Published on Feb 11, 2017
The Doctor Who Kills Doctors
Syria’s Bashar al-Assad is waging war on the very same health system that trained him.
At least 750 medical personnel have died in Syria since the beginning of the conflict more than five years ago, according to Physicians for Human Rights.
Mouawiya Syasneh was just 14 when he sprayed anti-government slogans on his school wall in Deraa, Syria. It was February 2011, and he could never have imagined that such a minor act would spark a full-blown civil war.
More than half a million people have been killed in Syria since the start of the war. Mouawiya’s home city has been ravaged by street fighting, shelling and barrel bombing. The war has left scars that may never heal.
Now a young man, fighting on the frontline for the Free Syrian Army, Mouawiya admits that had he known what the consequences of his actions would be, he would never have taunted the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad.
His life has been transformed by that adolescent prank. He has lost friends and relatives, including his father. And Syria has been changed for ever.
The Boy who started the Syrian Civil War offers a glimpse into life in Deraa since the start of the conflict.
We meet Syrians trying to lead normal lives amid the chaos as well as those who have taken up arms against Assad’s forces.
FILMMAKER’S VIEW
by Emmy Award-winning producer, Jamie Doran
I was in Moscow recently, chatting to people you might have thought would have known better. Educated folk, among them an experienced journalist. I had asked them a simple question: how did the Syrian war begin?
They uniformly launched into the answer that has been peddled so often in recent times, that it has now become fact in certain circles: “It was the terrorists who started it all.”
The fact that ISIL in its current form didn’t even exist in Syria at the time, or that al-Nusra wouldn’t arrive until many months afterwards, appear to have been conveniently forgotten – not just in Moscow but in most media coverage around the world.
The surprise, even shock on their faces when I pulled out my laptop and showed them the trailer for our latest film for Al Jazeera, The Boy Who Started the Syrian War, was a wonder to behold. They simply had no idea.
They claimed they hadn’t been aware of how, for decades, dissenters towards government authority had faced the daily dread of a visit from the secret police, of torture, disappearance and extrajudicial execution.
They had apparently never heard about how fathers were frightened to allow their daughters to be alone on the streets for fear of abduction, rape and murder at the hands of the Shabiha, Assad-family militias that operated with virtual impunity.
And they were totally unaware that it was a mischievous prank by adolescent schoolchildren that lit the fuse that set a country ablaze.
Early in 2016, I was sitting in Books@Cafe, a hangout for liberally minded Jordanians on Al-Khattab Street, Amman, with cameraman and filmmaker Abo Bakr Al Haj Ali. He was busily puffing away on his narghile (hookah), as we discussed how Deraa, the city which had given birth to the revolution, had been virtually ignored by the media in recent years.
One of the reasons it had been overlooked was that the Jordanians wouldn’t let any Western journalists cross from their side. Almost the only other option was an official tour of government-controlled areas via Damascus that didn’t appeal to me at all, even if they had let me in, which was rather unlikely.
I’d spent the previous week sitting on the border, just an hour’s drive from Deraa, having established an agreement with the Jordanian military which would have made me the first Westerner allowed to cross over in three years.
READ MORE: Syria’s Civil War Explained
There I was, in the border compound about to leave Jordanian soil, when a call came to the post. Moments later, I was very politely placed in a saloon car … and driven back to Amman. I later found out that the representative of the British intelligence agency, MI6, in Amman had advised the Jordanian government that it would be a bad idea to let me cross … even though I was travelling on an Irish passport!
So, back at Books@Cafe, Bakr and I sat chatting about how we could make a film about Deraa without my physical presence. It’s his home town. His territory.
“So, who do you know, who was there at the very beginning?” I asked.
“I know the commander, Marouf Abood, who set up the very first people’s militia, after government troops attacked his village,” he responded.
“Interesting. And who else?”
He went on to reel off half a dozen names; commander this, commander that.
“Come on, Bakr. You must know someone else, someone different. Someone fresh,” I said.
