"Gay Girl in Damascus" fake?

[8bitagent]

Perhaps I'm a bad parapoliticker, but I just can't ignore the fact the Syrian arm is on an all out bloody blitzkrieg, leveling town after town.
(tho funny how the neolib/neocon hawks on Libya are silent this time around)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp ... 1#43371960

[JackRiddler]

Perhaps I'm a bad parapoliticker, but I just can't ignore the fact the Syrian arm is on an all out bloody blitzkrieg, leveling town after town.
(tho funny how the neolib/neocon hawks on Libya are silent this time around)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp ... 1#43371960

Not at all. But given this thread topic, how does that fool MacMaster do anything but add to the madness?

.

[Joe Hillshoist]

So what is happening in Syria?

Remember the allegations of the 13 year old boy tortured to death recently? Did that actually happen, or was he shot and tramped by a crowd?

[Spiro C. Thiery]

In it, the author says the narrative was fictional but insists it "created an important voice for issues I feel strongly about."

Echoing Jack Riddler: Bullshit, shit, shit, shit...

It says the author never expected so much attention.

Sounds like he's accepting a fucking award.

What gets me, as well, is that the stealing of someone's identity is potentially putting that person in danger. If some nut had killed her, it wouldn't be "creating an important voice" would it? That woman should take him to the cleaners, and moreover, I know there has to be some kind of law against doing what he did.

They could have hoaxed without a photo - the implication having been since this thing got sussed: she'd have to conceal her identity. So why the photo? To create not just a voice, but a face. And a bigger lie. This does nothing to further anyone's cause.

I think this story goes together well with the Nokia ARG. Same kind of compulsive exploitation of real events to draw attention to one's fictionalized version, with the excuse that the attention is a good thing in itself.
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... =8&t=32316

Yep. Absolutely.

[Spiro C. Thiery]

Perhaps I'm a bad parapoliticker, but I just can't ignore the fact the Syrian arm is on an all out bloody blitzkrieg, leveling town after town.

Not at all. But given this thread topic, how does that fool MacMaster do anything but add to the madness?

Exactly.

(tho funny how the neolib/neocon hawks on Libya are silent this time around) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp ... 1#43371960

The neolib's propaganda arm notwithstanding, I take all press reports on war with a huge block of salt. The current administration's hypocrisy might be exposed to anyone paying attention, but Syria isn't exactly being ignored by the drum machine.

A better comparison to the outright dis-ingenuousness from the Americans (and forgive me for straying off topic) is the fact that Bahrain is doing exactly what Libya had done, but buried in Frau Merkel's excellent White House adventure was this:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/06/07/readout-president-s-meeting-his-highness-salman-bin-hamad-al-khalifa-cro

The President met today and had a productive discussion with His Highness Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince of Bahrain, following the Crown Prince’s meeting with National Security Advisor Tom Donilon. The President reaffirmed the strong commitment of the United States to Bahrain. He welcomed King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa’s decision to end the State of National Safety early and the announcement that the national dialogue on reform would begin in July.

You see, this White House understands the importance of branding. "State of National Safety" could have come straight out of the US president's PR unit. Forget that what it really means is "shooting protesters, jailing suspects, and torturing opposition". It's good to be king.

At this point, the hoaxer's best defense would be that every government on the face of the earth has whole armies of disinfo agents doing the same kind of shit.

[8bitagent]

Perhaps I'm a bad parapoliticker, but I just can't ignore the fact the Syrian arm is on an all out bloody blitzkrieg, leveling town after town.
(tho funny how the neolib/neocon hawks on Libya are silent this time around)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp ... 1#43371960

Not at all. But given this thread topic, how does that fool MacMaster do anything but add to the madness?

.

Oh he adds more layers of confusion. I agree, it's a nuisance and does noone any favors. And in fact, did you see this?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43369742/ns ... ork_times/

The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy “shadow” Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks.

