Quinn Wilson
\nIn Motion Staff Writer<\/p>\n
With a death toll of over 130,000 and millions of Syrian citizens displaced, disgruntled politicians are the last thing a peace conference needs; especially when a Syrian police photographer defects, revealing an archive of torture from Syria\u2019s government.<\/p>\n
Ban Ki-moon, the United Nation\u2019s secretary general, gave Iran an invitation to the peace talks on Syria. This devolved into a twenty-four hour conflict that came close to ending the conference before it began. News feeds, both national and international, await the beginning of the end. After the first day, the tunnel ahead still appears dark and endless. Both sides are all in.<\/p>\n
Social Media sites and forums are in a frenzy. Abu Khaled al Suri, one of the main figure heads of rebel group Ahrar al Sham, stated that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, another rebel group, was not al Qaida\u2019s representative in Syria and was not following al Qaida\u2019s current leader, Ayman al Zawahiri.<\/p>\n
Will McCants, Brookings Institution\u2019s Project on U.S.-Islamic World Relations and adjunct professor at John Hopkins University, explained why the possibility of Ahrar al Sham being designated a\u00a0terrorist group could impede the aid of Syrian citizens. \u201cIf Ahrar is designated, it will be hard for (aid groups) to move humanitarian aid through the country since they control large swathes of it. The designation will also put the U.S. at odds with Qatar, Ahrar\u2019s main state sponsor.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Twitter, Anne Barnard, the Times\u2019 Beirut bureau chief, held a Q&A. It just goes to show that politicians and professors are not the only people concerned\u2014the public is too. In the case of Twitter, your 140 character tweets don\u2019t always have to be about the awesome sandwich your mother made you for lunch. Social Media can be cause for change, especially when the public gets a chance to interact with journalists and political analysts.<\/p>\n
Within hours of the following events, lawyers commissioned by the Qatari government released a handful of photos to public eye. The archive of tortured victims, containing over 55,000 photographs, documents 11,000 numbered individuals. The ways in which the victims had been tortured were photographed, documented and preserved. Smuggled by a Syrian police photographer, the photographs are considered the largest archive of evidence regarding mass war crimes. David Crane, one of the investigators of the photos described them as \u201cthe likes of which we haven\u2019t seen since Nuremberg.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Quinn Wilson In Motion Staff Writer With a death toll of over 130,000 and millions of Syrian citizens displaced, disgruntled politicians are the last thing a peace conference needs; especially when a Syrian police photographer defects, revealing an archive of torture from Syria\u2019s government. Ban Ki-moon, the United Nation\u2019s secretary Continue reading Byte by Byte: The worth of a picture<\/span>