A short film by the Syrian activist Bassel Shahade. He was killed two nights ago by Assad’s forces along with two other prominent citizen journalists for the Sham News Network. His funeral at the local Um Al Zinnar church could not be carried out with the dignity he deserved since Assad’s forces made a point to shell the neighborhood and church during the services.

Here is a video a few hours after Bassel and his colleagues were killed. Their bodies wrapped in white sheets as mourners carry them through the streets of Homs.

Bassel was a Fulbright Scholar at Syracuse University in New York pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Film degree in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. He left the university early in order to go to Homs and help show the world what Assad was doing to the city and the country. Here is a dedication to Bassel from the University’s Chancellor.

A very moving story by NPR on Basel’s life.

The film by Bassel above, Saturday Morning Gift,  depicts a young boy in 2006 during Israel’s brutal bombing of Beirut.

You can help the people of Syria, please donate to one of the following or contact your local representatives:  :

Syrian Orphans - A collection of Non-Profit Org’s supporting orphans in Syria

Rise 4 Humanity - Dedicated to helping the children of Syria via donations and awareness campaigns 

Avaaz.org - Int’l organization smuggling medical aid into Syria

Humanitarian Relief For Syria - Supports needy families and orphans as well as distributing aid in Syria

One of the bloodiest civilian massacres in Syria to date that left more than ninety people dead – at least a third of them children.

At noon on Friday, they gathered for their familiar and increasingly futile weekly ritual – an act of peaceable defiance against the regime they loathe. The chants resounded far and wide, audible to the army troops menacingly nearby and to the adjoining Allawite villages largely sympathetic to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. “The Allawites have been hearing our chants for many months,” said Houla resident Abu Jaffour. “And neither they, nor the army have liked what we’ve been saying. Maybe that’s why they did what they did.”  

Three hours later, vengeance rolled into town with a savagery rarely paralleled in the 15-month Syrian uprising. When the shelling and gunfire stopped early on Saturday, more than 90 people had been killed, at least one-third of them children. Some appeared to have been killed at close range as they cowered in barricaded homes.  

In a few short hours, the town of Houla joined the sorry list of localities whose names have become synonymous with the merciless slaughter of civilians. Srebrenica. Nyarubuye. My Lai. Up to now, the Syrian conflict has killed 13,000 people. But until this weekend, it had yet to include the mass slaughter of nursery-age infants.

Click the title to read more … 

AL JAZEERA ENGLISH NEWS REPORT: HOULA MASSACRE - Scores have been killed in an attack by Syrian government forces and loyalists on Houla, a town in Homs province, according to activists.

The Syrian National council has asked the United Nations to take immediate action after what it called a “massacre”.

Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan reports.

THE REPORT CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES.

The mutilated bodies of a mother and four of her five children have been found in the latest atrocity in Syria, an apparently sectarian killing confirming the collapse into a murderous civil war. 

***MUST WATCH*** BBC’S LYCE DOUCET TRAVELS TO HOMS WITH UNITED NATIONS MONITORS. Please watch and share. Witness a fraction of the utter destruction and devastation that Assad’s army has brought upon the Capital of the Syrian Revolution.

Thanks @Samsomhoms

More than a month after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised to provide non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition movement, leaders battling a brutal government crackdown say almost none of that aid has arrived.  

Clinton announced April 1 the USA would provide medical and communications equipment and supplies, with the State Department pledging $33 million in non-lethal aid by the end of the month. Saleh Al-Hamwi, a leader of the Syrian Revolution General Commission, said Friday from Hama, Syria, he knows of only five satellite phones provided by the U.S. government.

Click the title to read more …

Thanks @usgrant63

Ahmed blinks away the tears as he recounts his family’s ordeal. His hands, frail and trembling, roll up his trousers to show the bruises on his knees where they first beat him with sticks. Then he lifts his shirt to reveal the deep burns on his back.

Syrian security officials tortured a pregnant mother and a father with electric shocks in front of their infant sons, according to an eyewitness who was held in the same cell. 

Former Syrian soldiers who’ve escaped to northern Iraq are telling grisly stories of how their units executed unarmed civilians for demonstrating against the Assad regime and staged mass reprisals when residents shot back, on one occasion lining up and shooting 30 defenseless civilians.

The former soldiers — Syrian Kurds who’ve crossed the mountainous border into Iraq’s Kurdistan region in small groups over the past three months, a group that now totals well more than 400 — also brought tales of colleagues being shot for not firing on civilians. One former special-forces noncommissioned officer even said he suspected that other government troops had orchestrated an ambush his unit endured, in an effort to motivate the unit to kill civilians.

Members of a special United Nations commission of inquiry said they’d heard many reports of soldiers being shot for not shooting civilians but that they hadn’t been able  to confirm them. The U.N. investigators said they hadn’t heard reports of government-staged ambushes against its own forces.

Reports of brutality against Syrian civilians in the year since the government of President Bashar Assad has moved aggressively against demonstrators demanding Assad’s removal are nothing new. But those accounts have come largely from members of the opposition or refugees, who’ve told investigators of them.

The testimonies of the former soldiers, however, are the first accounts from individuals who were serving in military units that allegedly carried out the atrocities. They provide new substance to the U.N.’s accusations that the Syrian government may be guilty of “crimes against humanity” for its brutal suppression of the anti-Assad uprising.

Click the title to read more…

CHANNEL 4 NEWS ON SYRIA - As the bombardment in the Syrian city of Homs continues, Channel 4 News broadcasts a special report from a photographer who captures with shocking clarity the intense assault on the city. 

Another excellent piece of writing from @AmalHanao

The Syrian revolution undeniably belongs to the street. It’s rooted in the public realm where masses of physical bodies occupy the squares and real voices fill the air with defiance against the brutality of a relentless regime. The virtual realm of the revolution is a strong, second line of defense. Communities of online activists in Syria tirelessly spread the voices and events from the street as far and wide as possible, while the activists outside Syria continue the ripple effect, transferring what is happening inside Syria across the world.

Supporters of the regime like to demeaningly describe the Syrian revolution as iftiraadiyyeh, hypothetical, “a virtual revolution,” fueled by outside forces far from Syrian streets (thus, Syrian interests). They mark the protesters as traitors falling prey to a “universal conspiracy” against Syria’s sovereignty.  

Click the title to read more…

SYRIAN TV ANCHOR DISCLOSES THE LIES AND PROPAGANDA SHOWN ON STATE CONTROLLED TV (ENGLISH SUBS) 

Charlotte McDonald-Gibson in Damascus talks to an activist who survived 21 weeks’ interrogation by Syria’s security forces.

It was a single egg that made Jolan, a 28-year-old activist, realise he was going survive Syria’s notorious torture chambers. He was blindfolded and locked in what he describes as a metal coffin, and each morning his tormentors would push a small piece of bread and a hard-boiled egg through a narrow opening by his head. But his cramped box – so short he could not straighten his legs – was tilted and his hands were bound, so for five days the egg would simply roll away and drop to the floor through a hole by his feet.  

Days earlier, Jolan had been sitting in a park in Damascus on a sunny morning, waiting for a friend from the burgeoning protest movement aimed at forcing President Bashar al-Assad from power. Instead, about 30 regime security personnel surrounded him. Before he could even think about fleeing, a rifle butt to the back of the head knocked him out cold.

Click the title to read more…