Afghan teacher Meher Afroza with her students at an Islamic school in Kabul. Under the Taliban, few girls attended school. Today 3 million girls go to school, and 20 percent of university of graduates are women. (Photo: ADEK BERRY/AFP/Getty Images)

World leaders, dignitaries and reporters will convene in Chicago next week for the 2012 NATO summit, and among the urgent questions they will consider is that of Afghanistan’s future after the 2014 withdrawal of U.S. and allied troops.

Yet Afghanistan’s female leaders were denied a place at the table for these critical discussions—despite Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s promise that the United States would not forsake the rights of Afghan women.

Indeed, recent developments signal that the significant but tenuous gains Afghan women have made over the past decade are mere bargaining chips in negotiations between U.S., Afghan and Taliban leaders seeking to expedite the transition to Afghan rule. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has proposed a program of “reintegration and reconciliation” with the Taliban that holds grim implications for women and girls, and in March he briefly endorsed an edict issued by a council of clerics that would allow husbands to beat their wives in certain situations and encourage gender segregation in workplaces and schools.

One of our ads in Chicago in time for the NATO summit

Thankfully, Afghan women refuse to be silenced. As the NATO summit begins next week, two prominent women leaders, Afifa Azim, executive director of the Afghan Women’s Network, and Manizha Naderi, executive director of Women for Afghan Women, will take part in Amnesty International’s May 20 Shadow Summit for Afghan Women, in Chicago. They will not only raise their voices in defense of women’s rights, they will argue that the full political, economic and social participation of women in Afghan society is vital to lasting peace.

Nargis Nehan, head of Equality for Peace and Democracy in Kabul, told NPR:

“We know how to communicate with the rest of the world, and we do have our own constituencies within Afghanistan—not only women, but also men.”

This generation of Afghan women leaders have finished school, graduated from university and won 27 percent of the seats in parliament in 2010. They have spoken to the international media and appealed to the U.N. Security Council to defend hard-won human rights advances—including a new law prohibiting violence against women,  early and forced marriage, and the deprivation of access to property, education or healthcare.

The question of history is a thorny one for the United States as it prepares its exit from a decade-long military intervention that has “quagmired” two administrations. But the Obama administration must not submit to political expediency and allow the Afghan government’s overtures to the Taliban and other insurgent groups to threaten women’s rights. At this critical moment, Afghan women desperately need us to stand with them to make sure that their rights are not swallowed up by the quicksand of transitional politics.

Carlos DeLuna was executed by the state of Texas in 1989. A new study by Columbia University could prove his innocence.

The USA has almost certainly executed innocent men in the so called “modern” era of capital punishment, since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. One of them may have been Carlos DeLuna, who was put to death in Texas in 1989 for the killing of gas station attendant Wanda Lopez in Corpus Christi.

Today, a comprehensive report and website by James Liebman and a team of students in the Columbia University Human Rights Law Review makes a compelling case for DeLuna’s innocence.

To explain how this wrongful conviction and execution could have happened Liebman et al. point to the

“failure of lawyers on the defense as well as the prosecution side to have the curiosity and gumption to look just an inch or two below the surface.”

This is an all-too common occurrence, argue the authors, when there is a general indifference to an “obscure” victim like Wanda Lopez, making such cases “ripe for miscarriage” of justice.

This report, Los Tocayos Carlos, follows on the heels of an investigation by the Chicago Tribune, amplified by the film At the Death House Door, which already made it fairly clear that Texas authorities had the wrong Carlos.

Carlos Hernandez was the other Carlos, the man Carlos DeLuna said had stabbed Wanda Lopez. At trial, prosecutors declared that Hernandez was a “phantom” made up by DeLuna, but this wasn’t true. He was in fact well-known to Corpus Christi law enforcement as a man with a propensity to frightening violence and a love of knives. A career criminal who was almost always out on parole, he continued to assault women after DeLuna was sent to prison.

