Syria, earthquake in the land of silence

 

Launch:

 

A bad fate has befallen Aleppo, in northwestern Syria. On walls weakened by 12 years of destructive war, the February 6 earthquake had a devastating effect. Hundreds of buildings collapsed, thousands became uninhabitable. While Turkey enjoys an immense outpouring of international solidarity, the Syrian population is forgotten and neglected. Despite a temporary lifting of economic sanctions imposed by the West, few countries are taking the risk of sending aid to Syria, for fear of being accused of acting to rehabilitate Bashar al-Assad. Prisoners of this geopolitical blockage, the civilian population of Aleppo suffers a double punishment and tries to survive in the midst of the ruins. One of our journalists was able to enter this city, to enter this very closed country. Beyond the natural disaster, it is the psychological trauma that marked these testimonies. As if fate was working against them.

Credits: Simon Dupuy, Thomas Lhoste, Babel Doc

 

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Duration: 12min16

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Buildings gutted, entire neighborhoods destroyed, ruins as far as the eye can see. Aleppo. A city disfigured by a decade of war and now by an earthquake. The population is in material and psychological distress.

 

TC: 00:35

SOUND GRAND MERE

Look over there, there is no one left. That house collapsed. My son, take them to see them.

 

Thousands of buildings threaten to collapse... like the one where Ahmad's house is...

 

TC: 00:52

SOUND AHMAD

Look at that crack on that wall

 

One month after the earthquake, no expertise has been carried out in this district.

 

TC: 01:05

SOUND AHMAD

It was 4 a.m. when it started. It was raining ropes. Suddenly, the house started shaking and the doors were slamming. My cousin and his wife died, but God saved his children. They were pulled out of the rubble the next day.

 

The earthquake killed more than 6400 people in Syria, and nearly a thousand in Aleppo. Ahmad, like the other survivors here, are traumatized.

 

TC: 01:35

SOUND AHMAD

This earthquake was worse than the war. Worse than the 11 years of war we have experienced. It was stronger than the bombing.

 

TITLE

 

STUPOR AND TREMBLING

 

In northwestern Syria, the earthquake struck cities already devastated by a war with terrible toll. More than 500,000 dead. Entire metropolises destroyed by bombing and intense fighting. 

 

In this city, a key moment of the war was played: the battle of Aleppo.

 

TC: 02:23-02 :38

ARCHIVES

REPLACE IMAGES France 3 - 19 20 National edition - 09/12/2016

 

 

The guns of the Syrian army. To finish with the last neighborhoods of Aleppo still held by the rebels.

 

From 2012 to 2016, this Syrian economic capital became a martyred city.

 

Ahmad grew up in one of the most beautiful areas of the city, the old souk. Nothing remains of these thousand-year-old alleys

When nostalgia wins, this trained painter escapes, remembering Aleppo at the time of its splendour.

 

TC: 03:03

SOUND AHMAD

I draw to reconstruct our old neighborhood of Aleppo. This is the souk of the city. Those who knew him know that it was the most beautiful markets in the world.

 

TC: 03:20

SOUND GRAND-MERE

My one and only dream, before I die, is to see Aleppo and Syria standing up, and better than it was. But now the earthquake has destroyed those hopes. You never know what the future holds.

  

Fearing that their house would collapse, Ahmad and his family now prefer to sleep outside under a makeshift shelter.

 

TC: 03:57

SOUND GRAND-MERE

We made this tent with these nylon tarps and have been sleeping here ever since.

 

TC: 04:07

SOUND GRAND-MOTHER OFF

I feel protected in the tent. At least here, we are not in danger of being buried under rubble.

 

TC: 04:16

GRANDMOTHER ATMOSPHERE - GRANDSONS

Come on Ibrahim, you too will buy yourself a candy.

 

After the war and now the chaos, for children too everything has changed.

Their daily life, like their child's play.

 

The youth of Aleppo is shattered.

 

At 6 years old, Ahmad's nephew Ibrahim can't even sleep.

 

TC: 04:55

SOUND IBRAHIM

When I sleep I am afraid. I dream of thieves coming to kill me. I am very scared, I wake up my grandmother and I tell her: "Grandma, the thieves will kill me". She tells me to go back to sleep but I can't and I keep crying.

 

Almost no accompaniment is organized to appease tormented spirits. When the temperatures become frigid, these thousands of families sleep on the streets, left to fend for themselves.