The effort includes secretive projects to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries, as well as one operation out of a spy novel in a fifth-floor shop on L Street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype “Internet in a suitcase.”

Financed with a $2 million State Department grant, the suitcase could be secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet.

The American effort, revealed in dozens of interviews, planning documents and classified diplomatic cables obtained by The New York Times, ranges in scale, cost and sophistication.

Some projects involve technology that the United States is developing; others pull together tools that have already been created by hackers in a so-called liberation-technology movement sweeping the globe.

The State Department, for example, is financing the creation of stealth wireless networks that would enable activists to communicate outside the reach of governments in countries like Iran, Syria and Libya, according to participants in the projects.

Anyone who thought the US government had any sort of qualms about their once puppet regimes being "toppled" is out the window. I still won't say 100% the revolutions are CIA/Pentagon orchestrated...but its no secret the US has clearly made its position clear that its all for the rebels(unless they are rebelling against Saudi/Saudi backed regimes)

[8bitagent]

Perhaps I'm a bad parapoliticker, but I just can't ignore the fact the Syrian arm is on an all out bloody blitzkrieg, leveling town after town.

Not at all. But given this thread topic, how does that fool MacMaster do anything but add to the madness?

Exactly.

(tho funny how the neolib/neocon hawks on Libya are silent this time around) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp ... 1#43371960

The neolib's propaganda arm notwithstanding, I take all press reports on war with a huge block of salt. The current administration's hypocrisy might be exposed to anyone paying attention, but Syria isn't exactly being ignored by the drum machine.

A better comparison to the outright dis-ingenuousness from the Americans (and forgive me for straying off topic) is the fact that Bahrain is doing exactly what Libya had done, but buried in Frau Merkel's excellent White House adventure was this:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/06/07/readout-president-s-meeting-his-highness-salman-bin-hamad-al-khalifa-cro

The President met today and had a productive discussion with His Highness Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince of Bahrain, following the Crown Prince’s meeting with National Security Advisor Tom Donilon. The President reaffirmed the strong commitment of the United States to Bahrain. He welcomed King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa’s decision to end the State of National Safety early and the announcement that the national dialogue on reform would begin in July.

You see, this White House understands the importance of branding. "State of National Safety" could have come straight out of the US president's PR unit. Forget that what it really means is "shooting protesters, jailing suspects, and torturing opposition". It's good to be king.

At this point, the hoaxer's best defense would be that every government on the face of the earth has whole armies of disinfo agents doing the same kind of shit.

I agree completely.

Obama has launched a full on air/cruise missile/drone assault on port cities in Yemen(Conflict #6 in 10 years!) recently, once again under the auspices of "funding al Qaeda"...of course, funding/arming al Qaeda in Libya is totally kosher.

The Bahrain/Saudi thing is interesting, as America is sworn to protect its autocrat oil gulf state buddies almost as much or more than Israel.

[Spiro C. Thiery]

The Bahrain/Saudi thing is interesting, as America is sworn to protect its autocrat oil gulf state buddies almost as much or more than Israel.

Perhaps a reason why the Israelis spy on the US in spite of there acquiescence on almost every question.

[8bitagent]

The Bahrain/Saudi thing is interesting, as America is sworn to protect its autocrat oil gulf state buddies almost as much or more than Israel.

Perhaps a reason why the Israelis spy on the US in spite of there acquiescence on almost every question.

Do you think there's truly Saudi/Israeli cooperation with military and other maneuvering, or true animosity? It seems Israel is further and further isolated the more time goes on.

[Spiro C. Thiery]

The Bahrain/Saudi thing is interesting, as America is sworn to protect its autocrat oil gulf state buddies almost as much or more than Israel.

Perhaps a reason why the Israelis spy on the US in spite of there acquiescence on almost every question.

Do you think there's truly Saudi/Israeli cooperation with military and other maneuvering, or true animosity? It seems Israel is further and further isolated the more time goes on.

