"It will not change reality," she says in a phone interview from Vienna. "Plenty of laws in Syria allow the government to arrest citizens and accuse them of many different crimes."
RELATED: How Syria and other countries use emergency rule to quash dissent
President Assad has repeatedly made end-of-week concessions in an attempt to quell the violent post-prayer protests on Fridays. "It will not stop protests," says Ms. Allaf. "I used to be more careful with my predictions. Right now, I can say more strongly and confidently, I dont think it will prevent anything. People are infuriated by the killings that the regime has done over the past few days. The mood is very defiant."
The government still rules with impunity, agrees Bilal Saab, a Middle East expert from the University of Maryland at College Park. If anything, he adds, lifting the emergency law will embolden protesters on Friday.
"If there is one trajectory of this dissent movement, it is they are no longer afraid,"
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