II. Abuses in Schools

Syria’s mukhabarat, or intelligence forces, as well as the pro-government armed groups known as shabiha have threatened, interrogated, arbitrarily arrested, and in some cases physically assaulted students and teachers in schools in Homs, Damascus, the Damascus suburbs, and Daraa. Teachers and students told Human Rights Watch that teachers and security officers interrogated students in school, leaving them and their families in fear of repercussions such as arrest and detention. Soldiers or armed men assaulted children at demonstrations staged by students at boys’ and girls’ schools, and sometimes even by children at primary schools.

Human Rights Watch documented two instances in mid-2012 in which government forces and pro-government armed groups fired on schools while students remained inside, as well as firing on empty school buildings. 

Human Rights Watch also documented how both government forces and opposition armed groups occupied school buildings and used them for military purposes, thereby turning them into legitimate military targets.

Political Interrogations and Corporal Punishment

Four teachers and two students from the Damascus, Daraa, and Homs governorates told Human Rights Watch that teachers interrogated children at school about their political beliefs and the activities of their family members. Teachers and school principals then beat those who gave answers deemed to show opposition to the Syrian president.

Human Rights Watch did not interview any students or teachers who identified themselves as pro-government, and thus is not in a position to report on teachers questioning, harassment, or abuse of students who continued to support the Syrian government. Some teachers did describe harassment and violence between pro- and anti-government students.[17]

Abdou, a fourth-grade student at a government school in Homs until his family left Syria in May 2012, told Human Rights Watch, “The teachers at my school would ask questions. They’d ask ‘Does your father have a rifle or a revolver? Does your father watch al-Jazeera? Al-Arabiya?’”—two international Arabic news channels that have extensively covered government abuses. He said, “There was a female teacher…. She would ask us, ‘Do you go to protests? Do you like Bashar?’…. Students who said no to that question [about the president] went to the principal [for punishment].”

Abdou said that his school principal beat him after he had ripped up a picture of the president, and whipped him and other students after learning of their participation in anti-government protests:

After I [ripped Assad’s picture], [my teacher] hit me a lot…. [Then] she sent me to the school principal. He took me into the schoolyard and hit me with a stick, and made me sit in the yard for the rest of the day.

One day, we had a protest just after school, and a classmate went to this [same] teacher, and told her: these people went to protest. The principal came and collected all the names and put us in the yard. He hit each of us five times with a hose. The students who used to chant slogans during protests, he beat them more.[18]

Mahmoud, who taught Arabic at Al-Farabi private boys’ school in Douma in the Damascus governorate before he left Syria in June 2012, said that a fellow teacher at his school asked students similar questions. “The sports teacher would ask [students]: ‘Why are you not going to protests to support the president? Are you going to protests? Are you a supporter or an opponent?’ Even the other teachers were scared of him.”[19] Hala, who taught at a girls’ school in Damascus until the school year ended in mid-2012, told Human Rights Watch, “We had teachers that supported the regime, and if the students chanted any slogans [against the government], they would beat them with a stick. A lot of students stopped coming to school. [Some] only came to the final exam.”[20]

Abdulkarim, an employee from the Ministry of Education in Damascus who left his post when he left Syria in mid-2012, told Human Rights Watch that, after the uprising began, the ministry sent informants to schools around the country to monitor students and staff:

[The ministry] used to send one person to each school. They would say this person was a teacher but it was obvious he’s a security officer. For example, they sent a teacher to be a librarian at a school. [Librarians] should hold a special certificate, but he didn’t have any of that. These teachers didn’t have any of the required qualifications.[21]

Teachers also described government security forces openly entering schools and questioning students. Sahar, who worked as a teacher at a government-run primary school in the city of Homs until she left Syria in September 2012, told Human Rights Watch that students faced interrogation at her school. “[Our school] used to be a safe place,” she said. “But [during the conflict] we were afraid…. Security informants came to school and asked students, ‘Does your dad watch Arabiya? Does he watch Jazeera?’”[22]

