Syrian protest death toll reaches 200

Yahoo News reports:

Syria's main human rights movement has said the death toll from less than a month of protests has reached 200 and called on the Arab league to impose sanctions on the ruling hierarchy.

"Syria's uprising is screaming with 200 martyrs, hundreds of injured and a similar number of arrests," the Damascus Declaration group said in a letter sent on Monday to the secretary general of the Arab League.

"The regime unleashes its forcers to besiege cities and terrorize civilians, while protesters across Syria thunder with the same chant 'peaceful peaceful'," it added.

"We ask you to... impose political, diplomatic and economic sanctions on the Syrian regime, which continues to be the faithful guardian of Hafez al-Assad's legacy," the letter said, referring to the iron-fisted rule of President Hafez al-Assad, father of current President Bashar.

The Arab League is unlikely to turn on Assad. Syria will be interesting to watch after Egypt and Libya. On the one hand, Assad's crackdown on protests is closer to that of the Mubarak regime than Qaddafi's. On the other hand, the protest movement in Syria is not as strong as in Egypt, and their powerlessness vis-a-vis the government is closer to that of Libyan rebels. Right now, the Arab League and the West is turning its shoulder, but this could quickly change.