In November 1983, Hernandez was arrested for attacking his wife with an axe handle. He got 30 days in jail for a misdemeanor, but his parole wasn’t revoked. The judge who issued this light sentence was the father of the lawyer who had inadequately represented Carlos DeLuna.

Carlos Hernandez repeatedly told others that he killed Wanda Lopez and that a tocayo (namesake) was paying for the crime. Hernandez also told people he was responsible for a 1979 murder for which he was indicted but never tried. A former detective admitted that tipsters had told him Carlos Hernandez was the real killer of Wanda Lopez, but that information was apparently never pursued.

The failure to investigate Carlos Hernandez for the killing of Wanda Lopez, or to adequately punish him for other crimes, suggests a cruel indifference to the people of the community he was terrorizing. As the authors put it:

Wanda Lopez’s worthy and unimpeachable life was dishonored not only by the inattention to her plight on the night of February 4, 1983, by everyone in a position to help her, but also by the nonchalance with which everyone in a position to find her killer carried out that responsibility.

The people in this Corpus Christi community paid the price for this nonchalance, and it appears Carlos DeLuna paid the ultimate price.

If you think the death penalty is wrong and the risk of executing the innocent is too high then do something about it by joining our fight to abolish the death penalty in every US state.

"Pussy Riot" (Image via Wikipedia)

Three young women in Russia may spend seven years in prison for “hooliganism” after a flash punk rock performance at a Moscow church that criticized President Vladimir Putin.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina and Ekaterina Samutsevich, alleged members of the controversial band Pussy Riot, were arrested in March 2012 and are being held in pre-trial detention following the politically-fueled performance at Moscow’s famed Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.

Pussy Riot is a Moscow-based anonymous feminist band that, for the last year and a half, has played unauthorized “flash performances” to protest government policies (watch them in action here).  Pussy Riot’s members use their right to freedom of speech – through music – to shed light on what they perceive to be a corrupt government. In an interview with the Guardian, band member “Garadzha” explains:

“We understood that to achieve change, including in the sphere of women’s rights, it’s not enough to go to Putin and ask for it. This is a rotten, broken system.”

Her bandmate “Tyurya” goes on:

“The culture of protest needs to develop. We have one form, but we need many different kinds.”

They hope that through their music and performances – like the generations of musician activists worldwide who’ve come before them – they can inspire change in their country.

Cathedral Of Christ The Saviour

So what was it about their most recent performance that persuaded the government to potentially lock the women up for seven years? The song, “Virgin Mary, Redeem Us of Putin,” calls on the Virgin Mary to become a feminist and banish then Russian President-elect Vladimir Putin. It also criticized the dedication and support shown to Putin by some representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church. The performance was part of wider protests against Putin and unfair elections in Russia.

The hooliganism charge against Pussy Riot is overblown and isn’t really about disrespecting the Orthodox Church, but for challenging the return of Vladimir Putin to the Russian presidency. Using a church that was once destroyed because of intolerance to advance a governmental policy of intolerance for dissent is unacceptable.

The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the world’s tallest Orthodox Cathedral, where the performance occurred has its own tumultuous history with oppression and crack-down on free speech.  The late 19th century Cathedral was demolished in 1931, with other houses of worship throughout the Soviet Union, by the Stalin regime. The Cathedral was rebuilt in the early 1990s. While it deserves preservation and respect, so do the human rights of the members of Pussy Riot.

If you agree, tell the Russian authorities to drop the hooliganism charges against the arrested members of Pussy Riot.

In 2005, state and national governments approved a massive steel plant here, and the South Korean steel company POSCO prepared to sink $12 billion into the project. Yet from the beginning, local residents objected to this top-down development, which would push them from their farmland and fishing spots, depriving them of their homes, land, and livelihoods (if history is any guide, they were likely to end up in distant urban slums).

After hundreds of villagers were forcibly evicted last summer opposition stiffened locally, across India and around the world. By late 2011, the Orissa government began resorting to jailing peaceful protest leaders on false charges. First it was Abhay Sahoo – who had also been jailed for 10 months in 2008-9. Then, it was Narayan Reddy.

