Hamza Khatib, the Middle East's Emmett Till

Hamza Khatib was used as target practice. The bullets were not used to kill Hamza but to torture him. Imagine anyone being shot repeatedly in the arms and legs just because someone felt like it – now imagine that “anyone” be a frightened thirteen year old whose only fault was expressing, in the only way that he knows, his opinion in a country where that luxury is not given.

Hamza Khatib was castrated and his hands, feet, and abdomen were severely beaten. Overall, men in power who don’t care about him being so young and innocent subjected this teenager, for a period of well over a month, to most signs of abuse and torture imaginable.

Hamza Khatib and Emmett Til, two teenagers worlds apart, yet both suffered crucifixion at the hands of a society afraid of its shadow, let alone its children. The majority in the Middle East are children, thus the nature of his brutal murder reveals how dictatorial regimes fear the generation bound to replace them, unless these children are turned around, i.e., aborted, reactified, incarcerated or assassinated. Hamza and Emmett were not wanted simply because they were free beings, exercising the freedom of youth.

The power of youth cannot be eternally suppressed, maybe for a time the will participate in reactionary behavior, but once they see the light, we know the result, we see it in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria. Syria has long been a police state, a brutal regime that tolerated no opposition whatsoever.

My son Darrel/Abdul (RIP), won a Fulbright Fellowship to the University of Damascus. He told me what he endured as a young student, how the secret police interrogated him almost daily. Why was he going to the American Embassy to swim? Why was he hanging around those filthy Palestinians? He said there were Africans in Syria who are virtual slaves since their passports were taken, thus they cannot leave. Of course my dear friend Dr. Mohja Kahf has informed us of the terror in Syria. She recently sent out a passionate video reading her poem My People Are Rising!

Dr. Mohja Kahf,

Syrian-American

poet/novelist/professor

We salute the people of Syria, now led with inspiration from the child martyr of their revolution, Hamza Khatib. The murder of Emmett Till advaced Black liberation, let Hamza advance the liberation of Syria and the Middle East. "A child shall lead them."
--Marvin X

1/2/11