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DARAA, Syria — The Syrian government pledged Thursday to consider lifting some of the Mideast’s most repressive laws in an attempt to stop a week-long uprising in a southern city from spreading and threatening its nearly 50-year rule.

The promises were rejected by many activists, who called for demonstrations around the country today in response to a crackdown that protesters say killed dozens of anti-government marchers in the city of Daraa.

“We will not forget the martyrs of Daraa,” a resident said by telephone. “If they think this will silence us, they are wrong.”

The coming days will be a crucial test of the surge of popular discontent that has unseated autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt and threatens to push several others from power.

Sheltering in Daraa’s Roman-era old city, the protesters have persisted through seven days of increasing violence by security forces but have not inspired significant unrest in other parts of the country.

President Bashar Assad, a close ally of Iran and its regional proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, appears worried enough to promise increased freedoms for discontented citizens and increased pay and benefits for state workers — a familiar package of incentives offered by other nervous Arab regimes in recent weeks.

“To those who claim they want freedom and dignity for the (Syrian) people, I say to them we have seen the example of Iraq, the million martyrs there and the loss of security there,” presidential adviser Buthaina Shaaban told reporters in the capital, Damascus, as she announced the promises of reform.

Shaaban told reporters that the all-powerful Baath party would study ending a state of emergency that it put in place after taking power in 1963.