With the rise of video-sharing and social media sites such as YouTube and Facebook, it might be more difficult today to hide abuses happening behind closed doors in Syria. The latest scandal follows the posting of a short video showing two schoolteachers using physical violence against their students.

The identity of the instructors and the school where the incident happened are still unknown but the images have drawn wide condemnation among Syrian netizens who asked for those responsible for the abuses to be questioned and punished.
A Facebook group called, “Help us identify the two teachers that have abused our kids,” has attracted more than 1,200 members. The organisers said that teaching using violence has to be stopped. The video showed a teacher beating a child on the soles of his feet and then hitting the hands of a little girl with a wooden stick. In the background, other pupils wearing official school uniforms were shown crying.

Comments on the group mostly rejected these practices. One commentator asked sarcastically in reference to a notorious case of torture of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers, “Do they think they are in the Abu Ghraib prison?” Some of the group members said that the teachers were probably in a rural school. Others said they were shocked to see that these practices, used in schools in the past, were still happening.

YouTube Video shows abuse in Syrian school : The Damascus Bureau

They got caught and lost their jobs last month. They also got banned from working with children:

Two Syrian teachers have been fired and banned from working with children after a Facebook group posted a video of them abusing young students.

The video shows the two female teachers beating the children on their hands and on the soles of their feet with sticks.

Syria's education ministry opened an investigation into the case after the video caused outrage in the country.

The teachers were tracked down to a school in Aleppo in northern Syria and dismissed.

During the investigation, it emerged that the pair had already been disciplined in 2004, following similar complaints about their treatment of children.

In a statement issued on Saturday, Syria's education ministry said it was "determined to stop any future cases of child abuse".

Facebook campaign

The case came to light three weeks ago after a group posted the video on Facebook, appealing to the public to "help us expose the identity of the two teachers who abused our children".

The children can be seen crying and wincing in pain as the teachers repeatedly strike them on their hands and feet.

In one case, a child is made to hold up the legs of a fellow classmate so the teacher can beat him on the soles of his feet.

It is unclear who shot the footage, which provides a clear view of the two women.

Although the Syrian authorities block access to Facebook, residents routinely get around the restrictions by using proxy addresses, says the BBC's Lina Sinjab in Damascus.

The use of physical punishment in schools has been banned for many years in Syria, but occasional reports of abuse emerge from the country's state schools, our correspondent says.

This year, the government introduced a new teaching system at the elementary school level, which aims to make the instruction more interactive and empowering of students, she adds.

BBC News - Syrian teachers fired over Facebook beating video