad, including peacetime residents and refugees, but only about 200,000 were able to vote yesterday, at 38 embassies, a foreign ministry source said in Damascus.

Pro-regime daily Al Watan said that is “a relatively acceptable figure, if we bear in mind the fact that France, Germany and Belgium have banned Syrian citizens” from voting, along with the United Arab Emirates.

The ministry says 40,000 citizens in Lebanon, which hosts more than a million refugees fleeing the violence, are on the electoral register.

Damascus has barred refugees who left Syria through unofficial crossings from taking part in the election.

By midday, all the entrances to the Lebanese capital were blocked, causing long tailbacks, as thousands of Syrians descended on the embassy, mostly by foot.

The army set up checkpoints around the embassy to head off any disturbances, with the country’s Syrian community sharply divided into pro- and anti-Assad camps.

There was little sign of any opposition voters in the long queues outside the mission.

Syria’s exiled opposition and its Western backers have ridiculed the June 3 vote as a “farce”.

The civil war raging since March 2011 has killed more than 160,000 people and forced nearly half the population to flee their homes.

More casualties were added to the figure yesterday, with news that air force raids on rebel-held areas of the northern city of Aleppo had killed more than 40 people in 24 hours.

Barrel bombs killed 22 people in eastern districts of Aleppo on Tuesday and another 21 yesterday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Nine children figured among the dead, the Britain-based Observatory added, warning that the toll could rise because “many people are in serious condition and there must be bodies under the rubble”.

But Syrian state television repeatedly interrupted its programmes to broadcast live images of crowds of loyalists voting in Beirut.

Amid similar scenes in Amman and under tight security, Syrian voters lined up in their hundreds outside their embassy.

Around 30 anti-regime activists stood near the mission, chanting slogans and carrying a banner which read: “No to the killer’s re-election.”