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New York: Pro-government
forces in Syria have detained, tortured and used young children as
human shields during the ongoing conflict, which is now being
called a civil war by at least one senior official, according to a
report released by the United Nations (UN) on Tuesday.
The UN report said it found credible evidence of children as young
as 9 who were victims of killing and maiming, arbitrary arrest,
detention, torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence,
by the Syrian armed forces, the intelligence forces, and the
Shabiha militia. Schools have also been regularly used as military
bases and detention centers.
The evidence was gathered in March by a technical mission which
conducted interviews with victims and witnesses in refugee camps,
villages and hospitals in the region. “In almost all recorded
cases, children were among the victims of military operations by
Government forces [..] in their ongoing conflict with the
opposition,” the report said.
In one documented incident in March, children as young as 8 were
used as human shields when government forces surrounded the
village of Ayn l’Arouz in Idlib province. Witnesses reported that
several dozen children between the ages of 8 and 13 years were
forcibly taken from their homes and placed in front of the windows
of buses which carried military personnel into the raid on the
village.
The UN report was put together to report on child victims
worldwide in armed conflicts during the year 2011, but the
organization said the gravity of incidents reported in Syria
during the first few months of this year required their inclusion
in the report. It follows previous UN reports which documented
similar incidents involving children.
The report goes on to detail how dozens of children as young as 14
years of age were tortured while in detention. “Most child victims
of torture described being beaten, blindfolded, subjected to
stress positions, whipped with heavy electrical cables, scarred by
cigarette burns and, in one recorded case, subjected to electrical
shock to the genitals,” the report said. “At least one witnesses
said that he had seen a young boy of approximately 15 years of age
succumb to his repeated beatings.”
The children were detained and tortured because their relatives
were accused of being members of the opposition or the Free Syrian
Army (FSA), or they themselves were suspected of being associated
with the opposition. Previous UN reports have documented children
being tortured by government forces until they admitted their
relatives were members of the opposition.
But while children have been used as human shields by
pro-government forces, the UN found no evidence that children
under the age of 18 were being enlisted into the armed forces. The
mission, however, did find credible evidence that the armed
opposition, including the Free Syrian Army, has recruited a number
of children, despite stated FSA policy of not recruiting any child
under 17 years of age.
Also on Tuesday, UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous for the first
time referred to the ongoing crisis in Syria as a civil war,
noting increasing violence and the Syrian government having lost
large chunks of territory to the opposition. “I think there is
massive increase of the level of violence,” he said. “So massive
indeed that, in a way, its implicate some change of nature.”
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