But this spring, there have been victories for human rights and the environment in Jagatsinghpur. In late March India’s recently established National Green Tribunal ruled that the 2011 government clearance of the project was “arbitrary and illegal” for failing to take into account the full scale (and thus environmental impact) of the project, slated to be the biggest foreign direct investment project in the country. This reversal was met by much hand-wringing in business circles about the negative signal it would send to potential foreign investors in India. Not surprisingly, the ruling was welcomed by those most affected by the project. Days later, protest leader Abhay Sahoo was released by an Indian court.

The struggle isn’t over, and the gains have not come easily. Narayan Reddy remains in jail for his dedicated non-violent activism in an attempt to silence him and delegitimize the movement against the POSCO plant. You can help free him and tell the Orissa state government to stop its plans to forcibly displace thousands of families.

Michael Selsor

Oklahoma carries out more executions per capita than any other state in the USA (though things might slow down as the state is currently down to its last dose of pentobarbital, the anesthetic in its lethal injection cocktail).

In September 2010, Al Jazeera reporter Josh Rushing put together a video piece on the Oklahoma and U.S. death penalties. Now, he has supplemented that with his interview of Michael Selsor, who was first sent to Oklahoma’s death row in 1976, and a blow-by-blow description of Selsor’s execution on May 1, 2012 for the 1975 killing of convenience store clerk Clayton Chandler in Tulsa.

The interview with Selsor (which took place back in 2010 and was the only one he ever gave) is particularly interesting and reveals a man who was remorseful, reflective, somewhat resigned but also prideful.  He was sorry for his crime, but never reached out to the victim’s daughter:

“And really if I could say look I’m sorry for what I’ve done, I’m sorry I killed your dad, what the hell would that mean to her?”

Like Merle Haggard in the country classic Mama Tried (“That leaves only me to blame ‘cos Mama tried”), Michale Selsor didn’t fault others for his crime:

“No. It would have to be a different me. I don’t wanna blame my parents for my shortcomings.”

Selsor comes across as a plain-spoken man who accepted his guilt, and his punishment.  But he also observed that “…somewhere along the road there should be some kinda redemption.”

Sadly, there isn’t, not with the death penalty. There is only retribution.

Was the 57-year-old man put to death in Oklahoma’s execution chamber last week the same person who committed that terrible crime 36 years ago? From the article describing the execution we learn this:

“When school children visited the prison, Selsor played a regular part in the tour. From behind bars he shared his life lesson about the consequences of one’s actions with the children.”

This would seem to suggest that Oklahoma authorities believed Michael Selsor had become a better man. At his clemency hearing, corrections workers testifed that:

“Selsor was a model inmate who often looked out for younger men and helped them adjust to prison life.”

But whatever self-improvements Michael Selsor made were meaningless under a law that places no value on the human capacity for change.

Maria Vargas and Maira Garcia wait on line to get married at the City Clerk's office in Brooklyn, New York, on July 24, 2011, the first day gay couples were allowed to legally marry in New York state. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

President Obama’s courageous statement today in support of marriage equality was a boon to the human rights movement. The president’s announcement was especially heartening following the news yesterday that North Carolina passed a ban on marriage for same-sex couples and other partnership agreements and that Republican state legislators effectively blocked the Colorado Civil Union Act from going to a vote.

The president’s statement is also an important act of global human rights leadership that will no doubt lend hope to lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in countries like Saudi Arabia, Uganda and Cameroon who face threats of execution, torture, imprisonment and persecution for their sexual orientation.

Yet we must remember that marriage equality for LGBT people is a human right, and as such should not be left for states to “decide the issue on their own,” as President Obama suggested today.

These policy debates have big real-life implications, ranging from additional logistical burdens that complicate the wedding-planning process to access to health care that could make the difference between life and death.