You would think there would be animosity on some level for sure. As far as them being more isolated, I sense that too, but since I hear that a lot nowadays, I try to take into consideration that the commonality of that perception might influence mine a bit as well. It also seems that they have always felt that way, which has led to a pretty deplorable human rights record since their inception. One thing I have little doubt about is that Israeli Jews are more polarized and support for their government "from the left" internally is probably at an all-time low.

Ditto all of the above for the US, by the way.

[AlicetheKurious]

Do you think there's truly Saudi/Israeli cooperation with military and other maneuvering, or true animosity?

Both. There's no rule that says states have to like each other to do business together when it suits their purposes.

Saudi/Israeli cooperation goes back a long way, at least since the 1950s, when Israel covertly worked with Saudi Arabia to defeat the revolution in Yemen, and with the Jordanian king in 1970 to defeat the Palestinian uprising in Jordan. Both Saudi Arabia and Israel strongly support the Hariri-led "March 14" camp in Lebanon, the former overtly, the latter semi-covertly, and share a strong enmity against the Syrian regime. (BTW, Saudi's King Abdullah; assassinated former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri; Abdelhalim Khaddam, Syria's former vice president and an implacable foe of the Assad regime currently exiled in Paris; and Rifaat al-Assad, Syria's former Intelligence Chief who was forced to flee Syria after a failed coup attempt...all happen to be brothers-in-law).

Saudi Arabia (especially via the Saudi ambassador in Washington, Prince Bandar) played a very important role in partnership with Israel in the Iran-Contra scandal. Both view Iran as a major enemy, and although there is no evidence that I'm aware of that they've directly cooperated to destabilize it, given their history of working together I'd be amazed if they hadn't.

There are also very large Saudi/Israeli joint business ventures and partnerships and mutual investments, etc., especially in the international financial sector and in the petroleum sector around the Caspian Sea. I posted about the latter some time ago here at RI.

The strange choice of Saudi bedfellows is not limited to Israelis, either: Prince al-Waleed ibn Talal is the second-largest investor in Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., owner of the rabidly anti-Muslim, anti-Arab FOX News.

Yes, Virginia, in politics appearances can be deceiving.

[JackRiddler]

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EDIT: To add this quote and fix language.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13744980

SNIP

Mr MacMaster said he had just tried to show some of the struggles of people living amid political upheaval in the Middle East and to "illuminate them for a western audience".

But political and gay activists have reacted furiously to the revelation.

"Because of you, Mr MacMaster, a lot of the real activists in the LGBT [lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender] community became under the spotlight of the authorities in Syria," wrote Daniel Nassar, an editor of the Gay Middle East blog.

"You took away my voice, Mr MacMaster, and the voices of many people who I know."

BangPound, one blogger who investigated the story, wrote on Twitter: "There is no positive side effect of the Amina hoax. It did not bring attention to Syria. It brought attention to a white fantasy."

MacMaster is such a terror-art-narcissist diva. The feverish, lonely white man found a way to make everyone believe his fantasy was real, about being a young lesbian girl in love and helping to overthrow the state. They want to run some guy out of Congress for sending pictures of his dick to a handful of recipients (while apparently not understanding the concept that everyone can see your TwitterDic). This guy caused the world's media to believe in the reality of his soft-porn fan-fic avatar, as a result of which a few more real Syrians you'll never hear about will be arrested, brutalized, maybe killed. In other words, he's done more damage to random innocent people than Bradley Manning!

At the minimum he's a dirty, unscrupulous, sociopathic liar willing to hurt the lives of strangers just to satisfy his fantasy needs. But why isn't he a liar now? His story (I just wanted to feel like a girl and make you write about it!) could be the cover for a spook who's been burned. The paranoia line has shifted, but not gone away: At first it was terrible to doubt she existed. Now it's established she didn't, you'll be a conspiracy theorist if you don't think it was all MacMaster.

.