Assaults on Student Demonstrations

Four children interviewed by Human Rights Watch said they held peaceful anti-government protests on school grounds, or marched with classmates in protests against the Syrian government at the end of the school day while wearing school uniforms. Four teachers described similar protests at the schools where they taught. Three boys—one only 10 years old—and one girl said they participated in student protests. None of those interviewed described violence of any kind from students taking part in these incidents, and none of the more than 20 YouTube videos showing elementary or high-school student demonstrations that Human Rights Watch reviewed showed students engaging in violent activities. Yet students, parents, and teachers from the Daraa, Damascus, and Homs governorates told Human Rights Watch that they saw armed men, either pro-government shabiha or government soldiers, shoot in the direction of student demonstrations, in some cases hitting students. Parents said that they feared their children would be arrested for participating in student demonstrations or that the demonstrations would be attacked. Because they feared their children would participate in such demonstrations, they said, they kept children at home even when their area did not face shelling or aerial bombardment.

Somaya, a 14-year-old girl from the Qadam neighborhood of Damascus, described how she and her classmates in the 7th grade at Rashid al-Khatib Girls’ School organized an after-school protest, bringing flags and handmade signs to school. Shabiha assaulted the protest, she said, and one of her classmates was shot. She told Human Rights Watch:

The shabiha attacked our protest. There were six or seven of them in a normal civilian car, but they had Kalashnikovs [assault rifles]. They threw me on the ground, but I managed to get away. All the girls ran, some of us hid in a falafel shop. They arrested four girls.

They shot at us. One girl got shot in her hand. They threw her on the ground, arrested her and pulled her into the car.[23]

Human Rights Watch reviewed three YouTube videos of girl students protesting in Qadam between February and March 2012, the same approximate time frame that Somaya gave, though we could not confirm that any of these showed the same protest Somaya described.[24] In all of the videos, large groups of female students carried backpacks and wore school uniforms, and did not engage in violence.[25]

Marwan, an 11-year-old student in the 4th grade who used to attend after-school protests at his government school in the Quneitra area of Damascus, told Human Rights Watch what happened at a protest in April 2012. “The [security officers] attacked us…They were wearing black uniforms and they had machine guns. They hit my friend, who is 13, with electric rods.”[26]

Parents and teachers interviewed expressed fears for children’s safety and the consequences they could face for participating in protests. May, the mother of two girls who had attended middle school and high school in Damascus until the school year ended in mid-2012, told Human Rights Watch:

Every chance they got, [my daughters] liked to protest. They would protest in the courtyard of the school…. [At] my son’s school … Sharif Georgi al-Wathba secondary school, in [the] Abbaseen [neighborhood] near Bab Touma … they used to go out and protest. They would protest in their school uniforms, [and still, the shabiha] shot at them twice.[27]

Fatima, a mother with two sons and three daughters, came from the city of Daraa, which saw protests, along with mass arrests, detentions, and torture of men and boys, from the very beginning of Syria’s uprising. She said that though she feared for the safety of all of her children at school, she was particularly frightened for her school-age son and kept him home so he would not be arrested at school or at an after-school protest. “I was most scared about Ali because he might go out protesting,” she said.

Mostafa, a guidance counselor at a boys’ high school in Nimr, another town in Daraa governorate, told Human Rights Watch that Syrian security forces arrested and detained him four separate times, and that each time, interrogators questioned him extensively about student protests. He said:

They asked me: “Did you threaten students to make them protest? Did you give them signs to carry? Did you forbid them to leave school when a protest was occurring? What was your role in the student protest? “They told me, “If you want to be a good citizen, you will forbid [anti-government] protests. You have power over their minds.” They accused us … of brainwashing them. They told me, “You have to tell students to love their country, to teach them love for Bashar. Tell them to protest for Bashar.”[28]

Two other teachers and a school principal told Human Rights Watch that security forces had questioned them about student protests and graffiti on school walls, and told them they were responsible for student anti-government activities.[29] While one teacher was questioned in detention, like Mostafa, the other teacher and principal were both called into a local security branch for questioning, during which they were asked about student protests at their schools.[30]

Raids and Arrests in Schools

Human Rights Watch interviewed nine children from the Daraa, Homs, and Damascus governorates who witnessed raids on their schools by government forces that involved arbitrary arrests of students, or who themselves faced physical violence from security officers on school grounds.