“My partner and I plan to get married next summer,” said Emilie Segal, a rancher in Laramie, Wyoming. Although the state recognizes civil unions people enter into in other states, Emilie and her partner will have to travel outside Wyoming to get married, and they cannot purchase a family health care policy. Furthermore, neither their civil union nor their impending marriage would be recognized by current federal law.

“It’s an issue of economic and social justice. A couple with resources can move to a gay-friendly state, but those without resources cannot. We shouldn’t have different rights and freedoms based on where we live or our economic status.”

It was moving to hear the president speak of how his daughters’ experiences had influenced his views on the issue—a sign that, in some parts of the country, at least, a sea change is underway. But LGBT people in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin—all states that have laws banning marriage for same-sex couples—should not be denied their human rights just because their state legislators have not had similar epiphanies.

Indeed, the rights of LGBT people on a range of issues, including marriage, hospital visitation, adoption, housing, and employment, vary wildly from state to state. Human rights are by nature inherent and universal—not regional—and we must continue our work to advance this understanding at all levels of government.

Families of migrant workers in Morang district, Nepal, 2011, who were interviewed by Amnesty International.

 “Migrant workers from Nepal and other countries are like cattle in Kuwait.  Actually, cattle are probably more expensive than migrant workers there.  No one cares whether we die or are killed. Our lives have no value.” –N.R., domestic worker from Ilam district, Nepal

Anyone who has waited for a flight at Kathmandu, Nepal’s international airport has seen the large groups of men and women quietly lining up to board flights for Qatar or Malaysia, many appearing nervous, clutching only their papers or a small bag of belongings.

But the men and women boarding these flights have reason to be nervous. While some Nepalese migrant workers arrive in the destination country and earn decent wages, others end up in forced labor or exploitative conditions.

These are some of the estimated 25,000 people a month who leave Nepal for work abroad to escape poverty and unemployment at home and to send remittances back to their families in Nepal.

Amnesty details the exploitation of workers by unscrupulous Nepalese employment agencies who charge exorbitant fees and often deceive workers about the jobs, salary, and conditions of work to which they are agreeing. Already deeply in debt to pay the outrageous fees of recruitment agencies, many feel compelled to accept any employment that is offered. Others, especially women, face exploitation as sex workers.

Once abroad, some labor at back-breaking construction jobs for 12 hours a day in the heat of the desert; others work grueling hours in factories with no days off; and some end up as virtual slaves trapped in private homes as domestic helpers. One woman described her harrowing experience working as a domestic worker in Kuwait in this way:

“I was tortured, hit with belts, starved and locked in the toilet all night.”

It shouldn’t be this way. Working abroad can be safe if the Government of Nepal were to enforce its own legislation and regulate rogue employment agencies.  Governments in the receiving countries must also do more to protect migrant workers. 

Please sign the online petition calling on Nepal’s political parties to take urgent steps to protect the rights and lives of Nepalese migrant workers.

Will Armenia step up protections for women? (Photo KAREN MINASYAN/AFP/Getty Images)

The smallest yet probably oldest of the successive Soviet nations, Armenia prides itself for its ancient traditions. In his International Women’s Day statement, President Serge Sarkissian wishes women “happiness, luck, and healthy and strong families,” commending the preservation of women’s “traditional role.”

Does the latter include being a victim of violence? The Armenian government’s very poor record on combating widespread violence against women may suggest so.

Armenia is the only country among its Council of Europe neighbors without legislation criminalizing domestic violence. Armenia’s government has been arguing that it will pass comprehensive legislation once the Council of Europe finalizes its convention on the issue. It’s been nearly a year since the Council of Europe convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence opened for signatures, yet Armenia hasn’t ratified it (see the interactive map of countries that have).

Here are five reasons why Armenia must step it up in the fight against violence against women. If you agree, take action here.

1. Way too many. Amnesty International’s November 2008  “There’s no pride in silence: domestic and sexual violence against women in Armenia” report found that 25% of women in Armenia are victims of abuse. Even worse, victims don’t have effective access to the criminal justice system, shelter, medical care, redress, and reparation.