Continuing to drag deeply on the narghile, deep in thought, he told me that there was no one else that was really very interesting.
And then he added: “Well, I suppose there’s the boy who scrawled the anti-Assad graffiti on his school wall that started the war.”
It was one of those moments where you could have knocked my 90 kilos over with a feather.
The boy who started the Syrian war! Think about it. It wasn’t ISIL, nor al-Nusra, nor any other terrorist group. It was an act of defiance, a moment of youthful rebelliousness, if you like, that led to an uprising which has seen more than half a million people killed and a country torn to shreds.
It wasn’t, of course, the fault of this 14-year-old boy and his three friends who joined him in this moment of adolescent disobedience – a prank which would have enormous consequences beyond their understanding. But when they were arrested by the police and tortured in a most horrendous way, a line was crossed from which there would be no turning back.
When their parents and families arrived at the police station to plead for their freedom, they were told: “Forget these children. Go home to your wives and make some more. If you can’t manage, send us your wives and we’ll do it for you.”
Anger rose. The fuse had been lit and, when police started randomly killing marchers in the demonstrations that followed, armed resistance became an inevitability.
READ MORE: The Syrian conflict does not end here
For me personally, this film has taken on an importance beyond many that I have made in the past. To be able to remind (and, in some cases, inform) a massive global audience of the true origins of the Syrian civil war, is an enormous privilege for a filmmaker.
For those directly involved in those origins, however, our film has provided an opportunity for reflection. So many have suffered greatly and sacrificed so much for a revolution which, by any calculation, is and will remain incomplete, no matter what the outcome of negotiations.
Mouawiya Syasneh, The boy who started the Syrian War, is now a young man who, like so many other young men in Deraa, carries a Kalashnikov rather than a satchel these days. As viewers will discover, his own family has paid a dreadful price for the events that followed his actions back in February 2011.
His own reflections are now a matter of record for the first time.
Article from: http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2017/02/boy-started-syrian-war-170208093451538.html
Video from Al Jazeera English:
SPECIAL SERIESSYRIA’S CIVIL WAR
The Boy Who Started the Syrian War
We tell the story of Mouawiya Syasneh, the boy whose anti-Assad graffiti lit the spark that engulfed Syria.
09 Feb 2017 10:22 GMT Syria’s Civil War, War & Conflict
Mouawiya Syasneh was just 14 when he sprayed anti-government slogans on his school wall in Deraa, Syria. It was February 2011, and he could never have imagined that such a minor act would spark a full-blown civil war.
More than half a million people have been killed in Syria since the start of the war. Mouawiya’s home city has been ravaged by street fighting, shelling and barrel bombing. The war has left scars that may never heal.
Now a young man, fighting on the frontline for the Free Syrian Army, Mouawiya admits that had he known what the consequences of his actions would be, he would never have taunted the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad.
His life has been transformed by that adolescent prank. He has lost friends and relatives, including his father. And Syria has been changed forever.
The Boy Who Started the Syrian Civil War offers a glimpse into life in Deraa since the start of the conflict.
We meet Syrians trying to lead normal lives amid the chaos as well as those who have taken up arms against Assad’s forces.
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Amnesty International has teamed up with Forensic Architecture, a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, to recreate the horrors of Saydnaya, a Syrian torture prison near Damascus, through an interactive 3D model.
This video demonstrates the model of the prison, and features interviews and testimonies from researchers at Forensic Architecture, from Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Programme Director at Amnesty International, and with former prisoners at Saydnaya.
The 3D model of the prison can be found at the following link.- https://saydnaya.amnesty.org
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END the horror – sign the petition http://amn.st/61868Tgiw
This harrowing story is based on the real life accounts of former prison guards, officials and detainees held at the notorious Saydnaya Military Prison. Amnesty International has discovered that between 2011 and 2015, every week and often twice a week, groups of up to 50 people were taken out of their prison cells and hanged to death in Saydnaya prison 30 km north of Damascus, Syria. In five years, as many as 13,000 people, most of them civilians believed to be opposed to the government, were hanged in secret at Saydnaya. Prisoners were not aware of the sentence or the fact that they were going to be imminently executed until moments before they were hanged.
