AS PROTESTS continue for a seventh week and the government acts ever more harshly in its efforts to suppress them, two new features of the upheaval have emerged. First, the number of Syrians crossing the country's various borders has sharply increased as people flee on foot into Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, and many of the 1m-odd refugees from Iraq ponder whether to go home. Second, hundreds if not thousands of intellectuals and would-be dissidents have gone into hiding for fear of arrest. Many are banned from leaving the country. The security forces are reckoned to have rounded up some 7,000 people since March 18th. Many of those since released tell of torture. Residents in several places report tanks rumbling down their streets.
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