On the announcement by the State Department that it will help set up shadow cell-phone networks and "Internet in a box" for dissidents to evade the surveillance of repressive authorities: Don't you know a PR campaign when it bites you? Why do you think they're telling you about this tippity-top sensitive program, with all the dangers for anyone caught with the US technology to be hanged as a spy (depending on the country)? Why just now, when a bunch of the USG's favorite proxy states are carrying out massacres and crackdowns on their own people?

The USG has been setting up communications for chosen dissident networks since the 1950s at least, when they were doing it in the Soviet bloc countries (and got most of the poor freedom-loving patsies rolled up by their authorities). They've also been setting up fake oppositions since that time. Why are they announcing this? Do they specify countries? (Don't you just know the number one planned beneficiary is Iran?) How do you join up? "Hey dissidents in authoritarian states, contact your nearest US embassy's CIA station to receive your free Internet-in-a-box today!"

That's an image campaign about how much the USG is for freedom and democracy and would love to monitor and coopt your movement today. The USG would like to have control-hooks into both, your tyrannical government and your opposition movement. Bets must be hedged. Everyone is expendable. Figure it out: They don't want to encourage revolutionary movements, they do want set up their own alternatives that they can use as assets.

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[Spiro C. Thiery]

At first it was terrible to doubt she existed. Now it's established she didn't, you'll be a conspiracy theorist if you don't think it was all MacMaster.

A lot of people vaguely remember that there was a woman who claimed that the Iraqis were yanking Kuwaiti babies from incubators. But no one can put a face or name to the American sailor in Panama, allegedly forced to watch his wife raped (that is if they even remember the story and not just the general haze that Noriega = Tony Montana).

I say lock up MacLiar so that he can earn his heroic status by taking one for the team, whoever that might be.

[Belligerent Savant]

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http://mobile.kcfr.org/news/front/13714 ... ePage=true

Some excerpts:

Tom MacMaster, the man who admitted he was behind the Gay Girl In Damascus blog, said the blog was something that was created "innocently and then got out of hand."

"I mean there was no malice on my part at any point, no intention of really running a massive hoax," MacMaster told us in a telephone interview from Turkey, where he is vacationing with his wife Britta Froelicher.

...

As we reported yesterday, MacMaster, an American from Georgia who is in a medieval studies graduate program at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, revealed that Amina did not exist and that he was the sole author of the blog.

...

In our interview, MacMaster, 40, said he didn't recall what year he created the Amina character, but a Yahoo! messaging group called "alternate-history" has records of Amina as far back as February of 2006.

MacMaster said he created Amina so he could "have a discussion about the real questions" on subjects like the Middle East or U.S. involvement in Iraq. He said with a name like Tom, people would immediately question his alliance to the U.S. But with Amina, people would engage in full conversations.

MacMaster posted on different websites and listservs as Amina and suddenly he found himself with an "extremely full and vivid character." He wrote a back story for her and started writing a novel based on her. As a way to flesh the character out, he created profiles of Amina on different social networking sites to create a "depth of character."

He used Amina's profile, he said, so he could snoop around sites that MacMaster couldn't. And he was living the character so much, he would walk into restaurants and know immediately, what Amina would like on a menu and what she wouldn't like:

For years, his interactions had no consequences. His relationships were strictly about discussing issues like science fiction and Mid-East politics, but earlier this year things changed.

He logged on to a lesbian news site called LezGetReal and left a couple of comments on a couple of articles on Syria. That got him the notice of the website's editor, Paula Brooks who asked Amina to write for her:

"I was flattered," MacMaster said, because he wanted to be a writer.

He wrote a few pieces for LezGetReal and then decided to start a blog of his own — Gay Girl In Damascus — to chronicle Amina's stories. That came not too long after the fall of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the deposed president of Tunisia. It also marked the beginning of the Arab Spring.

..

Amina got media attention and that, said MacMaster, felt good.