2. Way too unfair. In May 2010, a teacher who had continuously sexually and physically abused mostly girls at a boarding school for disabled children was sentenced to only two years in prison (while a businessman who had sexually exploited teenage boys received a 15-year sentence). Initially, when prominent female activist Mariam Sukhudyan alerted the media about the abuse, law enforcement promptly pressed charges - not against the pedophile but the activist!

3. Way too little. In October 2011, military contractor Yanis Sarkisov was sentenced to an only ten-year prison term for brutally beating his wife Zaruhi Petrosian to her eventual death. According to Petrosian’s sister, the wife had endured ongoing cruel physical abuse at the hands of Sarkisov and his mother, who was never charged with the murder.

4. Way too unbelievable. In 2011, a 13-year-old girl was allegedly raped by her father, and the police carried out no effective investigation. But the worst was yet to come. The society turned against her and her mother, with the parents of her classmates demanding her expulsion and neighbors demanding their eviction. The rape victim’s mother says her daughter is suicidal.

Even when the violence is caught on tape, Armenia’s authorities can dismiss it, especially if the assailant is the appointed governor of Syunik – Suren Khachatrian. In 2011, he hit businesswoman Silva Hambardzumian in the lobby of a hotel after being accused of corruption. Despite security camera video showing the assault, the authorities dropped Hambardzumian’s claim, explaining that she had not sustained an injury! And the ruling Republican Party refused to condemn the assault, let alone fire the governor. In other words, an Armenian official can hit a woman without facing any penalty as long as she doesn’t sustain injury.

5. Way too important. Armenia’s government must raise awareness of violence against women as an unacceptable and punishable crime and a human rights violation, as nonprofits don’t have the mechanism to carry out this monumental mission by themselves.

Please take action to send Armenia’s authorities the message that domestic violence legislation should be adopted now, before it’s way too overdue.

In his press conference on the eve of the arraignment the Chief Prosecutor, General Mark Martens, tried to address this issue:

“Some have said that any attempt to seek accountability within the Military Commissions system must inevitably be tainted by torture… we acknowledge your skepticism, but we also say that the law prohibits the use of any statement obtained as a result of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and we will implement the law.”

Of course the law also requires the state to investigate allegations of torture – yet in the case of the five defendants being arraigned this hasn’t happened. That might explain some of our skepticism.

Yet, it keeps ‘spilling’ out at every turn.

Almost as soon as the arraignment began the courtroom feed was cut and white noise pumped into the viewing gallery because one of the defense attorneys had “spilled” classified information by trying to raise how his client had been treated in custody.

Only minutes after proceedings had got back underway the defendants then refused to listen to the translation of the court proceedings through the headphones they had been given.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s attorney David Nevin explained to the court why his client wouldn’t wear the equipment provided:

“The reason he wouldn’t put the headphones in his ears has to do with how he was tortured.”

Judge Pohl was forced to order consecutive translation over the court’s PA system, the cumbersome logistics of which bedeviled almost every subsequent exchange.

Not long after that Mr. Nevin asked the Prosecution to identify the individuals sitting at the back of the courtroom on the government’s side commenting:

“The presence of unknown shadowy people is extremely disturbing for my client.”

The individuals in question were FBI Agents observing the arraignment.

This is a defense tactic to be sure, but it is a legitimate tactic nonetheless. If the defendants had been handled lawfully it wouldn’t be an option.

The Military Commissions are in part designed to make it easier for the government to navigate the legal problems that the past ill-treatment of the Guantanamo detainees has created.

But this is not a problem that can be process-managed away.

One of the most interesting developments observing this proceeding was the apparent matter-of-fact acceptance on all sides of the courtroom that what happened to the defendants in CIA custody amounted to torture.

The word ‘torture’ came up repeatedly throughout the arraignment but at no point did anyone on the government side, either in the courtroom or in press briefings, try to make the argument that the Enhanced Interrogation Techniques used on them did not amount to torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

Even Judge Pohl seemed to have made up his mind on this point telling the defense at one point that there would be an opportunity for the defense to ‘right this wrong’ at trial.

