Baraa Abdulrahman, an antigovernment activist in the Damascus suburb of Douma, desperate to direct the world’s attention to government airstrikes that were killing scores of people, set up a scene that echoed the Islamic State video in which the caged Jordanian pilot, in an orange jumpsuit, was burned alive.
He ordered an iron cage from a blacksmith and placed it against a backdrop of collapsed buildings, and then filled it with a gaggle of neighborhood children dressed in orange clothing. As the camera rolled, he waved a burning torch, asking why the world responded to the killing of the pilot but not to the deaths of children in Douma. Some of the children in the cage, he admitted, were frightened and cried.
“I’m very sorry to get to this point, to use the kids,” said Mr. Abdulrahman, who uses a nom de guerre for security reasons. “But this is the fact. Our kids are getting killed every day, every moment, getting under the wreckage.”
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