Friday 1 June 2012

Why look at pictures of slaughtered children?



What do you do when you see a picture of a toddler with his hands tied together and his throat cut? I shook, sobbed, but I kept looking. There is huge controversy about whether newspapers and broadcast media should publish this kind of picture - and in this country, they don't - but images and footage of Houla's dead children are available now on YouTube and via Twitter, and I think people should look.

I look out of respect, because that child felt terror and pain: for me to look at that image is to acknowledge what they went through, to treasure their humanity, to remember that until minutes before they had been laughing and squabbling and refusing to eat their tea just as my children do, and to value the incalculably precious life that has been so violently stolen from them. My pain on looking at such pictures is, by comparison, of no relevance.

Except in what such feelings might galvanise someone to do. It has to prompt something, looking at pictures of  children's broken, slashed, bloodied bodies, else it becomes not only emotionally devastating but ultimately pornographic and disrespectful.

I've not known what to do for months now, but on Saturday night, I knew I had to do something or I would always be ashamed.

I woke my partner up, and told him that I was going to organise a protest against the systematic killing of children, and that it didn't matter if no-one came and it was just him and me and our two small boys standing there. We were going to do it anyway. And we are - together with all the amazing people who have contacted me to say they'll join us with their own children.

On Sunday 10 June, at noon till 2pm, the 'Stop Killing Children' protest will be held outside the Syrian embassy, 8 Belgrave Square, London. Please join us. Bring your kids. And if you can,  wear something red to symbolise the blood spilt by the 49 children who were killed in Houla last weekend, the children who have died in the days since that atrocity, and the thousands more who have been slaughtered over the past 15 months.

It's not enough. I don't know what is. But doing something must be better than doing nothing. This is my something.

If you're going to join us, please let me know: louise@louisetickle.co.uk, and follow updates about the protest on the Twitter hashtag #stopkillingSyrianchildren