Bashar al-Assad supporters stage rallies in Australia ahead of Syrian poll:Hundreds are expected to sign petitions backing al-Assad at rallies in major cities, in absence of polling stations

The Syrian government has been unable to set up overseas polling stations in Australia because the country’s embassy shut in June 2012.
Australians backing Bashar al-Assad in the upcoming Syrian presidential elections are staging rallies across the country to help expats register their support.

Hundreds are expected to sign petitions backing al-Assad at rallies in Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne ahead of the 3 June poll. The petitions will then be sent to Damascus, organisers said.

The Syrian government has been unable to set up overseas polling stations in Australia because the country’s embassy shut in June 2012, a month after top Syrian diplomats were expelled. A consulate still operates in Sydney, but is not large enough to facilitate the poll.

“People are trying to get their voices heard,” an al-Assad supporter, Elle Mohamad, said. “I think people want the world to know that Syrians have a right to vote, to determine who their leaders are going to be.”

The election on Tuesday will be the first in the country’s history with more than one candidate on the ballot. Assad won Syria’s last presidential election in 2007 with 97% of the vote, a poll dismissed as a sham by opposition groups, and is expected to win easily again.

Australia's department of foreign affairs has panned the election as "having no legitimacy in the eyes of the Syrian people or the international community".

"The circumstances in Syria make holding genuine elections impossible," a spokeswoman said.
Earlier this month the US secretary of state, John Kerry, labeled the presidential poll a “farce” and a “fraud on democracy”.

Syria has been fractured by an ongoing civil war that has seen an estimated 2.7m refugees flee to neighbouring Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. Anti-regime activists estimate that casualties have climbed above 160,000.


A UN report in March accused the Syrian government of widespread human rights violations including deliberate attacks on civilians, the use of child soldiers and systematic campaigns of murder, torture, rape and kidnapping.

Armed opponents of the regime, who include the Al-Qaida-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) as well as secular nationalists and Syrian army defectors, were also implicated in war crimes by the report.

On Thursday Australia’s intelligence chief, David Irvine, told Senate estimates that the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation was monitoring 150 citizens with suspected links to "violent extremist groups", including many in Syria.

"Young Australians are going overseas and getting themselves killed in foreign conflicts," he said.

Irvine estimated up to 12 Australians had been killed fighting in the Syrian conflict but conceded the figure was difficult to verify.

Asio was concerned Australians involved in the fighting would come home radicalised and look to share their training, he said.

Attorney-general George Brandis in April estimated that the number of Australians who had traveled to Syria to fight against the Assad regime was between 120 and 150.

“We also know that Australians are taking up senior leadership roles in the conflict,” he said.

Michael Safi