generalspeaking

The Syrian Spring

UNICEF has joined other NGOs, the United Nations and NATO countries in abhorring and condemning the Syrian government's reaction to the popular uprising against the reign of Bashar al-Assad and his Alawite party. As is seen so often in the Arab and Muslim world, a minority Shia dictatorship ruling a majority Sunni population in a region of the world where tribal and sectarian tensions and animosities run high.

Syria has responded to the popular uprising as only a totalitarian government would, by firing live rounds at protesters, by sending tanks into the streets and communities of cities and towns where people have miraculously and courageously assumed the right to speak of improvements in their living conditions, in the political structure of their country, imploring their government to relax tensions by relaxing its stridently militant rule.
Emboldened by events outside Syria, by the seeming surface success of the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, 15 boys from a school in the south of the country wrote on the walls of their school, "The people want the fall of the regime", and they were arrested for their crime, inspiring an organized protest in the province of Daraa. In late April a 13-year-old arrested by police was tortured and murdered.

His body was released to his family with the order that it be buried and that no one speak of the event in public. The family, instead, released photographs of the mutilated body of the child, described the events publicly and raised another storm of outraged protests against the vicious brutality of a regime, led by President Assad, that had lost all semblance of humanity. Male members of Hamza al-Khatib's family have now been arrested.

"There were a few bullets in his body used as a way of torture rather than to kill him with. Clear signs of severe physical abuse appeared on the body such as marks done with hands, sticks and shoes. Hamza's penis was also cut off." Facebook site.

Ten thousand Syrians are thought to have been arrested; one thousand civilians have been killed in the government crack-down on illegal dissent. UNICEF recently viewed a video of children who had been detained arbitrarily, suffering torture and/or other ill treatment during their detention. No one is immune from Syrian government-propelled human-rights atrocities.

Labels: Conflict, Human Rights, Middle East, Political Realities

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, June 02, 2011