Credits:
With thanks to:
Lawrence Abu Hamdan for prison sound design
ioo collective for
Direction, Design: Cesare Davolio & Simon Buijs
Animation: Robert-Jonathan Koeyers, Jamie de Jonge
Compositing: Jeroen Bijl
Sound: Francis Locadia
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The Syrian regime has bombed and gassed its own civilians in broad daylight, and now we have new insight into what goes on behind cell walls in secret prisons. Amnesty International has revealed widespread torture and mass executions taking place in the notorious Saydnaya jail, just 30 kilometres from the the presidential palace in Damascus. We hear from a former detainee, and speak to a lawyer suing the regime for crimes against humanity.
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Bunker-buster bombs are, the most powerful nonatomic bombs, are wiping out underground shelters in Aleppo. So how do they work?
Bunker busters pass through concrete while remaining intact. They explode underground, creating shock waves that collapse buildings.
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Published on Feb 4, 2017
From 2011 to 2016
15,948 Syrian Children were killed
312,001 – 437,363 Syrian were killed
Rest in Peace
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR)
(18+) NOW w/ ARTICLE: 11-18-16. The Saudi-led Genocide of Yemenis & Destruction of Their Country.
Published on Oct 28, 2016
10.28.2016. YEMEN.
READ ARTICLE On Our BLOG (https://alistairreignblog.com/2016/11…).
This report takes a look at how 19 months of the Saudi-led airstrikes, relentlessly bombing Yemen, has reduced a country to rubble, and forever destroyed the lives of the people who survive these deadly airstrikes on civilians.
Reporting The News That Matters – From A Non-biased Perspective. Alistair Reign News Blog playlists are rated 18+ for possible graphic images of war, injury or death.
We post video reports from reliable media sources with journalists and correspondents reporting on location. This media outlet is not attached to, nor does it sympathize with, condone, nor condemn any religious organization or group. Alistair Reign and associated campaigns represent human rights for all, and the wellness of children worldwide.
YEMEN Is DYING: 1 Child Dies Every 10 Minutes. 2 More Children Died While You Watch This Report.
Published on Dec 31, 2016
12.31.2016. Yemen.
This report is a compilation of interviews and footage from the war raging in Yemen, and the humanitarian crisis left in its wake. [Advisory: 16+ For Images of War and Injury].
Reporting The News That Matters – From A Human Rights Perspective. Alistair Reign News’ Playlists Are Rated (18+) for possible graphic images of war, injury or death. Read our website disclaimer for more information (https://alistairreignblog.com/disclai…).
Alistair Reign News Reports produced and written by Alistair Reign are personal opinions, requests or observations, and are not to be reported or quoted otherwise. Video press briefings are from reliable media sources, journalists, correspondents, and/or witnesses reporting on location.
Alistair Reign Channel’s are not attached to, nor sympathize with, condone, or condemn any religious organization or group – excluding terrorist groups of course! Alistair Reign and associated humanitarian fundraising campaigns represent human rights for all, and the wellness of children worldwide.
THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — It’s been a miserable winter in Greece, especially for the many thousands of refugees staying in tents in old factories and warehouses. At a tiny workshop in the northern city of Thessaloniki, they’re trying to make a little bit of a difference.
Volunteers are working long hours to try to keep the refugees warm, with bursts of noise from sewing machines revealing their mission: To turn discarded blankets into jackets, overcoats and other winter wearables.
There’s an almost endless supply: The blankets — mostly army issue, gray with red stitching — came from the sprawling refugee and migrant encampment at Idomeni on the Macedonian border that is now closed.
As many as 14,000 people lived in tents at the site last year after European countries closed borders to refugees streaming into the continent. Greek police cleared the camp last May, leaving hundreds of tents and thousands of blankets behind. A Greek-German charity called Naomi collected them by the vanload to be washed and reused.
