Latest victim of Syrian troops is a seven-year-old protester

Published on Monday 13 February 2012 12:16

Seven-year-old Julnar Nakeshbandi was shouting messages of solidarity for civilians in the war-torn Syrian city of Homs from her bedroom window when the sniper shot her. Hit twice in the stomach she died later that day, just before dawn prayers.

As Syrian troops unleashed the first wave of the week-long onslaught on Homs, mosques had broadcast a defiant and rare night-time call to prayer.

“Julnar heard the mosque’s call, so she started to wake me up. She wanted to join in,” said her mother in an interview this weekend. “I put a chair at her bedroom window for her to stand on and I started chanting ‘Allah Akhbar’ with my daughter’.

Suddenly gun shots rang out, and the little girl fell to the ground with two bullet wounds in her stomach. Panicked, her mother rushed her to a neighbour’s apartment. From outside came the constant rattle of gunfire as government troops sought to silence the protest.

“I knelt quietly next to my dying daughter on the floor. I held her hand, I whispered with her verses that Muslims must say before they die,” said her mother. “Around me everyone was weeping and screaming. Somebody massaged her chest.”

Frightened of the incendiary reaction that might come from the little girl’s death, the funeral was a rushed and controlled affair. Security forces prevented the attendance of men at her funeral. Only her father and two brothers were allowed to go.

“In the Muslim world it is the men who go to the funeral. They dig the grave, they conduct the ceremony,” said Julnar’s mother. “But only we, the women of the family were allowed to go. It was us who dug my daughter’s grave.”

Julnar’s father was made to sign a paper confirming that his daughter was killed by a stray bullet. But, defiant, her mother is certain it was a targeted killing, but that the bullet was intended for her.

A prominent activist involved in the organisation of anti-regime demonstrations, she is known for her hatred of president Bashar al-Assad. Living in a Homs community that is mixed between Sunni Muslims and the ruling minority Alawite sect, it is a stance that is much opposed by some.

“I am not sure who shot my daughter, but I am sure it was an Alawite,” she spat, her sadness suddenly subsiding to flaring rage.

As the violence in Syria shows little sign of abating, the Arab League called yesterday for the UN Security Council to send a joint UN-Arab peacekeeping mission to Syria and decided to scrap its own monitoring team.

Arab ministers met in Cairo to revive diplomatic efforts after Russia and China vetoed a UN resolution that called for Mr Assad to step aside. That resolution was based on an Arab peace plan and had Western backing.

The Arab League also called for “opening communication channels with the Syrian opposition and providing all forms of political and material support to it”. It also urged the opposition to unify its ranks.

The League said yesterday that the Arabs would scrap their monitoring mission which had been sent to Syria in late December but which was criticised by Syria’s opposition as ineffective from the outset. It also faced internal dissent and logistical problems.

The Sudanese general leading the observers quit yesterday

“I won’t work one more time in the framework of the Arab League,” General Mohammed al-Dabi, whose appointment had been criticised because of Sudan’s own rights record, said.

“I performed my job with full integrity and transparency but I won’t work here again as the situation is skewed,” he added.

In place of the Arab team, the League called for the UN Security Council to issue a resolution setting up a joint UN-Arab peacekeeping mission to go to Syria

The League said violence against civilians in Syria had violated international law and “perpetrators deserve punishment”. It also reaffirmed a call for Arabs to implement economic sanctions on Syria and decided on ending diplomatic co-operation with Damascus.

“How long will we stay as onlookers to what is happening to the brotherly Syrian people, and how much longer will we grant the Syrian regime one period after another so it can commit more massacres?” Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal asked ministers at the League session.

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