Syria's first couple at work in bid to burnish image
Source: Agencies |
April 19, 2012, Thursday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
SYRIAN President Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma were shown on state TV packing food aid yesterday, an apparent effort to burnish the image of a first couple derided for ordering luxury goods on the Internet while their country burns.
State television broadcast pictures of the Assads receiving a rapturous welcome at al-Fahya stadium in Damascus. They joined hundreds of volunteers boxing cartons full of flour, sugar, cooking oil and pasta for victims of fighting in Homs, where government forces are crushing an uprising.
The Assads have long worked to manage their image, but it backfired a year ago when a glamorous photo shoot and gushing profile of Asma, 36, appeared in Vogue magazine.
For yesterday's appearance Asma avoided any hint of glamour, dressing down in a pink sweater over a simple dress with her dark blonde hair soberly braided and pinned up.
Her husband looked relaxed, towering above his admirers in a polo shirt with an identity pass on a ribbon around his neck like other volunteers. The couple packed boxes, sealed them with tape and carried them over to stacks awaiting distribution.
Assad is held responsible by Western and Arab governments for the deaths of over 9,000 Syrians in a crackdown on dissent that began 13 months ago. He says Syria is under attack by foreign-backed terrorists and that armed gangs have killed over 2,600 soldiers and police. The worst-hit city Homs is the ancestral home of Asma, a British-educated former investment banker.
She once cultivated the image of a serious-minded woman but appears to have kept up a life of luxury shopping during the uprising.
E-mails exchanged with her husband, obtained by Britain's Guardian newspaper, showed her spending tens of thousands of pounds on jewels, fancy furniture, and a Venetian glass vase from Harrods.
"I am the real dictator, he has no choice," she said about her husband in an e-mail attributed to her.
State television broadcast pictures of the Assads receiving a rapturous welcome at al-Fahya stadium in Damascus. They joined hundreds of volunteers boxing cartons full of flour, sugar, cooking oil and pasta for victims of fighting in Homs, where government forces are crushing an uprising.
The Assads have long worked to manage their image, but it backfired a year ago when a glamorous photo shoot and gushing profile of Asma, 36, appeared in Vogue magazine.
For yesterday's appearance Asma avoided any hint of glamour, dressing down in a pink sweater over a simple dress with her dark blonde hair soberly braided and pinned up.
Her husband looked relaxed, towering above his admirers in a polo shirt with an identity pass on a ribbon around his neck like other volunteers. The couple packed boxes, sealed them with tape and carried them over to stacks awaiting distribution.
Assad is held responsible by Western and Arab governments for the deaths of over 9,000 Syrians in a crackdown on dissent that began 13 months ago. He says Syria is under attack by foreign-backed terrorists and that armed gangs have killed over 2,600 soldiers and police. The worst-hit city Homs is the ancestral home of Asma, a British-educated former investment banker.
She once cultivated the image of a serious-minded woman but appears to have kept up a life of luxury shopping during the uprising.
E-mails exchanged with her husband, obtained by Britain's Guardian newspaper, showed her spending tens of thousands of pounds on jewels, fancy furniture, and a Venetian glass vase from Harrods.
"I am the real dictator, he has no choice," she said about her husband in an e-mail attributed to her.
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