I found some photos today. Most of you will probably be best advised not to view them.
Iconic Photos presents an image of the front page of the May 30 issue of The Times, which displayed one picture of a dead child with descriptive text; I have sequestered the text beneath the fold because it is very graphic:
Here's the text:
One photograph shows a cherubic baby girl, no older than 2, with a tiny gold ear-stud. She is wrapped in a white shroud. Half her skull has been hacked or blown away. A saucer of bone juts from a bloody gash in what remains of her head.
Another shows what appears to be a boy of perhaps 6 or 7. The blanket in which he is wrapped has fallen away to expose a bare white shoulder. He looks as if he is sleeping, but the back of his head has been lopped off like the top of a boiled egg. His brain lies on the blanket behind him.
A third shows a pretty young girl staring upwards, her mouth slightly open as if smiling. Above her right eye there is a large, bloody bullet hole surrounded by a mess of flesh and bone.
The pictures go on, some mercifully out of focus, most far too shocking to print in The Times though our failure to do so spares the Assad regime.
Sixteen of the photos are posted at A Separate State of Mind as The Little Children Terrorists of Syria, and another dozen at More Pictures from the Syrian Houla Massacre.There is a baby wearing nothing but a nappy, seemingly untouched except that it lacks an arm. Another young girl wearing a blood-soaked T-shirt with the word “Baby” or “Dolly” written on it has had her jaw shot away. A man carries the body of a child with only half a head remaining.
"The photos are from the Damascus-based Shaam News Network, a citizen reporting collective."
Warning. The last two links have gore. Extreme gore. Extreme pediatric gore.
I looked at the pictures, all of them, and whilst they made me sick to my stomach, thankyou for posting. It's important that these atrocities are broadcast as far as possible.
ReplyDeleteThere's no excuse for butchering children and babies like this.
I'm 100% with you on this one. Violence will not disappear if you close your eyes or turn your head. Sometimes you have to look into the abys, even if it looks back at you.
DeleteYet the fact that so many women and children were killed in that massacre points to the extreme partisan hatred the perpetrators had against the victims. When one is motivated by such hatred, they will find excuses to kill not only the able-bodied adults whom they consider their opponents, but also wipe out their offspring, so there will be no trace of them left on Earth.
The survivors say that the men who killed their families were men from a different Muslim sect, some of them from nearby villages, but the whole carmage was sanctioned and suported by the regime.
While I've seen pictures of atrocities before I couldn't bring myself to look at these. I've recently become a father and even that Ed Sheeran "Small Bump" song gets me.
ReplyDeleteThis is disgusting and the worst thing is that it happens all over the world and the so-called Powers-that-be do bugger all unless it pays to. The media won't offend them so that's that.
All we can do, all I do is volunteer locally and try and help what suffering I can reach.
Edit: Worse than I imagined, all those little, defenseless... PEOPLE! How anyone could do that - some of that was done up close, it wasn't just like a building fell down or something. How anyone could raise their hand and harm someone so beautiful as a child... it sickens me.
ReplyDeleteAppalling yes. But American soldiers have committed similar atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan. But that's different. Right?
ReplyDeleteAll war crimes on children and civilians in general are horrible.
DeleteHowever, by deferring the conversation to something else, you are not fully involved in the current discussion. It seems like you might not really know what is going on in Syria and as such are generalizing the discussion so you might have something to add about how war is bad.
Quite the contrary. I am fully aware of what is going on in Syria but am unwilling to compartmentalize and therefore direct my horror at a specific, reviled individual or regime when Americans in general, expressing their horror at Syrian atrocities, have yet to acknowledge or perhaps even tolerate a full discussion of similar crimes committed by 'heroes'. Safe to say the 'current discussion' is safe indeed under that limitation.
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DeleteAnonymous, you're welcome to post your sentiment, but clean up your language.
DeleteWhat sickens me most is that Russia and China support Assad. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18424991 ("How Russian and Chinese media justify Syrian support")
ReplyDeleteThe U.S./UK and so on has supported (and do support) similar dictators when it suits them. They are no different.
DeleteVery true, Steve. Proportional to the population, the massacre in Bahrain is much bigger - it got some occasional notes; the repression of the oposition in Saudi Arabia wasn't reported at all. Attacking your enemies' policies while you are doing the same or worse have a name: hipocrisy.
DeleteI am crying just from the descriptions. I couldn't imagine looking at the actual pictures. I would quit my job and go grab my kids out of daycare and never let them go.
ReplyDeleteArguably, that would mess them up for life.
DeleteI know what you mean, though.
I did not look at the pictures. The descriptions were more than enough. Perhaps it is old age, but I have come to not quite trust everything I hear from the press and my government. There has yet to be a war where atrocities are not committed by BOTH sides...and yet it seems that we can conveniently file numerous reports about the atrocities committed by those we want to lose, while overlooking the atrocities of those we wish to win. We know how to do PR with the best of them.
ReplyDeleteI tried to think of how we would feel if a group of Americans took up arms against our nation. What if China and Russia, etc., broadcast every misstep by our military, yet had very little to say about those in rebellion? I mean, I'm sure that there are plenty of powers that would want the government overthrown. Same with Syria.
Consider that in Syria there is an established government. Is it a good one? I don't know of a single "good" Muslim government. Sorry. But the point is ANY government is going to fight for its life when threatened. Do we really think that the government should "share power" because there are those who are discontent? Would WE, the United States, be willing to share power with white supremacists who take up arms against the government? Is that the way we would settle matters? I think not.
I'm not at all saying that the Syrian government is good. I'm just saying that it is almost certain that we are getting only a partial and slanted picture of what is really going on.
lol you do know that Syria is secular right? That Muslims, Athiests, Christians, Jews, Hindu's etx all give their part?
DeleteI disagree completely with the statement "Mass media news outlets understandably filter out or suppress the worst aspects of war."
ReplyDeleteI have been scorned for this belief, but I think the worst parts should be visible. People would not so readily enlist, send their children, and in any way support war if they were privy to its atrocious nature.
We need no suppression. We need to see how ugly it is. Of course with major media being influenced and controlled by the military industrial complex, this will likely never happen. But that's the point. Their product is war. Death, destruction, all masked with patriotism and geopolitical agenda. It is inhumane, and for us to accept the wool over our eyes is a sore mistake, for all of mankind.
Let us not hide from the ugliness, but bring it out into the light. It's the cancer we ignore which kills us.
Perhaps I should have phrased it "Everyone understands that mass media news outlets filter out..."
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