Viral Pic: Four-year-old Raised Hands Thinking A Camera Was A Gun

By R. Siva Kumar - 03 Apr '15 07:45AM

One Syrian child, Hudea, was shot by the camera, not the gun that she feared it was. Scared by the barrel of the gun, she lifted her hands, and just stared into the camera lens, immediately "surrendering to camera because she thought it was a gun," according to thetimesofindia.

The photo was published in Turkiye, and quickly went viral, as the heart-breaking image of the little girl's eyes as she bit her lip to stop herself from crying is a reflection of how "humanity failed" in the Syrian civil war.

A photojournalist tweeted it in Gaza, after which it became viral.

Nadia Abu Shaban's post on reddit, on 24 March, was shared more than 14,000 times, even as 14,000 comments sprang to life.

Nadia said Hudea thought the photographer held "a weapon, not a camera", however, she has given no more information, which made everyone feel that the image was fake and shot in an unrelated situation.

The photographer then came forward to explain the real context. Osman Sağırlı told the BBC that he shot the scene in December last year at Atmeh refugee camp, near the Turkish border. He is now working in Tanzania, and said Hudea was a four-year-old girl, who was forced to escape the fighting near her home in Hama with her mother and two siblings.

"I was using a telephoto lens and she thought it was a weapon," Mr Sağırlı recounted."

"İ realised she was terrified after I took it, and looked at the picture, because she bit her lips and raised her hands. Normally kids run away, hide their faces or smile when they see a camera."

In all the 25 years that he has covered conflict and disasters for the Turkiye newspaper, he has visited many refugee camps and told the BBC that suffering can be viewed through children who "reflect the feelings with their innocence".

Syria, where the photo was taken, is considered by the United Nations as one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world, according to dailynation.

The scene was an offensive by the Syrian opposition in December 2012, which started a counter-operation by the Syrian Army in various towns and villages, as well as the alleged massacre of hundreds of civilians. More than 200,000 have been massacred so far in the Syrian civil war, where Isis, other Islamist militants, secular rebels and President Bashar al-Assad's government are fighting at various spots.

Most of the 3.9 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt seem to face a bleak future, according the UN's refugee agency. The Atmeh refugee camp, where Hudea was photographed, sprang up on the Turkish border when the conflict started in 2011.