Media outlets will discuss the roughly 600,000 people in Syria who were killed in the civil war and the millions of people who were internally displaced. They will recount how Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons on his own civilian population. They may even trot out videos of London-educated Asma al-Assad, Bashar’s wife, on how she stood by her husband.
I would like to share one name: Hamza al-Khateeb, a 13-year old boy taken by Syrian forces in April 2011, whose corpse was returned to his family a month later.
Here is the story as relayed on May 31, 2011 by Al Jazeera:
In the hands of President Bashar al-Assad’s security forces, however, Hamza found no such compassion, his humanity degraded to nothing more than a lump of flesh to beat, burn, torture and defile, until the screaming stopped at last.
Arrested during a protest in Saida, 10km east of Daraa, on April 29, Hamza’s body was returned to his family on Tuesday 24th May, horribly mutilated.
The child had spent nearly a month in the custody of Syrian security, and when they finally returned his corpse it bore the scars of brutal torture: Lacerations, bruises and burns to his feet, elbows, face and knees, consistent with the use of electric shock devices and of being whipped with cable, both techniques of torture documented by Human Rights Watch as being used in Syrian prisons during the bloody three-month crackdown on protestors.
Hamza’s eyes were swollen and black and there were identical bullet wounds where he had apparently been shot through both arms, the bullets tearing a hole in his sides and lodging in his belly.
On Hamza’s chest was a deep, dark burn mark. His neck was broken and his penis cut off.
The scale and savagery of the attacks in the Middle East are sometimes reduced to numbers such as the million who were killed in the Iran-Iraq war. As Syria falls, it is worth remembering a single soul who was brutally maimed and killed to comprehend the deep moral depravity that permeates – and must be expunged from – the region.
First One Through 