Hamza Ali al-Khateeb ... tortured to death. Credit:Wikipedia It is too early to tell whether the boy's death will trigger the kind of critical mass that brought down the regimes in Egypt and Tunisia and that the Syrian protests have lacked. But it would not be the first time that the suffering of an individual had motivated ordinary people who might not otherwise have taken to the streets to rise against their governments. The revolt in Tunisia was inspired by a street vendor who set himself on fire after being insulted by a local policewoman. In Egypt the beating death last year of Khaled Said, an Alexandria resident, kindled the opposition movement that eventually led the uprising against the rule of Hosni Mubarak. Activists believed Hamza will become the Khaled Said of Syria, said Wissam Tarif of the human rights group Insan. ''This boy is already a symbol. It has provoked people, and the protests are increasing.''

Over the weekend, demonstrations erupted in towns and cities across Syria to denounce the torture of Hamza, marking an escalation in a movement that had until now focused its protests around Friday prayers. In Hama, a city 185 kilometres north of Damascus, the capital, thousands swarmed a central square holding pictures of the boy and chanting ''Hamza, Hamza''. In a neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria's largest city, which until now had not taken part in protests on any significant scale, people climbed onto rooftops overnight on Saturday, chanting, ''God is great. Hamza, Hamza.'' In Darayya, a suburb of Damascus, children took to the streets on Sunday to denounce his torture. A Facebook page, ''We are all Hamza Ali al-Khateeb, the Child Martyr'', has drawn more than 40,000 members since it was created on Saturday. ''There is no place left here for the regime after what they did to Hamza,'' one comment said. An English version has more than 3000 followers. ''Torture is usual in Syria,'' said Razan Zeitouneh, a human rights lawyer who is in hiding in Damascus, in an interview conducted on Skype. ''It's not something new or strange. What is special about Hamza is that he was only 13 years old. He really is a child. That's why it shocked all Syrians, even those who haven't decided whether they want to participate or not in the protests.'' The details of what happened to Hamza are sketchy and cannot be independently confirmed because most foreign journalists have been denied visas to enter Syria, and the few who are there cannot operate freely.

But according to the accounts of family members, the boy had been among a group of people detained when his father took him to an anti-regime rally on April 29 in their home town of Jiza, a small southern farming community near the protest flashpoint of Daraa. The family members heard no news of Hamza until Wednesday, when Syrian government officials arrived at their home and asked them to sign a document agreeing to accept the boy's body on the condition that they not show it to anyone or discuss the circumstances of his death. They complied but were shocked by the extent of the injuries and invited an activist to make a video, which was posted on YouTube. The camera pans over the boy's body, showing bruises, scars and a gaping hole where his penis should be. An unidentified male offers a commentary, describing the injuries and proclaiming, ''Look at the reforms of Bashar the perfidious.'' Since Saturday, amid reports that Hamza's father and possibly his brother had been taken into custody, the family has stopped taking phone calls. Calls to family members went unanswered, and a government spokesman did not answer the phone. However, there were still no signs that the regime is preparing to give ground and pursue the reforms that are being demanded.

The Washington Post