I’ll be brief, because time is of the essence.
There are people dying. More specifically, there are children dying. Children.
My children are 2 and 4. If someone killed them you can bet your ass I would make it my life’s work to hunt down the person who did it and revisit their crime upon them in as slow and fascinatingly painful a way as possible. The parents of the Syrian children murdered in Houla last Friday can’t do this because they were killed too, as part of a State-sanctioned operation against opposers of the Assad regime.
When the news broke that the children in Houla were killed not by bombs but shotguns on Wednesday, the extraordinary and eloquent Potty Mummy tweeted this:
“You don’t have to find words – just read, & pass on the link. Everybody should read this piece. http://thetim.es/LGeHOb #Syria #StopTheKilling”
I read and retweeted.
Today I signed the petition and wrote this post.
When Londoners were rioting, I wrote about the legacy that we leave our children. In the face of the crisis in Syria, the London riots seem a piffling matter of burnt buildings and stolen stuff. This is about killing children. They could be my children. They could be your children. They are all our children.
We have a collective responsibility to the children of Houla and their parents to stop this killing, and to ensure that all children have the right to grow up safe from fear, so that they can be the statesmen we hope they will be, the ballerinas, the princesses, the pirates that they dream of becoming, and so that they can enjoy the childhood they have now.
What you can do to help:
(thanks Chris for this list)
Please tweet using #Syria #StopTheKilling and #TippingPoint
Retweet any posts you see using the above hashtags
Share this post and others on Facebook
Sign the petitions here and here
Write a post of your own
Go on! You know you want to tell me what you think!