The Written Word is hosting its first ever guest post! This article appeared in the Fall 2012 issue Pearls Magazine. Pearls magazine is a seasonal, o
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What would happen if you
and I were to spray-paint anti-Harper slogans on the local library, school, or
other public building?
We'd probably end up
getting a strict telling-off from our parents and teachers. Our privileges
would most likely be suspended, and, worst-case scenario, we'd have to find
some way of removing the paint.
We would have had it
ridiculously easy, considering what happened to the schoolchildren who did the
same thing in the beginning of last year in Syria. In our case, no police, jail
cells, physical pain, or traumatic torture would be involved. Unfortunately, in
the Syrian childrens' case, their lives were destroyed when they did the same thing.
For a few, their lives actually ended, as they were murdered by the Al-Assad
regime.
In January 2011, a group
of schoolchildren from a school in Giza, Daraa, spray-painted some of the
slogans and chants they'd heard on the Tunisian and Egyptian uprising
broadcasts onto a wall of their school. At 1 AM in the morning, the Secret
Police broke into the houses of, and arrested, twenty-five of the students from
the school. The boys who were apparently the leaders, Hamza Elkhateeb and Tamer Alsharee, who were both thirteen years old,
were detained for a month, after which their dead bodies were returned to their
families. The bodies of both the boys were discovered to have several gruesome
injuries caused by inhumane torture, any of which they could have died from. In
other words, Hamza and Tamer suffered an atrocious fate, which no sane person
would condemn an adult to, never mind a thirteen year old. (I do know exactly what
injuries they sustained, but they're too sick to write here. Check out http://english.the-syrian.com if you want
to know. I'll tell you this, though: I will NEVER, EVER, for the rest
of my life, play one of those virtual shooting or fighting games like Call
of Duty. On this side of the world, we play and get a “Game Over” when we
'die'. Over there, they actually die. If they're lucky.)
And so began the Syrian
revolution.
As for the other 23 children
who were arrested in Giza, they were kept in prison for varying lengths of
time. They were beaten, burned by cigarettes, and their fingernails were pulled
out. I can never look at a bottle of nail polish the same way again. The
officials who were in charge did not allow the parents to visit their children,
even shouting at them to forget their children existed. Can you imagine? It's
hard to believe that anyone would do that to a child who wrote on a wall. But
they did. What else are they doing, right this minute?
And the children from Giza
aren't the only ones. What makes the Syrian Revolution stand out from the other
uprisings of the Arab Spring is the extraordinary amount of children involved.
According to the Syrian Revolution Martyrs Database, 691 children were killed
by the regime's forces from March 15, 2011, to February 27, 2012. They were all
under the age of sixteen, and 151 of them were females. There have been
confirmed reports of children as young as one year of age, being killed by
sniper guns and by other means. There are also 437 child detainees. When one
considers the fate of Hamza, Tamer, and the other children from Giza, these
childrens' future looks very bleak. And remember, these are only the
documented cases. Considering how reporters and other people trying to get
the word out have been murdered by the regime, these could be only half of the
actual numbers.
And if these are only the
children under sixteen years of age, what is the total number of people who
have lost their lives, been tortured, raped, and imprisoned, since the
beginning of the uprising?
Thousands doesn't even begin to cover it.
The President of Syria,
Bashar Al-Assad, has been stubbornly denying that these crimes have been
carried out under his orders, saying that it's all the work of 'gangs'. Gangs
don't collectively attack people peacefully protesting the rule of the Al-Assad
regime. They don't keep it up for over a year and a half, and they don't wear
army fatigues and carry sniper’s guns.
Now, people often ask, isn't
Syria a democracy? The answer is, “That's what they want you to think.” It's
true Bashar Al-Assad is called the 'President', and he is assisted by two vice
presidents, a prime minister, and a cabinet of ministers. But 'President'
Bashar Al-Assad himself appoints people to these positions, they're not elected
to them. Also, Bashar's father, Hafez Al-Assad, ruled for twenty-nine years.
When he died in 2000, his son Bashar ran unopposed for the position.
Strangest of all, the Syrian constitution was amended to allow him to run for
presidency. It's hard to believe that, in a country with so much potential,
with a population of over 17,500,000, they couldn't find even one another
candidate to run for the presidential election.
Now, do you remember the
revolution in Libya, last year? Do you remember how quick the Canadian
government was to send some military planes to assist the Libyans? So, why did
it take the UN over a year to even deliver a warning to Bashar Al-Assad?
The answer is simple. Libya
sells oil to the Western world. During wars, the prices of a country's exports
go up. If the Libyan revolution had continued for as long as the Syrian one is,
the economies of Canada and the US would have suffered significantly as gas and
oil prices skyrocketed. This is not to say that the ideal solution is to bomb
Damascus and Aleppo and and Homs, but it shows you how a country's values and
moral standards can be flexible when dealing with the gold and green.
If the Western, Russian, and
other governments that trade with Syria create sanctions, the Syrian regime
would have to at least think twice about the consequences of their actions.
Right now, Hillary Clinton is discussing government plans with Egypt. Russia
just stopped providing the Syrian regime with weapons in mid-July, while it
should have started 18 months ago. And how often do you hear about the situation
in Syria when you watch or listen to any news station?
How many people have to die,
how many families have to be broken apart, how many lives have to be shattered,
while the world looks on and does nothing?
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