Simon Tisdall - Don’t call them Syria’s child casualties. This is the slaughter of the innocents
Murdered children are
no longer news. International media coverage of the war in Afghanistan,
where child deaths reached an all-time high last year, is sporadic
at best. In Yemen it is estimated that at least 85,000 under-fives have died of starvation since 2015, a
figure that numbs the mind. In Syria, especially, it is hard to keep count
because children are being killed almost every day – and who is
really counting?
Harrowing images
briefly capture public attention. One of the more recent showed five-year-old Riham struggling amid the rubble of her bombed home in
Ariha, in Syria’s north-western Idlib province, to save her baby sister,
Tuqa. Riham died later in hospital along with her mother and another sister.
Thanks to her efforts, and White Helmet rescuers, Tuqa survived.
But the following day,
at least another 10 civilians, including three children, were killed in air
raids on villages and towns in rebel-held areas of Idlib, Aleppo and Hama.
According to Save the Children, more children have been killed in the past
month than in the whole of 2018. Monitors say there have been 800 deaths since
the Syrian regime’s Russian-backed offensive in Idlib began in April, 200 of
them children. Most of these murders were not captured on video.
There are more
comfortable ways to describe child deaths. The word “casualty” suggests the
killings might even be accidental. But murder is what it is, and what it should
be called. These are war crimes and crimes against humanity, ultimately carried
out at the behest of two leaders – Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Russia’s
Vladimir Putin – who must one day face justice, or else international law is
meaningless. “Intentional attacks against civilians are war crimes, and those
who have ordered them or carried them out are criminally responsible for their
actions,” Michelle
Bachelet, the UN’s human rights chief, declared last week. Earlier in
Syria’s eight-year war, she said, the world had shown considerable concern.
“Now, airstrikes kill and maim significant numbers of civilians several times a
week and the response seems to be a collective shrug.”.. read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/03/syria-idlib-child-deaths-airstrikes-assad-putin-russia