Hamza al-Khateeb (Figures of Revolution Part 2)

Hamza al-Khateeb was a 13 year-old boy detained during a protest in Saida (near the now-infamous Deraa) on April 29th. According to his parents, they received his mutilated body nearly a month later, on May 24th. Government-run media has offered the explanation that what the parents call signs of torture are actually the natural effects of decomposition. Video taken of al-Khateeb's body made the rounds on the internet, and was met with outrage, to say the least. Some protesters see the torture and murder of a child as further evidence "that the secret police and the authorities are criminals who cannot be trusted to make any reforms." al-Jazeera English article (warning: possibly graphic image)

It remains to be seen if al-Khateeb's death will lead to more people protesting, but it has certainly galvanized those already taking to the streets.

I said yesterday that I feel like al-Khateeb is a stronger rallying point for Syrian protesters than Amina Abdullah. This is, in part, a matter of publicity and in part a matter of identity. Abdullah's blog was published in English, on Blogger. Internet users with Syrian IP addresses can't read blogs on Blogger (though they could post, as of the most recent Open Net Initiative testing). So accessing Abdullah's blog requires some amount of 'Net savvy to block one's IP address (the same ONI tests found about a third of anonymizer sites were also blocked), as well as English proficiency or expert-level decoding of Google Translate. Similarly, the Facebook page I found demanding her release was in English. Abdullah's possible American citizenship could also present something of a barrier to Syrians' affinity for her (not that Syrians don't like Americans, just that some might see the arrest of a Syrian-American as something different than that of a Syrian). Apart from her English-language blog, Abdullah remains an enigma--no (real) picture or video of her or even her family. MBC article (Arabic) complete with trolls in the comments
(MBC= Middle East Broadcasting Center, most well-known for its satellite TV channels. I can write a post about them sometime)

Contrast that with the graphic pictures and video of a dead ("martyred")* 13 year-old Syrian child splashed everywhere, along with the emotional displays of his devastated family. You do the math.

*(I know a little bit about martyrdom from my undergraduate honors' thesis. Another future post idea)