During the Omar Khadr trial the question of torture and duress was largely brushed under the carpet. The premature end of the case in a guilty plea deal meant that the court’s decision to exclude testimony relating to Khadr’s mistreatment in U.S. custody was quickly forgotten.

That is not likely to happen this time.

The 9/11 defendants seem intent on contesting this case to the bitter end and at some point the torture issue is going to have to be dealt with or any subsequent convictions will be beyond unsound.

In conversation with reporters, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali’s Defense Counsel James Connell made a prediction:

 “[This] is only the beginning of a trial that will take years to complete, followed by years of appellate review. Indeed, we may all meet again another ten years from now if the Supreme Court strikes down the Military Commissions as unconstitutional for the second time.”

This is not an entirely unlikely scenario. It will certainly be years until we reach the final arguments in this case. It’s going to be years before it even starts.

This is all so unnecessary, if this case had gone to federal court immediately after the defendants had been captured it would have completed years ago – as more than 350 terrorism-related cases have been since 9/11.

That’s what is so depressing about the Military Commissions – nobody is being well served by this process. Not the defendants, not the victims, and, most certainly, not the American people.

Tom Parker is currently at Guantanamo Bay to observe the Military Commissions proceedings against five alleged 9/11 co-conspirators

A Syrian family sits around a fire resting in the northewestern village of Janoudia, in Idlib province, as they wait to be helped by rebels of the Free Syrian Army to cross the Syrian border with neighbouring Turkey. (Giorgos Moutafis/AFP/Getty Images)

Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s senior crisis adviser, was in Syria’s Idlib province for 10 days at the end of April. Here she reports some of the first-hand accounts of the brutal crackdown by the Syrian regime against its people:

“Soldiers came to our home and took my son. Later, as I was peering out of the window I saw soldiers line up eight young men standing facing the wall with their hands tied at the back and shoot them. Then they put the bodies in the back of a pick-up truck and left. I don’t know if the men were all dead or injured. At that point I did not know that one of the men was my son. His body was found with other bodies at a school not too far from our home.”

A relative of another man, who was also killed that day told me:

“Members of the military security came to the house of our relatives, where we were staying and asked for our ID and did not find any problem; we were not wanted. Then one of the soldiers looked at my relative’s cell phone and found a pro-revolution song.

They took him outside … A neighbour told me the soldiers had shot him and then taken him to a nearby house; I went there and found him injured. He had been shot in the ear and neck but was still breathing. Some neighbours helped to carry him to the car and three of them took him to a field hospital (normal hospitals have long been out of bounds to people injured by the army/security forces) but on the way there they were stopped by soldiers and were killed.

Their bodies were later found at a school, except the body of my relative who had been taken back to the house where he had previously been left for dead. They had finished him off with an additional shot to the head.”

These are the accounts of relatives of victims and witnesses of extrajudicial executions carried out by the Syrian government’s security forces in the city of Idlib on April 16th. They only agreed to meet me and speak on condition that their names and any details that could identify them would not be published. Others, whom I was able to reach after much chasing, said they could not speak as the danger of retaliation against them and their families is too great.

To say that families of victims and eyewitnesses are scared is an understatement. Those I met were literally terrified.

Syrian mother with her two sons, one of them holding a picture of his four-year-old brother Iyab who was killed in an attack by government forces. (Ricardo Garcia Vilanova/AFP/Getty Images)

A man whose wife and child were shot during the army’s heavy-handed incursion into Idlib city a month and a half ago (March 10 to 14) simply said:

“I don’t care about myself, but I have other children; if something happens to me who will look after them?”

An elderly woman whose son was taken from home by soldiers and then found dead later that day told me she has no news of another of her sons who was arrested by military security weeks ago.

“I’ve already lost one son; I don’t want them to kill the other too,” she said.

A woman whose house was burned, looted and ransacked on 11 March told me that the only possibility for reporting the attack to the authorities was for her to say it had been carried out by “armed groups”.

