The Syrian uprising started three years ago this week, sparked by the image of some 300 school children in Deraa being dragged to one of Syria’s dark prisons for the “crime” of writing graffiti calling for freedom.
The uprising hasn’t turned out as the people hoped. Three years later, starving people are braving government sniper fire to forage for leaves and berries to feed their families.
A new report from Amnesty International released Monday tells how an uprising that began with the detention of children has become one where starvation is being used as a weapon of war.
This report focuses on the situation in Yarmouk, where the siege has had the harshest impact and has caused the largest number of deaths from starvation. When the current crisis began, Yarmouk was home to the country’s largest Palestinian refugee community. Thousands of people displaced by fighting elsewhere in of Syria have since arrived to seek shelter there.
The report documents one story of a body of a 16-year-old boy brought lifeless to the hospital after being shot dead by snipers while he was foraging for berries to feed his starving family in the besieged community of Yarmouk. The boy’s father said he “died for the sake of bringing hibiscus leaves for your brothers and sisters.”
While both sides of the conflict are responsible for besieging civilians in violation of international law, Amnesty documents repeated evidence of the Assad government attacking civilians, hospitals, mosques and schools with heavy weapons and blocking access to humanitarian aid.
Nearly 200 individuals since the siege was tightened in July 2013 and access to crucial food and medical supplies was cut off. According to Amnesty International’s research, 128 of those who have died starved to death. Twelve infants under 12 months old are among the deceased.
With international support, this can be the week when Syria begins to move from darkness to light.
Other residents have also eaten this plant but some have suffered an allergic reaction, including bloating, as a result. Cases of food poisoning and other illnesses became common as many people have been forced to exist on a diet of leaves and weeds. In desperation, some have killed and eaten cats and dogs, a practice reportedly permitted through a fatwa issued by local sheikhs, in some cases suffering food poisoning as a result.
In this week, the third anniversary of the uprising, Amnesty International is also joining with other organizations to shine a light on the humanitarian situation there and demand that the world take action to stand with Syria. We are calling on the United Nations Security Council to end the suffering of the Syrian people and implement its Resolution No. 2139 calling for all sides in the conflict to provide free and unfettered access for food and medical supplies. Take action here.
And throughout the week, Amnesty International member will hold vigils around the world to show solidarity with the Syrian people. In Washington, D.C., Amnesty International will join a vigil held at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Capitol Reflecting Pool. The vigil will light up iconic D.C. sites, including the Lincoln and Martin Luther King memorials to reflect the theme of shining light on Syria.
The worldwide efforts can be followed on a special website, with-syria.org. Several Amnesty members holding their own vigils this week are contributing photos of their events to let the Syrian people see they are not alone.
Three years after the uprising, the lesson remains the international community must not become paralyzed, even as the desperation of the Syrian people increases and the stalemate at the U.N. Security Council appears unyielding.
Amnesty International’s documentation is keeping alive the truth of the human rights abuses within the country, and that truth will out sometime in the future in international tribunals. Our refugee work is improving lives, and stopping sexual assaults in refugee camps and providing asylum for Syrians in the United States. Our work on humanitarian aid is necessary to assisting aid groups in their efforts. And our highlighting of Syrian prisoners of conscience is helping human rights defenders.
With international support, this can be the week when Syria begins to move from darkness to light.
Thank you Amnesty International for all the work you do. My best to you and to all those who are suffering.
BIG SALARIES = BIG APATHY
I must be very naive. I thought the U.N. was founded after the 2nd World War, modelled on the earlier League of Nations. The intent, I was taught, was to prevent atrocities like those that happened in Europe and Asia from ever being allowed to happen again. The U. N. was supposed to be the place where any country, or its people, could come and ask for help if they were being persecuted in any way, either from without or within. What went wrong?! Why is it so ineffectual? Why is it structured so that one nation can hold the entire body hostage and helpless? Surely we can all agree on what constitutes inhumanity, however it manifests, and surely we can agree on what cannot be tolerated? If such a blatant example as the current obscenity happening in Syria doesn't fit the definition of inhumanity, worthy of intervention by the U.N. , then nothing does, and we might as well disband the U.N. and send everybody home. I know every country tries to protect their own interests, and each is afraid to allow a precedent which could come back to haunt it at some future date, but if we can't even agree that starving children and bombing hospitals and refugee camps is not acceptable, EVER, then what's the point? Let's just admit we're all still savages and give up!!
If we spent as much money helping hungry children and adults as we do in U.S. political elections, perhaps war and hunger would disappear…. Isn't it worth a try???
Who remembers Rawanda? Do we really wish to look like harbingers of evil again? to step up and take action against the Dictator and his evil army and followers. If we don't we may as well begin the mass burials of the oppressed in Syria..
As an Israeli Syria is unfortunately an enemy.
However when I read in Israeli newspapers the horrors that take place there I read it as a mom and as a wife, as a human being. The suffering, torture and abuse, how kids are being denied of their childhood in the cruelest way is horrible!
I read it and cry in sadness and anger asking myself where is the world? Why is it so silent?
This is a hollucust.
Something must be done to save those kids, women and men.
The world must take action.