Rights group: Syrian forces have tortured children

Syrian army and security officers have detained and tortured children with impunity during the past year, Human Rights Watch said on Friday. After interviewing more than 100 individuals detained by Syrian security forces since protests began in March 2011, HRW has documented at least 12 cases of children detained under inhumane conditions and tortured, as well as children shot while in their homes or on the street. The humanitarian organisation also documented government use of schools as detention centres, military bases or barracks, and sniper posts, as well as the arrest of children from schools. HRW urged the United Nations Security Council to demand that the Syrian government end all human rights violations and cooperate with the commission of inquiry dispatched by the UN Human Rights Council and the Arab League observer mission. The government should stop deploying security forces in schools and hospitals, Human Rights Watch said. “Children have not been spared the horror of Syria’s crackdown,” said Lois Whitman, children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Syrian security forces have killed, arrested, and tortured children in their homes, their schools, or on the streets. In many cases, security forces have targeted children just as they have targeted adults.” The report documented widespread government violence against peaceful demonstrators, systematic killings, beatings, torture using electroshock devices, and detention of people seeking medical care. Interviews with defecting army officers also corroborate accounts by detainees. An army officer who had been deployed in Douma as part of the 106th Brigade, Presidential Guard, and another deployed in Talbiseh with the 134th Brigade, 18th Division, told Human Rights Watch that they had orders to arrest any male over the age of 14 or 15 in large-scale raids. Some of the arrests took place in schools. “Nazih” (not her real name), a 17-year-old girl from Tal Kalakh, told Human Rights Watch that in May 2011, security forces entered her school and arrested all the boys in her class, after questioning them about the anti-regime slogans painted on the school walls. “About four [officers] jumped over the walls, and the rest came through the main gate. They hit [the boys] with their hands and cursed them. I left school three days after that. I don’t know if [the boys] ever came back,” she said. Four other children interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that they were detained in solitary cells, sometimes with no light or windows, sometimes for several days. “Ahmed,” age 16, spent a total of 10 days in solitary confinement in the Tartous military security detention centre: “They put me in a solitary cell, about one meter by one meter. I was still blindfolded, and there was no light – I didn’t know night from day. Every night I would hear the cries of men and women being tortured. Every day new buses of people would come. Syrian activists have reported dozens of cases of children being by sniper fire or shelling from government security forces in residential areas. In interviews with Human Rights Watch, army defectors confirmed that they fired arbitrarily in residential areas in some cases. “Mohammed,” a doctor treating Syrians in Lebanon who were injured in Syria, told Human Rights Watch in January that he had treated 24 Syrian children in the last two months, and that the majority of them were injured by bullets, some in their homes. Human Rights Watch interviewed two children who said they were shot while inside their homes in Quseir. “Youssef,” age 11, told Human Rights Watch that he was a student until the fall of 2011 when schools closed because of the violence, and that after that he started work in a shop as a car washer. He described being shot in the back at his home in late January: “I came back to my house at 12:30 p.m. – we closed the shop where I work because we knew there would be an attack. Around 2 p.m. they started shelling the hospital near my house, the national hospital, which is about 500 meters from the house. Then they started to hit the baladiye [municipality] building, about 1 km away. I was inside the house, my brother and all my siblings were with me. I heard shooting and felt pain in my back. Then I fell unconscious.” Activists estimated over 6,000 people have died in Syria since pro-democracy uprisings began mid-March, including hundreds of children.