Refaat, a 10-year-old boy from Inkhil in Daraa governorate who left Syria in September 2012, told Human Rights Watch, “A car of army officers came [to my school]. They arrested two boys from my school. [That was when] I was in the third grade [back in Syria].”[31]

Marwan, an 11-year-old from Quneitra in the Damascus governorate, said: “When security officers entered my school [in the spring of 2012], they grabbed me by the ear and asked, ‘Where are the armed people from your house?’”[32]

Ammar, a 10-year-old from Mahajja in Daraa governorate, said:

In 2012, during our second semester, we were outside in the school yard for sports. The army broke in [to the school]. They started saying bad words to the students. They pointed their guns at us and threatened us. They said, “If you don’t go home, we’ll shoot you.”[33]

Girls and their parents also reported that government forces beat female students and carried out violent arrests in their schools. Laila, a high school student from the town of Hajjar al-Aswad in the Damascus governorate, left Syria in September 2012. She said, “I saw security [forces] beating students [at] school. They beat students with their rifle butts, they were wearing the black uniforms. The students were wearing their school uniforms—they were in the first and second grade.[34]

May, the mother of two girls and one boy from the Jobar area of Damascus, told Human Rights Watch, “My daughters studied at Abdullah Mahmoud al-Sweida [school] in Jobar, in al-Abbaseen neighborhood. They were in high school. [Security forces] raided the school [and interrogated] the girls. They arrested four girls between 9th and 11th grades.[35]

The students said the raids and violence led to irregular school attendance. Parents told Human Rights Watch that they kept children out of school because they feared security forces visiting the school would arrest and detain them, including on exam days when students attended in greater numbers. Jamal, a father from the Sayyida Zeinab neighborhood of Damascus, said, “My son was in the 4th grade. The principal told his mother, ‘Don’t bring your son to school because they’ll arrest him.’ [The principal] was trying to help us.”[36]

Ground and Air Attacks on Schools

Syrian government forces have conducted military operations involving attacks on schools in various parts of the country in apparent violation of the laws of war.[37]

Four students told Human Rights Watch that they stopped attending classes after their school was shelled by a government armored vehicle, faced an armed attack, or faced a serious threat of attack.

Salma, a 14-year-old girl from Dael in the Daraa governorate, described how government forces attacked her school twice while she and her fellow students were still attending classes. She said the first attack took place sometime during Ramadan, between July 19 and August 18, 2012. She told Human Rights Watch:

 [In the first attack,] when the tank entered the school, it hit the walls of the school with machine guns. So students got down [on the ground] to shelter. We spent half an hour or an hour there underneath our desks. Then the teachers asked [the government soldiers] if the children could leave, so they let us go home.

We were crying because [we heard a] plane and a soldier said “Why are you crying about the plane? When we leave, a ‘barrel bomb’ will fall.”[38]

Human Rights Watch reviewed video footage posted to YouTube on July 25, 2012, approximately a week after Ramadan started, placing it in the same time frame as the first attack Salma described, though it was not possible to confirm that the video showed the same school that Salma attended.[39]The video shows a school in Dael that had been damaged by direct fire from machine guns and several high explosive projectiles. Analysis by arms experts at Human Rights Watch confirms that the weapon used to attack the school was the 73mm gun of a BMP-1 armored infantry fighting vehicle, which a layperson might describe as a tank. BMP-1 armored vehicles also have a machine gun mounted alongside the cannon that is often used to check the aim before firing the main gun. A young man pictured in the video holds the remnants of the fin-stabilized, rocket-assisted projectile fired by this weapon. 