Project organizer Elke Wollschlaeger helps make and even model the coats, which have the label “Remember Idomeni” stitched inside.
“We’re trying to keep it in people’s minds what happened in Idomeni last year, and what Europe did to refugees and the Greek people, just leaving the borders closed and thousands of people stranded,” she said.
Greece’s government says more than 60,000 refugees and migrants remain stuck in the county following the border closures. It has struggled to shelter camp dwellers from freezing overnight temperatures. Authorities on the island of Lesbos are investigating three recent deaths at a refugee camp there, possibly caused by fumes from makeshift heaters.
For Syrian refugee Hasan Al Kodsy, helping out at the coat workshop in Thessaloniki was a natural fit. The 30-year-old used to run a family textile business in Damascus that employed about 100 workers. His journey to Europe stopped at Idomeni but he’s still hoping to join his wife and 2-year-old daughter in Munich, Germany, through the European Union’s slow-moving relocation scheme.
“I saw women (in Idomeni) shivering in blankets and that was not a nice thing to see,” he said. “So we started making clothes with the blankets.”
The charity doesn’t distribute the jackets directly but passes them on to other aid groups in return for donations, using any money raised for skills-training programs for refugees and projects to take them out of camps and place them in apartments. It also sells the coats to walk-ins, like resident Katerina Tsolakidou.
“We really liked the idea of re-using the blankets from Idomeni,” she said after picking up a coat. “It gives the refugees something to do. So instead of spending the money somewhere else, it’ll be put to good use here.”
Article from: https://apnews.com/6d5e1d5a89a840a88c6b5c8cca19e89b
A February 2015 joint report by the Center for Public Health and Human Rights of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Syrian American Medical Society asserted that “Syria is the most dangerous place in the world to be a doctor”. Roughly half (an estimated 15,000) of Syrian doctors fled the country. The government passed a law in 2012 making it illegal to render medical aid to anyone suspected to be an opposition member and Amnesty International found that doctors and medical staff also took part in torture of patients.
Physicians for Human Rights has been tracking the medical personnel deaths in Syria,
though they state that “these numbers are conservative given the difficulties in reporting during a war.” As of the end of September 2015, the number of medical workers killed in the Syrian civil war totaled 679. 648 of these deaths are attributable to the Syrian government, 17 by non-state armed groups, one by Kurdish forces, and 13 by unidentified forces. In February 2016, the number of killed medical personnel was updated to 697, and subsequently in June to more than 700.
Médecins Sans Frontières has reported that suppliers in Syria refuse to sell essential medical supplies such as gauze and surgical threads to doctors due to government intimidation, with this being a particular problem for besieged areas.
Published on Feb 4, 2017
The war on Syria’s doctors: The ultimate barbarity
Dr Assad turns Syria’s hospitals into death traps as part of a “kneel or starve” policy.
Assad’s government has killed almost seven hundred medical personnel.
Rohingye people, a Muslim population, living in Rakhine State on the northwest coast of Burma have been restricted to their villages and placed in Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camps by the Burmese government. They have been the victims of persecution and communal violence by numbers of the Buddhist majority in Rakhine. International NGO’s such as MSF have been expelled by the government, leading to a soaring crisis in health care.
GENEVA (3 February 2017) – Mass gang-rape, killings – including of babies and young children, brutal beatings, disappearances and other serious human rights violations by Myanmar’s security forces in a sealed-off area north of Maungdaw in northern Rakhine State have been detailed in a new UN report issued Friday based on interviews with victims across the border in Bangladesh.
Of the 204 people individually interviewed by a team of UN human rights investigators, the vast majority reported witnessing killings, and almost half reported having a family member who was killed as well as family members who were missing. Of the 101 women interviewed, more than half reported having suffered rape or other forms of sexual violence.