 

Humanitarian aid is trickling in because only a few organizations manage to get it through.

 

It is from Beirut that a Frenchman organizes these convoys. For 7 years, Vincent has been crisscrossing the region for the organization, the Oeuvre d'Orient. That morning, he loaded a truck bound for Aleppo.

 

SOUND VINCENT

06:13 Synth: Vincent Gelot, Lebanon-Syria director at Oeuvre d'Orient

The situation there is disastrous. Syria is a population that lives 95% below the poverty line. It is a population that is largely displaced or refugee. It is a country that is in this state, and that is forgotten.

 

Diapers, powdered milk, blankets... 6 tons of basic necessities.

After several weeks of an administrative obstacle course, the last authorization from the Syrian government arrives ... while it is only 1 hour from the border.

 

SOUND VINCENT

We just got the permit there. Halleluya. This allows us to cross the border with the truck. This morning, it was not yet 100% sure.

 

Despite his optimism, Vincent will have to be patient to cross the border. Here, impossible to take out the camera, we film on mobile phone.

 

Customs officers want to requisition the goods. This is unacceptable for Vincent and his team. They fear that humanitarian aid will not be distributed to the victims. But after 7 hours of relentless negotiations...

 

TC: 07:20

CUSTOMS SOUND

Well, that's the paper for the truck. Wait, I'll put a stamp on you.

 

Vincent and his team win their case, they leave with the truck.

 

The Syrian drama is being played out even in the cities that remained intact during the war.

We arrive in Latakia, the stronghold of the Assad family.

There too, following the earthquake, dozens of buildings collapsed, thousands of lives turned upside down.

 

TC: 08:12

FADI SOUND

25 people died here.

 

Fadi and his wife Raquel are miraculous. On the night of the earthquake, they were sleeping at their parents' house. Only 8 of their neighbours survived.

 

TC: 08:32

FADI SOUND

That's my shirt. Our apartment was located on this side, on the 3rd floor.

 

TC: 08:42

SOUND VINCENT

Do you have a picture of your house? You can show it to us. There was only one building here? Is all this one building?

 

TC: 08:52

FADI SOUND

Yes, one building, 8 floors with 4 apartments per floor. If we had stayed to sleep here, we would have been under this rubble.

 

After about ten minutes, we have to leave. This man in black is watching us, probably a plainclothes policeman, which worries our companions.

 

The country is held with an iron fist by the regime, thanks in part to a network of informants infiltrated into the population. Sheltered from the eyes and ears of the State, it is a presbytery, that the meeting resumes. The last refuge for these Christians.

 

TC: 09:35

FADI SOUND

This earthquake was one trauma too many. If we could go away from Syria, it would be better. We have withstood years of war but this is too much, we can no longer stay here.

 

SOUND VINCENT

There is a lot of unsaid, a lot of silence. Syria is the country of silence. Silence but I would say general. Around Syria too. Country that we no longer talk about. Who is talking about Syria today? Apart from the earthquake. Who cares about Syrians today?  That's a real question... for 12 years.

 

Caught in this endless descent into hell of Syria, Fadi and Raquel see exile as the only horizon.

 

On the road between Latakia and Aleppo, we cross villages as if frozen in the middle of the ruins.

 

SOUND VINCENT

The scandal of Syria, I would say, is that this country is not rebuilding. On the one hand there are the allies of the regime in place, Iran and Russia, who do not have the means or the desire to rebuild. And on the other hand, the West, which does not want to hear about reconstruction as long as Bashar al-Assad is in power. So there is no reconstruction and in the middle of these ruins live the people, the Syrians.

 

This truck that arrives in Aleppo is the exception, unloaded in this center of a Christian community under the responsibility of Brother Georges. It is he who will organize the distribution without distinction of religions. It considers that international aid is not up to the task in the face of this humanitarian tragedy.

 

SONOROUS BROTHER GEORGES

11:26 Synth: Br George Sabé, member of the Blue Marists of Aleppo

When the earthquake happened, Turkish airspace was saturated and ours in Syria was empty. We did not receive the help we should have received by thinking only of the human. A Syrian victim is the same as a Turkish victim.

 

Syrian victims in a suffocated country, ... hostages of a status quo.

Like Ahmad's family, like Fadi and Raquel, 13 million Syrians are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance.

 

12:13 Credits:

 

Simon Dupuy

Thomas Lhoste

Gabriela Ackermann

Edgard Blonde