"When I got a first couple initial media bites, I was extremely flattered and impressed with myself that here I had written something that was fictional but it was getting taken seriously as a real event," he said. "It appealed to my vanity that here I am, I'm so smart, I can do this."

But at the same time he knew he had taken it far enough. MacMaster said he thought when he had moved the Amina character to Damascus in the fall of last year, he was going to walk away from it. But the Arab Spring called her back. He said she would have a lot of things to say about it. But keeping up with Amina was taking up one to two hours of each day and his story was unraveling.

So he decided he would have Amina kidnapped by Syrian authorities. Here's how he narrated what happened next:

What MacMaster never expected was the outpouring of support for Gay Girl In Damascus. Facebook groups formed around her, calling for her freedom and even the State Department sought to get involved to try and help her out of the situation she was in.

"I was supremely stupid and miscalculating and I shouldn't have created that story" MacMaster said. "But I needed to shut things down and everything's been shut down."

Since MacMaster's confession went up, the reaction from the blogosphere has been harsh. A lot of criticism thrown his way was that he had thrown all bloggers in the Middle East into question, both in their countries and in the Middle East.

MacMaster said he's well aware of that and he "feels awful."

"I've created a situation where people are going to be extremely irritated with me and I don't blame them," he said.

MacMaster said that was part of the reason he kept Amina going. If he was discovered, the Syrian government could point to him and say "see how these foreigners are trying to malign our country:"

"If I continued with the masquerade, I could keep from creating that situation for them," he said.

...

MacMaster said Amina was born out of a fascination with the Middle East. He said he's been so enthralled with Syria, for example, that he was banned from Wikipedia for making too many edits on the country.

In a piece, yesterday, The Washington Post paints a portrait of MacMaster that has him as a Middle-East peace advocate who grew up in a Mennonite household in Harrisonburgh, Va. His mother told the Post that "He was raised in a family that has a warm feeling for the Middle East." He attended Emory University and traveled to Baghdad during the Persian Gulf War on a peace mission.

MacMaster said he learned three things throughout this ordeal:

The first, he said, is like a New Yorker cartoon, in which a dog is at a computer and the caption says, "On the Internet no one knows you're a dog."

"That cartoon could be my motto," he said.

The second is that people have a propensity to believe. And the third, he said, is that media coverage of the Middle of East is "superficial," that no one stopped to question him. (As a side note, in order to confirm that MacMaster was indeed in control of the Gay Girl In Damascus blog, we asked MacMaster to make a small change on the blog. We verified that he indeed controls the blog.)

[JackRiddler]

.

What an asshole. What a set of self-serving observations and fake apologies. "My art helped educate ignorant Westerners see what things are like in Syria." "My science discovered people are too stupid to tell a fake and their understanding of issues is superficial, and therefore performed a service." How about a few words of praise for the Electronic Intifada and other real-deal Web sleuths who nailed his cracker ass?

THIS is the reality MacMaster's sociopathic stunt serves to obscure:

June 13, 2011

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/13/s ... rth_policy

Syrian Troops Pursue “Scorched Earth” Policy; Videos Document Children Tortured to Death

The Syrian army has taken control of the northern town of Jisr al-Shughour following what state media has described as heavy fighting by "armed groups," who residents say are mutinous soldiers defending the town. Our guest Neil Sammonds, Syria researcher for Amnesty International, is interviewing refugees who have fled the violence by crossing into Turkey. They tell him Syrian military forces have destroyed houses, burned crops, slaughtered livestock and contaminated water supplies. We speak with Razan Zaitouneh, a lawyer and human rights activist based in Damascus. She has documented that children are among those killed by snipers, or kidnapped by security forces, tortured and killed. [includes rush transcript]

AMY GOODMAN: The Syrian army has taken control of the northern town of Jisr al-Shughour following what state media has described as heavy fighting. State television reported Sunday that the army was fighting, quote, "armed groups." But residents and activists have countered this claim. They say many in the army are defecting, and the military has been fighting mutinous soldiers defending the town.