Especially revolting were the accounts of children – including an eight-month old, a five-year-old and a six-year-old – who were slaughtered with knives. One mother recounted how her five-year-old daughter was trying to protect her from rape when a man “took out a long knife and killed her by slitting her throat.” In another case, an eight-month-old baby was reportedly killed while his mother was gang-raped by five security officers.
“The devastating cruelty to which these Rohingya children have been subjected is unbearable – what kind of hatred could make a man stab a baby crying out for his mother’s milk. And for the mother to witness this murder while she is being gang-raped by the very security forces who should be protecting her – what kind of ‘clearance operation’ is this? What national security goals could possibly be served by this?” High Commissioner Zeid said, noting the report suggests the recent level of violence to be unprecedented.
“I call on the international community, with all its strength, to join me in urging the leadership in Myanmar to bring such military operations to an end. The gravity and scale of these allegations begs the robust reaction of the international community.”
After the repeated failure of the Government of Myanmar to grant the UN Human Rights Office unfettered access to the worst-affected areas of northern Rakhine State, High Commissioner Zeid deployed a team of human rights officers to the Bangladeshi border with Myanmar, where an estimated 66,000 Rohingya have fled since 9 October 2016.
All the individuals interviewed by the team had fled Myanmar after the 9 October attacks against three border guard posts, which had prompted intense military operations and a lockdown in north Maungdaw. The military indicated that it was conducting “area clearance operations” in the region.
The report cites consistent testimony indicating that hundreds of Rohingya houses, schools, markets, shops, madrasas and mosques were burned by the army, police and sometimes civilian mobs. Witnesses also described the destruction of food and food sources, including paddy fields, and the confiscation of livestock.
“Numerous testimonies collected from people from different village tracts…confirmed that the army deliberately set fire to houses with families inside, and in other cases pushed Rohingyas into already burning houses,” the report states. “Testimonies were collected of several cases where the army or Rakhine villagers locked an entire family, including elderly and disabled people, inside a house and set it on fire, killing them all.”
Several people were killed in indiscriminate and random shooting, many while fleeing for safety. Those who suffered serious physical injuries had almost no access to emergency medical care, and many of the people interviewed remained visibly traumatized by the human rights violations they survived or witnessed. People who did not know the fate of loved ones who had been rounded up by the army or separated while fleeing were particularly distressed.
Many witnesses and victims also described being taunted while they were being beaten, raped or rounded up, such as being told “you are Bangladeshis and you should go back” or “What can your Allah do for you? See what we can do?” The violence since 9 October follows a long-standing pattern of violations and abuses; systematic and systemic discrimination; and policies of exclusion and marginalization against the Rohingya that have been in place for decades in northern Rakhine State, the report notes.*
Reports suggest that operations by security forces in the area have continued into January 2017, although their intensity and frequency may have reduced.
“The killing of people as they prayed, fished to feed their families or slept in their homes, the brutal beating of children as young as two and an elderly woman aged 80 – the perpetrators of these violations, and those who ordered them, must be held accountable,” High Commissioner Zeid said. “The Government of Myanmar must immediately halt these grave human rights violations against its own people, instead of continuing to deny they have occurred, and accepts the responsibility to ensure that victims have access to justice, reparations and safety.”
The report concludes that the widespread violations against the Rohingya population indicate the very likely commission of crimes against humanity.
ENDS
* To read the full report, please visit: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/MM/FlashReport3Feb2017.pdf
* See also the June 2016 report by the UN Human Rights Office on the situation of Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/RegularSessions/Session32/Pages/ListReports.aspx . The report was mandated by the UN Human Rights Council.
For more information and media requests, please contact Rupert Colville (+41 22 917 9767 / rcolville@ohchr.org) or Ravina Shamdasani (+41 22 917 9169 / rshamdasani@ohchr.org) or Liz Throssell ( +41 22 917 9466/ ethrossell@ohchr.org)
– See more at: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21142&LangID=E#sthash.a62fhzcg.dpuf
Collateral Damage 