Salma described a second incident in mid-September 2012 during which government soldiers surrounded but did not attack her school. “[This time] they wouldn’t let the students leave,” she said.[40]

Rami, a 12-year-old boy from Dael in the Daraa governorate, described to Human Rights Watch how government forces shelled his school, the Shahid Fayez al-Jamous School, and then shabiha entered it. He said:

[The army] fired on my school with a tank. It was during science class, but I was on my way to the bathroom. Two shells hit the fourth floor. I was on the first floor. People started running away. When I ran away, a shabiha caught my shoulder, but I struggled and managed to get away. The shabiha came into the school and shot the windows, broke the computers. After that, I only went back to take my exams.[41]

Both Rami and his mother told Human Rights Watch that there was no armed opposition presence in their school that might justify such an attack.[42]

Radwan, a soldier who defected from the Syrian army and was an opposition fighter until he sustained an injury, told Human Rights Watch that before he left Syria in September 2012, he watched the Shaba’a High School in the suburbs of Damascus being bombarded on the first day of the school year:

It was attacked by a plane and a tank…. Some students were injured, [and] the building sustained a lot of damage. It was 500 meters from [an army] checkpoint; the tank was at the checkpoint. I saw [the tank’s] gun pointed straight, towards the school, not at an angle [which he demonstrated with his arm].[43]

A news update from the Syrian Local Coordination Committees, opposition activists who have sent daily news updates on civilian casualties and government attacks since April 2011, described how on September 16, the first day of school in Syria, “heavy shelling target[ed] residential buildings and the high school in the town [Shaba’a].”[44] A YouTube video posted on September 16 by the Shaba’a Coordination Committee, the Shaba’a unit of the Local Coordination Committees, shows bullet holes and other damage to the outer wall of Shabaa High School.[45]

Human Rights Watch also viewed a YouTube video from the town of Khirbet Ghazala, in Daraa governorate, showing a group of children who had been injured after an attack on their school, the Ghazala Rasmiya Secondary School, on December 31, 2012.[46]A member of the Khirbat Ghazala media office who shot the video told Human Rights Watch:

I rushed to the school, and found it had been shelled and several students injured by shrapnel. The attack happened at about 9:15 in the morning, near the beginning of the school day. Fifteen students were injured: nine boys and six girls. Some of them had to go to Jordan for treatment, and some of them have permanent injuries. One boy lost part of his arm.[47]

Human Rights Watch documented an airstrike, in al-Bab, Aleppo governorate, on November 4, 2012 on a school hosting an opposition civilian council (responsible for civic matters such as garbage collection and schooling) while students were in the school. According to local residents, bombs struck and destroyed four houses to the south of the school in al-Bab around 10:30 a.m., killing five civilians, and then to the north approximately an hour later, with no casualties.[48]Finally, four bombs, one of which failed to explode, struck the school itself, killing the head of the civilian council.[49] The strikes on the school would likely have resulted in more casualties had the school administration not sent the students home earlier that day because of the jet attacks, members of the civilian council said.[50]   

Incendiary weapons were used in an attack on a school building and homes in Quseir in the Homs province on December 3, 2012. According to video footage and two local activists interviewed by Human Rights Watch, approximately 20 civilians, including women and children, were wounded that day by an airstrike on Ghaleb Radi school and neighboring homes in Quseir. One video uploaded on December 3 from Quseir shows what appears to be an airstrike using incendiary submunitions filmed from a distance while another video shows burning ZAB-2.5 submunitions on the ground of Ghaleb Radi school.[51]

A local activist in Quseir told Human Rights Watch:

The bombs hit a school called “Ghaleb Radi” Al Rifiat and several residential buildings next to it. The bombs were different than the cluster bombs. They caught fire as they were dropping from the MiG warplane. I heard a big explosion and several smaller ones. We saw smoke in the air and when we arrived to the Al Rifiyat street I saw at least nine houses on fire.

Then when I reached the school I saw at least seven bombs burning on the playground and releasing white smoke that had a terrible smell.

According to the activist, there was no activity by any armed opposition group in the school, a single-story building.[52]

Use of Schools by the Military and Armed Groups

All parties to the armed conflict in Syria have used schools for military purposes. Government armed forces and pro-government armed groups have used schools across the country as bases, barracks, sniper posts, and detention centers. Opposition armed forces have used schools as barracks and command posts. In some cases, troops have only used schools for a very short duration—a day, a weekend, or a week. In other cases, they have occupied schools for long periods or indefinitely. Human Rights Watch found that schools were used both after students had ceased to study there and, in some cases, while they continued to attend lessons.