The government operation forced many more refugees across the border. The U.N. refugee agency said Sunday that more than 5,000 refugees from Syria had crossed into Turkey.

METIN CORABATIR: The latest figure UNHCR received from the border area is 5,051 persons who fleed from Syria because of the violence and persecution in this country.

AMY GOODMAN: On Friday, about a hundred protesters gathered outside U.N. headquarters in New York urging the organization to take action against the Syrian regime.

ASSAD AREF: It has gotten to a point that killing is daily in Syria. And we are here to tell the United Nations enough is enough. They have to condemn the Syrian regime.

AMY GOODMAN: Speaking to reporters in Cartagena, Colombia, on Saturday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed concern at the situation in Syria.

SECRETARY-GENERAL BAN KI-MOON: I have issued many statements, and I have talked to President Assad several times. And I have urged him in person through my telephone talks that he should—he must take bold and immediate, decisive actions to listen to the people and to take necessary measures to reflect the wills of the people. I am deeply concerned and saddened by so many people have been killed in the course of peaceful demonstrations.

AMY GOODMAN: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

To talk about the situation in Syria, we’re joined on the phone by Neil Sammonds, Amnesty International’s Syria researcher. He is in a Turkish border village a quarter mile from the Syrian border.

We’re also joined from Damascus by Razan Zaitouneh, a lawyer and human rights activist. She’s been reporting on the recent protests for various online networks.

And we’re going to Ottawa, Canada, to Maher Arar, former victim of U.S. extraordinary rendition, now a human rights activist. He was seized at New York’s Kennedy Airport in September of 2002 and sent to Syria, where he was tortured.

But we’re going to start in Damascus right now. Welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about the situation there.

RAZAN ZAITOUNEH: There is continuing daily protest around the country. Every night, every—actually, during the week, most of the protests happen in the night. Every night, dozens of thousands of people are protesting in Damascus, in the suburb of Damascus, in Homs, Hama, in the whole country, especially in this time, when there is a Syrian city under siege, under army and security forces in Jisr al-Shughour. The situation there is disastrous, actually. Even though the regime declared that the military presence there is end, but the security there is still raiding houses, killing people. Only yesterday, 10 people got killed in [inaudible] Jisr al-Shughour, a massive wave of arrests among people who didn’t leave their houses. Thousands of people are continuing to flee their houses, not only to Turkey, to the Turkish border, only to Syrian villages far away from Jisr al-Shughour.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the level of protest, Razan Zaitouneh, in the streets? How afraid are people in Damascus right now, where you are?

RAZAN ZAITOUNEH: Maybe in Damascus, as you know, it’s—the level of is less than another places. There’s continuing daily protests in Damascus in different areas. In center of Damascus, Al-Midan, in Al-Qadam, in the oldest neighborhoods in Damascus, it’s still not in the same level of another cities, like Homs or Hama or Daraa, for example, but it’s continuing and it’s daily.

AMY GOODMAN: What about these reports of the helicopter gunship attacks, Razan?

RAZAN ZAITOUNEH: It’s for sure. We got videos, we got photos, of this helicopter, shot people in Jisr al-Shughour. It was a real, real war against Jisr al-Shughour and its neighbors during last few days. You can’t imagine that hundreds of troops, tanks and helicopters went to just make this process against a small city like Jisr al-Shughour. It was really like war situation.

AMY GOODMAN: And the reports of the killing of children, Amnesty, I think, has more than 80 names of children who have been killed, children and teenagers. Videos are emerging, one by one, gruesome videos, Razan.

RAZAN ZAITOUNEH: Actually, yes. Most of the children who got killed, according to our reports, were killed in their houses by snipers, when they—on windows, on balconies. Some of them who are between 14 and 15 got kidnapped and arrested in the streets, like what happened with Hamza al-Khateeb and Tamer. They were participating in the protests, which was going to break the siege on Daraa, when they got kidnapped by the security. And after days, they were delivered to their families as dead bodies, tortured awfully. It’s confirmed that the security didn’t separate, didn’t make any difference in dealing with Syrian people. It doesn’t matter if the person is 80 or is 10 years old. Everybody will be treated equally in torturing, in killing. And this is what the statistics shows, actually.

