A refugee child was raped in Lebanon
Translator: Nada Odeh , The idea of Story: Hicham Alnachawati Directed by, Issam Khoury
Eight Lebanese youths, one of them a member of the “Hezbollah” militia, documented their sexual assault on a Syrian child under the age of 13 and forced him to carry out heinous sexual acts, in the town of Sohmor, in the Western Bekaa, Lebanon.
Lebanese media sources confirmed that the attackers intentionally filmed the incident, to spread the video widely. The incident caused anger between the Syrians and the Lebanese, as many demanded the Lebanese authorities to hold the perpetrators accountable, in which the activists deliberately published a photo of the aggressor, in order to accelerate the closure of his Facebook account. The video includes clips showing the child after he tried to escape from the assailants several times, but they pursued him, assaulted him, and forced him to perform sexual acts with them.
The victim’s mother, who owns a vegetable store to support her family after her divorce from her Syrian husband, has a child, the victim works in a winepress, and the harassment and rape process was repeated several times amid psychological and physical torture, where they sometimes linked him and took turns to attack him. The mother of the child appealed to the organizations and bodies concerned with the rights of children to adopt the situation of her child and punish the attackers, calling on the Lebanese authorities to arrest the three young men who appeared in the video. A Lebanese website stated that the attackers are young men from the town and are known by name, all of whom are Lebanese nationals, while many twitters called for the need to impose the most severe penalties on the three young men, who boasted of sexual assault on the child who tried to escape from them several times. It is noteworthy that the Lebanese authorities did not comment until the moment this news was prepared on the crime, despite the fact that more than 72 hours have passed since it occurred, amid reports that Hezbollah was pressuring the child’s mother to prevent her from filing.
