Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...
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| children killed in Syria civil war |
Many others raped, tortured and maimed says report of United Nations
The Syrian civil war blacked lifes of thousands of people. Thousands more have also been forced to flee their homes during the three-year conflict, according to a report released this week to the Security Council and posted on the UN website. Many more are the victims of the use of heavy weapons by government forces and allied militias in their fight with rebels who oppose the regime of president Bashar al-Assad, the report says.
However, it adds, both sides in the conflict are guilty of abusing and misusing children, with even the Free Syrian Army - the so-called moderate opposition - recruiting them for combat roles.
The report says methods of torture inflicted on children include beatings with metal cables, whips and metal batons; electric shock, 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. It cites a 16-year-old boy as saying he witnessed his 14-year-old male friend being sexually assaulted and then killed.
During the first two years of the conflict, most killings and maiming of children were attributed to government forces, the report says.
However, opposition groups had increasingly engaged in such acts in 2013 owing to increased "access to heavy weapons and the use of terror tactics".
On receiving the document, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon urged "all parties to the conflict to take, without delay, all measures to protect and uphold the rights of all children in Syria".
"The present report highlights that use of weaponry and military tactics that are disproportionate and indiscriminate by government forces and associated militias has resulted in countless killings and the maiming of children, and has obstructed children’s access to education and health services," he said.
"Government forces have also been responsible for the arrest, arbitrary detention, ill treatment and torture of children.
"Armed opposition groups have been responsible for the recruitment and use of children both in combat and support roles, as well as for conducting military operations, including using terror tactics, in civilian-populated areas, leading to civilian casualties, including children."
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