U.S. Condemns Aleppo Barrel Bomb Raids
Secretary of State John Kerry condemned barrel bomb raids that have killed more than 150 civilians in the last four days, calling the Assad regime “barbaric.”
The BBC reports that Kerry’s comments “came after Syrian army helicopters reportedly dropped more barrel bombs on Aleppoon Tuesday, killing at least eight people. The bombs are essentially oil drums or cylinders packed with explosives and metal fragments.
“Five children were among those killed when bombs hit a mosque in the Masakan Hanano district, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based activist group. Witnesses say the almost daily attacks in Aleppo have prompted a mass exodus from several rebel-held districts in the east of the city. Raids in Aleppo have triggered a flood of refugees from rebel-held areas.”
Kerry “said that ‘each and every day that the barrel bombing of Aleppo continues, the Assad regime reminds the world of its true colors. It is the latest barbaric act of a regime that has committed organised, wholesale torture, used chemical weapons, and is starving whole communities by blocking delivery of food to Syrian civilians in urgent need.’”
U.S. Ambassador to Syria Retiring
The New York Times reports that Robert Ford, who serves as the top U.S. representative to the Syrian opposition, is retiring.
When the U.S. embassy in Damascus was closed, the onetime Syrian ambassador “became the chief American envoy to the moderate Syrian opposition and played a central role during the first round of the peace talks in Geneva this month.
“Mr. Ford’s decision to retire comes as the Obama administration’s policy has increasingly come under challenge. Syrian government officials blocked progress at the recent Geneva talks, American officials say, and the Assad government has been slow to get rid of its chemical arsenal under an accord reached last year.
“James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, told Congress on Tuesday that Mr. Assad’s position had grown stronger since that agreement was reached and President Obama withdrew the threat of military force.”
U.N. Report Details Abuse of Children in Syrian War
The Times also reports that United Nations investigators “say in a new report that children in Syria have been sexually abused in government detention, recruited to fight with the opposition, tortured and used as civilian shields.
“The report, the first to assess the impact of the nearly three-year-old Syria war on children, was quietly presented to the Security Council last week, as Syrian government and opposition representatives met in Switzerland for peace talks under the auspices of the United Nations.
“It estimated that at least 10,000 children had been killed and that ‘grave violations against children’ had been committed by ‘all parties to the conflict’ since it began in March 2011. While the report did not discuss accountability, the evidence it presents will inevitably invite discussion about how to pursue accountability for accused war criminals.
“’Ill treatment and acts tantamount to torture reportedly included beatings with metal cables, whips and wooden and metal batons; electric shocks, including to the genitals; the ripping out of fingernails and toenails; sexual violence, including rape or threats of rape; mock executions; cigarette burns; sleep deprivation; solitary confinement; and exposure to the torture of relatives,’ the report said.
“Investigators said they had documented reports of sexual violence against children in government detention, ‘perpetrated mostly by members of the Syrian intelligence services and the Syrian armed forces’ against those who were suspected of being affiliated with the opposition.”
Syrian Opposition Is Disappearing From Facebook
The Atlantic reports on Syrian opposition pages being removed from Facebook, hampering activists’ abilities to organize.
“Facebook was one of the first refuges for Syria’s dissidents — and now it has become one of their last,” it says.
“Which is why the social network’s recent decisions to shut down dozens of opposition pages, including the Kafranbel Media Center that Hamidou administered in exile, have dealt a significant blow to peaceful activists who have grown reliant on Facebook for communication and uncensored — if bloody and graphic — reporting on the war’s atrocities. It’s only the latest chapter in Syria’s well-documented Facebook wars, but it threatens to be the final one for the nonviolent voices who sparked the revolution to upend 40 years of oppressive Assad family rule.
“The SecDev Foundation, a Canadian NGO that runs several digital-security initiatives in Syria — distributing censorship-circumvention tools like VPNs and proxies, and warning about pro-regime hacking schemes — has compiled a list of dozens of pages belonging to opposition citizen-journalism outfits or non-aligned NGOs that have reportedly been shuttered since last fall for posting what Facebook deemed to be graphic imagery or calls to violence. These pages often resurface under different URLs with a fraction of the followers they had before, and sometimes continue operating as they had previously.
“Screenshots taken by SecDev or sent to the group by page administrators capture what appear to be some baffling decisions by Facebook. Take the case of the Daraa al-Mahata LCC. Its page, which documents the violence in Syria’s southernmost city of Daraa, had over 42,000 ‘likes’ when it was removed in October for posting a picture of a man allegedly killed by the Syrian army.”
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