THEY DON’T CARE

It is not a good afternoon. The shocking and tragic news just through today that a selfless, compassionate humanitarian woman, has been executed in Baghdad.

Margaret Hassan, was the local, tireless, boss of Care International. She had spent thirty years trying to improve the lot of the Iraqi people – especially children. One of her projects provided clean water for five million people. She built a school for the deaf. She developed a hospital project for people with spinal injuries. She became an Iraqi citizen. Married an Iraqi.

And terrorists kidnapped her, imprisoned her, terrorized her and murdered her. For what? Do these people really care about the health and welfare of the Iraqi people? I doubt it. And in what sort of religious fervour can people excuse the slaughter of an aid worker?

And now, understandably, Care International has pulled its other aid workers out which means Iraqi kids will suffer. Medical programmes will crumble. Food and other relief projects will stumble.

I have always admired the work done internationally by groups like Care Australia and Community Aid Abroad and Save the Children. Brave people like Phoebe Fraser have seen the suffering and felt the pain in places like Bangladesh and Rwanda and Somalia and Ethiopia. I have seen it first in places like India and Ethiopia and The Sudan.

I remember once interviewing Princess Anne in a godforsaken village near the Mali border and on the way there I thought that the corrugated floor of an African wadi pays no respect to a jarred Royal bum.

These people put their personal safety at risk. Three aid workers are currently being held hostage in Afghanistan and Margaret Hussan is dead. Her murderers filmed the execution for television and propaganda. The Arab TV network Al Jazeira reported that her death was too graphic and too gruesome to put to air. Although they happily showed an American marine shooting a wounded Iraqi in a mosque.

And now Margaret Hassan’s grieving husband is left to beg for her killers to at least return her body so a martyr can be buried with the respect not shown to her by her kidnappers.

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2004