AMY GOODMAN: Razan, there was a report of a protest outside the Turkish embassy in Damascus. Now, in many cases, people are gunned down when they protest in the streets. Here, as they were trying to take down the flag of the Turkish embassy and put up the Syrian flag—Turkey is accepting thousands of refugees into Turkey now—there was no attack like that. Who were these people protesting?

RAZAN ZAITOUNEH: It’s not only in front of the Turkish embassy. There is the security and shabiha. Daily they make a protest to show support to the regime, to show opposed to Al Jazeera, TV channel. They’re protesting daily in front of its office in Damascus, and yesterday in front of the Turkish embassy. If anybody, we have daily protests. All our protests, which demand for our freedom, is faced with security. Many got arrested. Many got killed. But for sure, those who are protesting for—they are pro-the-regime, they are from the regime, they are security and shabiha. They can do everything freely without anybody telling them anything.

AMY GOODMAN: So let us go to the border right now. We’re also joined by Neil Sammonds, who is the Syria researcher for Amnesty International, in a Turkish border village about a quarter-mile from the Syrian border, from Guvecci. Can you tell us exactly what’s happening there? Welcome, Neil.

NEIL SAMMONDS: Yes, hi. Thank you very much. Yes, well, the—it’s a small border village, Guvecci. And as far as I’m aware, the Syrians aren’t actually living there, but tens of them are coming across every day, and they are now collecting bread and Pepsi bottles and so on, and they’re then sneaking back across the border and they’re taking them to their families and neighbors who are displaced on the other side. On the other side, we can see tens of tents. And on the other side of the hill, apparently, there’s up to 10,000 people who are basically living under trees, and they’ve spent the night in the woods and under rain, actually. You know, it’s quite high altitude, and it was a cold, wet night.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us what people are describing who are coming across the border from Syria, Neil.

NEIL SAMMONDS: Well, it’s really a very chilling picture, from everyone I’ve spoken to today, and I’ve spoken to, I don’t know, up to 50 Syrians. They come from different villages around Jisr al-Shughour, most of them, and from Jisr al-Shughour itself. They say that no one is left in the city, and only in one or two villages, perhaps some elderly people left. The army, they say, and the security forces, backed up by a paramilitary organization, the shabiha, the "ghosts," have gone into those villages, and usually with tanks first, they’ve shelled the houses, and then the army has gone in and they’ve killed many people. It’s difficult to say figures. Some say tens, some say hundreds, some say thousands. That may be too high; it’s impossible to verify.

And not only that, they’ve gone on with something like a kind of scorched earth policy, because they say that livestock is being slaughtered, the crops have been burned, food has been burned, water supply has been contaminated. Basically, the population of northwestern Syria close to the Turkish border has just been driven up to within a few kilometers of the border here with Turkey.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve also been in the hospitals there, Neil Sammonds?

NEIL SAMMONDS: Yes, I was in the state hospital yesterday, and I’ll probably go back later today. There, I spoke with about half a dozen Syrians. Through the cases, I—well, I spent a lot of time on, they were quite mixed. One was a agricultural worker. He’s 40 years old, illiterate. He said he was working his land near a demonstration one day, and he got shot in the leg and then taken off by the army to a security center, where he was very badly beaten. And after about five days, when he thumb-printed some papers which he couldn’t read, he was allowed to go. And then he managed to get up here to hospital for treatment.

Another person was a first aid worker. He worked for the Syrian Red Crescent. He said he was treating wounded people, or trying to treat wounded people, at least, during killings in the city of Jisr al-Shughour on Saturday and Sunday, and then he was shot in the back. And then he was taken up to treatment.

