Revealing Assad's Government Actions Against Children After Torturing or Killing Their Parents

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights announced in a report that the officials of Bashar al-Assad's government systematically mistreat Syrian children and erase the identities of those who have lost their parents under torture in state prisons. According to this organization monitoring developments in Syria, documents indicate that children detained with their parents were sent to state-run child care centers under the pretext of being 'homeless.' The Assad government's security services handed these children over to social affairs offices, merging them with orphans and unaccompanied children, thereby concealing their parents' deaths and erasing their family identities. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported, based on testimonies from employees of some of these centers, that the Assad government arrested all family members of opponents and, after killing the parents, transferred their children to state centers. According to this UK-based organization, the Assad government committed these crimes to erase the children's identities and hide evidence of its systematic abuses. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights further noted that some individuals involved in these crimes have attempted to infiltrate these centers to destroy evidence and documents related to their involvement in these crimes. This organization reported, citing a Syrian mother, that after her husband was killed, she had no information about her children's fate until the fall of the Assad government and recently managed to find them in a child care center in Damascus. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has called on local and international human rights organizations to begin efforts to protect these documents and initiate investigations into these crimes. The organization has also requested that the new rulers of Syria identify and confirm the identities of the children present in the state centers of the Assad government. Following the peaceful protests of Syrian citizens against Bashar al-Assad's government, this regime, with the support of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, brutally suppressed opponents and protesters, resulting in nearly 14 years of civil war in Syria, with hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens killed and millions more displaced.