Powerful animations reveal plight of Syrian children in new charity campaign
Updated 13 March 2017
Arab News
DUBAI: Humanitarian group Save the Children has released a harrowing series of animations showing how the war in Syria has taken its toll on children.
The animated images were created by photographer Nick Ballon and artist Alma Haser and are overlain with testimony by Syrian children who fled the war and now live near the Syria-Turkey border, according to a release from Save the Children.
“I hate it when I am alone,” nine-year-old Hassan, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, says in in one of the videos.
According to the release, Hassan saw his father shot dead and has since become withdrawn.
“When I get afraid my body starts shaking,” Hassan says in the recording, “I dream of a big bird, bigger than me, that I can ride it and fly away.”
“At my aunt’s house my cousins all died,” nine-year-old Nesreen says. “I hope my voice will be heard by everyone. ... We don’t want anything else, just help for Syria.”
Meanwhile, the United Nations’ child relief agency said Monday that at least 652 children were killed in Syria in 2016, making it the worst year yet for the country’s rising generation.
Palestinian NGO condemns Israeli act of ‘revenge’ after prisoner abuse video
A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military priso
Updated 5 sec ago
AFP
RAMALLAH: A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison. Just days before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Ben Gvir held a tour of Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Channel 7 reported. In footage filmed on Friday and broadcast by the channel, around 20 police officers are seen storming a hallway leading to prison cells, brandishing their weapons and firing stun grenades. They then pull five detainees from their cells, their hands tied behind their backs, forcing them face-down onto the floor. The operation took place as a bill proposing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism awaited a final vote in the Israeli parliament. “This is all part of ongoing displays meant to take revenge on Palestinian detainees,” Abdallah al?Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, told AFP on Saturday. “Everything Ben Gvir and the far?right government are doing affects not only the Palestinian people and prisoners in detention camps — it also impacts the global legal and human rights system,” he added. Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, is considered one of the most hard-line members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition. “It is simply a source of pride — arriving at a prison like this, a prison for terrorists, the vilest of the vile, seeing them like this,” Ben Gvir said in the video. “I want one more thing: to execute them — the death penalty for terrorists,” he added. Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Saturday said the remarks were “a new war crime and a blatant challenge to international humanitarian law regarding prisoners.” International rights groups have repeatedly warned of alleged abuse and mistreatment inflicted in Israeli prisons since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel. While the death penalty exists for a small number of crimes in Israel, it has become a de facto abolitionist country, with the Nazi Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann the last person to be executed in 1962.