Another person, a construction worker, he was shot in the back. He says he was a demonstrator. He was amongst, he says, about 15,000-20,000 people who were marching towards military linesmen. They opened fire upon his—top of his leg has been shattered. And then, yeah, he was ferried up here, where he’s been.

The Turkish government has certainly done a pretty good job of receiving people, but until now it’s a little bit of a mystery about why they haven’t actually allowed journalists and others access into the camps, although it appears that their treatment has been very good.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, this is very significant. You know, many Libyans have also fled to Turkey, and they’ve certainly allowed access to the media. On the one hand, they’re allowing thousands of Syrians to come in, but not allowing them access to journalists means that it protects the Syrian government. Yet you’re there. You’re a human rights researcher. How are you traveling around there on the border?

NEIL SAMMONDS: Well, in the border area, you know, it’s fine to move around, and there’s not any clear Turkish security presence trying to stop anyone doing anything, except for around the camps. So, if you get to within 50 meters or so of these camps, which have actually now got like blue tarpaulin around them, so that—whereas maybe a week ago, people say that you could go up and talk to them through the fence. Now the government has actually closed up those little holes, so people aren’t able to talk to people in there. Another journalist was saying that she had been able to throw stones or rocks with little messages attached to them, and people were then able to kind of read them and send them back, so there was a little bit of communication like that. But even that is very difficult to happen at the moment.

People feel perhaps after the elections yesterday here, with the AKP winning again, or perhaps for other reasons, that it was unsure what the government would actually decide to do to deal with access to the camps. People are hopeful. We’re still trying to get in. And we would have thought, as Amnesty International, that we might have a slightly more benign influence, if we were allowed to be in, but it’s unclear.

AMY GOODMAN: Neil Sammonds, would you say that there would be more international response, if access was allowed to hear these stories of what you call a scorched earth policy on the part of the Syrian government and military?

NEIL SAMMONDS: Very possibly. That’s what it is. I mean, people who came here, you know, a week or so ago probably saw the worst events in Jisr al-Shughour, and that is not being adequately documented by anyone. You know, journalists and others aren’t allowed into Syria, obviously. At the same time, we have the Security Council deliberating very, very slowly yet again whether it can even condemn the killings. And it’s pretty disgusting they won’t go as far as condemning, let alone referring the situation in the country to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, which appears to be the only way that there would ever be an end to the killing there and to the impunity, which the Syrian government and security forces have enjoyed, sadly, for decades.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Neil, the killing of children—Amnesty has documented how many children killed? It sounds like far more than was previously believed.

NEIL SAMMONDS: Yes. You know, thanks to kind of trusted human rights activists in the country, I mean, we have 82 names. That’s until—that was three days ago, it was 82, you know, 16 and below. And amongst those, we have even five who appear to have been tortured to death—most shocking cases. And I’ve, you know, had some mixed [inaudible], and on a—you know, looking at a number of the videos of these people’s bodies after they’ve been returned to their families, and, you know, with like their heads beaten to pulps and broken bones and bullet wounds, skin scraped across, perhaps from, you know, acid or something—it’s difficult to say—electrolysis. You know, and this is to children. I mean, how far does a regime go to try to terrify its people into stopping to pressure for change? It’s astonishing. But really quite inspiring, as well, of course, that the Syrian people are continuing to go into the streets and to demand their legitimate rights, even though they know they may get a bullet in the head.

AMY GOODMAN: Neil Sammonds, I want to thank you for being with us on the Syria-Turkish border, on the Turkish side, there for Amnesty International, joining us from Guvecci, a Turkish border village. And thank you to Razan Zaitouneh, a lawyer and human rights activist in Damascus, Syria, who risks a great deal as she reports on the recent protests.

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, we turn to a Canadian citizen who was tortured in Syria—not now, well, almost a decade ago. He was sent to Syria by the U.S. government. He was a victim of extraordinary rendition. He’ll talk about the situation today and then. Stay with us.