Jessica Barry, British Red Cross delegate,
Jenin (24/04/02)
The truth about Jenin may never be known,
but for those who have been there, the sight of the mounds of rubble, the
half torn down houses, the scattered possessions, the festering smell,
and the faces of the women and children surveying what was once their homes,
will be hard to forget.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, (ICRC) was the first humanitarian agency to enter the camp, on the 15th April, after the fighting stopped. The same day I went up there to handle the press inquiries, little thinking that I would be answering journalists questions and giving interviews, literally non-stop, for the next 24 hours.
As I stood in the camp that day, amid a sea of rubble, trying to gauge the extent of the destruction, a woman came running up, arms outstretched, and said in English. "Come over here, there's a sick person in that house." Soon a stretcher, carried by a Palestine Red Crescent ambulance crew was on its way to investigate.
Another women, waving an empty plastic bottle, asked for water. Yet another pleaded for milk for her baby. We stood there, a small team of six delegates and twenty ambulance workers, surrounded by distraught women, and elderly, bewildered-looking men, seeking help.
We did what we could, but it was precious little compared with the needs. The Red Crescent set up a small medical post in a shady spot, and were soon surrounded by people seeking advice and first aid. Others set out in search of the sick and wounded. The rest looked for bodies. But it was evident that the scale of the disaster was far beyond the scope of one, or even several agencies. It needed specialists in search and rescue, and teams of mine experts to identify and remove the quantities of unexploded ordnance and home made bombs that peppered huge areas.
Those first 24 hours in the camp will remain in my mind for ever. I walked away from the rubble, to where the land sloped upwards, and the houses seemed untouched. Here, it was possible to imagine how Jenin must have looked before the bulldozers went to work. Fig trees were bursting into leaf in swept backyards, sunlight slanted down narrow alleyways, and families sat on their front steps before open doors. There was stillness everywhere. The contrast with the chaos in the rest of the camp was stark.
I walked on and arrived back in the middle of the ruins. But on the way I suddenly found myself in a wide space, packed solid with debris that had been completely flattened and compressed by tanks, and where there was no clear path to follow any more. I felt momentarily scared, fearing that there might be munitions all around, with no safe passage in or out. It took several nail-biting minutes to get back to a safe area. The moment was soon over, but it made me think of all the scampering children who will in the months ahead use this sad place as their playground. How many of them will lose a limb, or their life before the area can be made safe? Indeed, the following day I heard that two teenage boys had been hurt, one in the eye and one in the hand, and a day after that, a women set off an explosive device as she swept the floor of her damaged home.
Being on the spot as news breaks carries a huge responsibility. And working for the ICRC you are acutely aware that you must tread the middle path of neutrality at all times in what you say. No matter how you phrase the sentences, however, there will always be pressure groups and individuals who will castigate you for not denouncing one or other side, or for not apportioning blame. But that is not our role. Rather, ours has to be an objective, detached position, based on eye witness accounts, the Geneva Conventions (over which the ICRC is guardian), and our own observations.
Over the week in which Jenin was headline news, I must have answered the telephone over 500 times. One journalist explained the media's interest in ICRC's presence in the camp by saying that there were so many 'fringe' groups and 'experts' on the scene, all talking about human rights violations and 'massacres' and 'war crimes', that it was impossible to get clear, objective information any longer except from us and the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which overseas Jenin. His remarks reminded me again how careful we, as spokespersons for our organizations, have to be to ensure we stick to the middle path, thus avoiding the metaphorical minefields that lie in wait for the glib and unwary.
=A9 British Red Cross 2002
Registered charity number 220949
British Red Cross, 9 Grosvenor Crescent, London, SW1X
7EJ
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