© 2013 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
Jacques Bérès, the 71-year-old surgeon testifies to the violence of the Syrian regime against doctors
“There are buildings on fire, holes in the walls of houses and many, many injured people, mostly civilians, men, women and children…”, describes Jacques Bérès by satellite telephone, unperturbed despite the bombardment of Bab Amro a hundred meters from him.
But what is this 71-year-old French doctor doing under the Syrian bombs, in this district of Homs destroyed by the army of a president determined to crush the revolt that began almost a year ago?
¶ A “humanitarian dinosaur”
“We didn’t want to send anyone to this hell, and even less someone we love like Jacques. But he harassed us, he managed to convince us, so we signed a mission order for him,” confides the president of the Union of Muslim Associations of Seine-Saint-Denis, M’hammed Henniche. “Jacques is not the type to let himself be dissuaded,” confirms Bernard Schalscha, secretary general of France-Syrie démocratie and also signatory of the mission order.
“I am a humanitarian dinosaur”, confided the co-founder of Doctors Without Borders and then Doctors of the World upon his return to Paris. “I have been traveling to all the war zones for forty years to save civilians and it is normal that I also go to Syria. The regime kills men, women, children in this country… It constantly bombs this neighborhood of Bab Amro from where I was brought seriously wounded for more than two weeks”.
¶ Too dangerous
Officially, no NGO is sending humanitarian workers to Syria at the moment. Too dangerous. Not for Jacques. “He’s passionate. It’s his life,” his wife emphasizes. “_And whatever the consequences, I approve of it,” she says softly, but sure of herself. This mission “was no more distressing for me than others he’s been on: in Baghdad when the Americans attacked, in Chechnya… Or at the time of Ceausescu in Romania: I watched on TV the preparation of an assault on the hospital where he was, I think that was the worst moment.”
“I remember well,” says the surgeon. “We arrived at the hospital and an official told us, ‘sorry, we’re going to have to leave, an assault is announced in 20 minutes’. What was he still doing there then? I didn’t believe it for a minute. I told him, ‘So let’s prepare to die together’.” The assault didn’t happen. And the surgeon is still there to have fun with it.
“He doesn’t take unnecessary risks, his wife says, and he is very intuitive with the people he meets. In general, he makes the right decisions and that’s very reassuring. He seems hot-headed but in fact everything is coldly analyzed.”
¶ The most important: testify
Since his return, he has been giving his testimony. From radio to television, from interviews to press conferences, he carries around his impeccably trimmed beard and his tousled, immaculate white hair.
“It took me 20 years to understand what people were thanking me for. For a long time I believed it was for my medical skills. But we are also thanked when we return the dead to their families. In fact, you know, they thank us for being there with them. For bearing witness. That’s the most important thing: bearing witness”, proclaims the doctor.
Telling about the injuries treated and what caused them — bullet wounds, shrapnel, collapse. Telling about the lack of everything to treat — “we can no longer make a long list of what we don’t have. We make a short list of what we have and we make do with it,” he says. “What is especially lacking are anesthetic masks for children because we really can’t do without them…”
Telling stories of hospitals empty of wounded civilians because some were tortured, amputated for demonstrating, kidnapped too. Finally telling stories of a city sacrificed, before leaving again. Nothing will make his determination fade: “Yes, as soon as a new way of entering proves safe, I’ll leave again. My wife agrees, so… ”
Article published on February 28, 2012
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