Local media sources revealed an increase in cases of newborn babies being found in regime-controlled areas, where they said that a baby was found on the outskirts of Damascus. The forensic medical department of the Assad regime recently reported that 38 cases have been registered since the beginning of this year.
They said that on Sunday evening, residents in the area of Jarmana, near Damascus, found a newborn child dead in one of the orchards in the Qurayyat neighbourhood after he was thrown by a person. This comes amid talk of investigations in cases filed against anonymous
A few days ago, the Director-General of the General Authority for Forensic Medicine, Dr. Zaher Hajjo, revealed to al-Watan newspaper that 38 cases of abandoned babies were documented from the beginning of 2022 until the middle of May. He said that 17 of them were females and 21 males.
According to the newspaper, parents who leave –in dire times– their legal or illegitimate child or adopted child, whether they refuse to implement the obligation of guardianship that falls on them or neglect to obtain the means that enable them to fulfill it, shall be punished with imprisonment with employment for 3 months at most, in accordance with Article 487 of the Penal Code.
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The regime’s control areas are witnessing the discovery of many cases of children being thrown into public facilities. With the increasing phenomenon of leaving children, several regime officials have come out to justify the incidents, deny that cases have turned into a phenomenon, invent controversial solutions through social media sites, and use this to polish the image of regime officers.
Judge Yahya al-Khaja, president of the regime’s sixth sharia court in Damascus, said that “the cases of unknown parentage that were registered in the civil registry are not in the thousands, as some claim.” He noted that “the numbers of claims for stabilization of parentage are not significant, even though they increased during the war.”
One interesting solution to prevent the abandonment of children was the proposed distribution of “contraceptives to all persons in the form of a gift”. Lawyer Rami Aqeel stated that t it is not possible to accurately count the number of unknown parentages, but indications are that the numbers are increasing exponentially.
A pro-regime radio station quoted Basil Mayhoub, a member of the Office of the Health and Social Affairs Sector, as saying that “the graph related to the presence of children left in the street does not indicate an increase, and within a period of one to two months. He explained that the increase means a shift. The situation changes from behaviour to phenomenon to finding four to five cases per day.”
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