“The neighbours saw it was military security members who attacked my house. It was the middle of the day and there were tanks and soldiers and security forces members everywhere in the area; how on earth could this have been the doing of armed groups? So I did not lodge a complaint.”

I got to Idlib a few days before the arrival of the UN observers. Most people I spoke to were sceptical that their presence would make any difference. Others were very keen to speak to the observers but were desperately worried and frustrated that they would not have the opportunity to do so safely.

They feared that with the current level of military presence and surveillance there is just no way for ordinary people to approach the observers in confidence. Indeed, during the few days I spent in the city the place was swarming with uniformed and plain-clothes army and security personnel; pick-up trucks with anti-aircraft machine guns were stationed all over the market area and elsewhere in the centre of town, and there were checkpoints all over the city.

On Friday morning, I saw a very large contingent of uniformed soldiers and pro-government armed gangs known as shabiha being transported in open-back lorries and a couple of hundred of them being unloaded in the Dabbit district, in the centre of town. People still did not know the UN observers were coming to town but commented that any post-Friday prayer demonstration was clearly out of the question. As I was leaving a house in Dabbit a UN convoy was passing by; they were certainly not going to be held up by any traffic jam; the streets were completely empty.

In several villages and towns around Idlib the scars of the recent army incursions are very visible. Hundreds of houses have been burned down and everywhere I met families whose relatives were killed. Many were killed in exchanges of fire, in what seemed rather futile attempts by hopelessly outgunned armed opposition fighters to prevent scores of army tanks from entering the towns and villages. Others, both opposition fighters and people not involved in any fighting, were extra-judicially executed after they were arrested at their homes and those of their relatives.

In Saraqeb, a woman told me that in the afternoon of 26 March soldiers came to her home and took her 15-year-old son and then her 21-year-old brother from the neighbour’s house next door.

“I begged them not to take my boy, I told them that he is just a child, he still watched cartoons on TV; I tried to shield him with my body but they threatened me and took him away. And they also took my brother from the next door house. In the evening their bodies were found in the street, with others who had also been killed.”

In Taftanaz I met the families of two 80-year-old men who were killed in their homes during the army incursion into the town on 4 April. One was burned in his home. His wife told me:

“I had been staying with relatives across the street and my husband was at home. When I went back home I found it burned down but did not find my husband. I went out and asked the soldiers outside where they had taken him. I thought they had arrested him. A soldier replied ‘Go back in and look for him’. I went back and found his remains in a pile of ash.”

In Sarmin I met the mother of three young men who were taken from their home in the early morning of March 23 and burned outside the building:

“The army came early in the morning, we were all asleep. They took all my three sons who were at home and did not let me follow them outside; every time I tried to go out they pushed me back.

When I was able to go outside, after a couple of hours, I found my boys burning in the street. They had been piled on top of each other and had motorbikes piled on top of them and set on fire. I could not approach their bodies until evening because there was so much shooting.”

In addition to the human loss, families are having to cope with the loss of their homes and livelihood. Those whose homes and businesses have been burned down or destroyed and who have been left with nothing other than the clothes on their back are relying on the charity of relatives and friends. Some are trying to repair or salvage what they can from their wrecked properties but many are beyond repair. There is no doubt that the burning down of so many homes and businesses – and including medical facilities such as field hospitals and pharmacies – was deliberate, seemingly a combination of revenge and collective punishment.

The extra-judicial executions, the shooting and shelling of residential areas, and the deliberate destruction of homes, businesses and other properties in the Idlib area, are consistent with the pattern of violations inflicted by Syrian forces on the population in other parts of Syria where there have been opposition protests and/or armed opposition.

Soldiers, members of the security forces, and the civilian leadership up and down the chain of command should know that such abuses constitute crimes against humanity and the claim that “I was just carrying out orders” will not keep them from being brought to justice – either in Syria or in other countries around the world.

Take action to help the people of Syria

Article originally appeared in the Guardian