Army and Pro-Government Armed Groups

Two men who had been detained by government security forces in June and July 2011 told Human Rights Watch that they had been held in the Radwa school in Jisr al-Shugour.[53] One man said he was detained with approximately 65 others in a classroom.[54] A resident of al-Janoudyah, a town just north of Jisr al-Shughour in the Idlib governorate, told Human Rights Watch that as of February 2012, a public school in the town was being used by the army as a detention facility.[55]

Fadi, a teacher from Douma in the Damascus governorate until he left Syria in June 2012, told Human Rights Watch that government troops used the Ahmad Ghura school, a government school for boys, as a temporary detention center in April 2012. “They attacked [our] area, arrested 150 men and boys, [and detained] them in the school,” he said. “Then they took them from there to other prisons.”[56]

Iman, a 20-year-old woman from Quneitra in Damascus governorate, told Human Rights Watch that government snipers had been posted on the roof of Bassel al-Assad High School, which was next door to her family’s house. It also served as a detention center. [57] May, the mother of two girls and a boy from Jobar in Damascus, said that while her daughters continued to attend the Abdullah Mahmoud Sweida Girls’ School, at least two government snipers took up positions on the school roof. “The girls were crying all the time,” she said. She also noted that “there was a checkpoint directly in front of the school, which put a valid military target at a location that put children at unnecessary risk.”[58]

Faisal, the principal of a school in Quneitra until he left Syria in September 2012, told Human Rights Watch that, “During the summer, they made [my school] into a detention center—just for a short period, for 24 hours or so.”[59]

In its February 2013 report, the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria noted two specific examples in which government forces used schools in the Aleppo and Hama governorates. It reported that in March 2012, a school in Atarib in the Aleppo governorate, “was occupied with tanks on its grounds and snipers positioned on its roof.”[60] In early April 2012, a village school in Hama governorate was occupied by Syrian government forces, “which used it as a command post, again putting snipers on its roof.”[61]

Opposition Armed Groups

The Free Syrian Army and other opposition armed groups have occupied schools in their areas and used them as barracks or command posts, according to refugees from Syria who spoke to Human Rights Watch. As of August 2012, opposition fighters used schools as barracks or command posts in the towns of Sheikh Meskin and Dael in Daraa, and in Tel Rifaat in the Aleppo governorate in August 2012.

Malek, from the town ofSheikh Meskin, in Daraa governorate, told Human Rights Watch that in June 2012, before he left Syria, government forces attacked a school in his town that an armed opposition group had taken over:

In Sheikh Meskin, the Free [Syrian] Army was inside a school and the army attacked it with two tanks. Sixteen people were inside it from the Free Army. [The government army] fired on it until the whole school collapsed. This happened in June. The most targeted places [in Sheikh Meskin] are the schools, because the Free Army used to use schools as a place to rest.[62]

Several other former residents of Sheikh Meskin corroborated Malek’s account.[63] The Syria Network for Human Rights, a London-based human rights documentation group, described an attack on Sheikh Meskin on June 7, 2012, stating that “[government] forces sieged the city, shelled it randomly by heavy artillery, then broke into the school which had a field hospital.”[64]A student from Sheikh Meskin said that armed opposition troops used a school in the town as temporary a field hospital.[65]

Wissam, a 13-year-old boy who attended Dael High School in Daraa governorate until he left Syria in October 2012, told Human Rights Watch that government forces attacked his school because armed opposition fighters had stationed themselves there for four days. He said that “the government shot the school from a plane. They shot it with rockets and dropped a barrel [bomb] on it.” Afterwards, he said, “[soldiers] came to our house and said, ‘We cleaned the school of terrorists. Go back to school.’”

Opposition forces also used a school in Tel Rifaat in the Aleppo governorate as a detention center, as well as a local administration office and court, when government forces attacked it on August 7, 2012.[66] Two detainees said that opposition forces detained them in schools in the Aleppo governorate in July or August 2012.[67]