-
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I cannot forget them.
-
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Their names were Aslan, Alik, Andrei,
-
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Fernanda, Fred, Galina, Gunnhild,
-
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Hans, Ingebourg, Matti, Natalia,
-
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Nancy, Cheryl, Usman, Zarema,
-
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and the list is longer.
-
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For many, their existence,
their humanity,
-
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has been reduced to statistics,
-
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coldly recorded as "security incidents."
-
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For me, they were colleagues
-
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belonging to that community
of humanitarian aid workers
-
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that tried to bring a bit of comfort
-
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to the victims of the wars
in Chechnya in the '90s.
-
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They were nurses, logisticians,
shelter experts,
-
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paralegals, interpreters.
-
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On foreign service, they were murdered,
-
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their family torn apart,
-
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and their story largely forgotten.
-
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No one was ever sentenced
for these crimes.
-
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I cannot forget them.
-
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They live in me somehow,
-
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their memories giving me meaning everyday.
-
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But they were also haunting
-
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the dark street of my mind.
-
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As humanitarian aid workers,
they made the choice
-
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to be at the side of the victim,
-
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to provide some assistance,
-
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some comfort, some protection,
-
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but when they needed
protection themselves,
-
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it wasn't there.
-
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When you see the headlines
of your newspaper these days
-
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with the war in Iraq or in Syria
-
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-- aid worker abducted,
hostage executed --
-
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but who were they?
-
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Why were they there?
-
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What motivated them?
-
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How did we become
so indifferent to these crimes?
-
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This is why I am here today with you.
-
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We need to find better ways
to remember them.
-
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We also need to explain
the key values to which
-
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they dedicated their lives.
-
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We also need to demand for justice.
-
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When in '96 I was sent
-
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by the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees to the North Caucasus,
-
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I knew some of the risks.
-
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Five colleagues had been killed,
-
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three had been seriously injured,
-
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seven had already been taken hostage.
-
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So we were careful.
-
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We were using armored vehicles, decoy cars,
-
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changing patterns of traveling,
changing homes,
-
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all sorts of security measures.
-
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Yet on a cold winter night
of January '98, it was my turn.
-
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When I entered my flat
in Vladikavkaz with a guard,
-
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we were surrounded by armed men.
-
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They took the guard,
they put him on the floor,
-
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they beat him up in front of me,
-
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tied him, dragged him away.
-
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I was handcuffed, blindfolded,
-
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and forced to kneel,
-
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as the silencer of a gun
pressed against my neck.
-
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When it happens to you,
there is no time for thinking,
-
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no time for praying.
-
Not Synced
My brain went on automatic,
rewinding quickly
-
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the life I just left behind.
-
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It took me long minutes to figure out
-
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that those masked men there
were not there to kill me,
-
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but that someone, somewhere,
had ordered my kidnapping.
-
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Then a process of dehumanization
started that day.
-
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I was no more than just a commodity.
-
Not Synced
I normally don't talk about this,
but I'd like to share a bit with you
-
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some of those 317 days of captivity.
-
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I was kept in an underground cellar,
-
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total darkness,
-
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for 23 hours and 45 minutes every day,
-
Not Synced
and then the guards would come,
-
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normally two.
-
Not Synced
They would bring a big piece of bread,
-
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a bowl of soup, and a candle.
-
Not Synced
That candle would burn for 15 minutes,
-
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15 minutes of precious light,
-
Not Synced
and then they would take it away,
-
Not Synced
and I returned to darkness.
-
Not Synced
I was chained by a metal cable to my bed.
-
Not Synced
I could do only four small steps.
-
Not Synced
I always dreamt of the fifth one.
-
Not Synced
And no TV, no radio, no newspaper,
no one to talk to.
-
Not Synced
I had no towel, no soap, no toilet paper,
-
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just two metal buckets open,
-
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one for water, for one waste.
-
Not Synced
Can you imagine that mock execution
can be a pastime for guards
-
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when they are sadistic
-
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or when they are just bored or drunk?
-
Not Synced
We are breaking my nails very slowly.
-
Not Synced
Isolation and darkness
are particularly difficult to describe.
-
Not Synced
How do you describe nothing?
-
Not Synced
There are no words for the depths
of loneliness I reached
-
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in that very thin border
-
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between sanity and madness.
-
Not Synced
In the darkness, sometimes,
I played imaginary games of checkers.
-
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I would start with the black,
-
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play with the white,
-
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but to the black
trying to trick the other side.
-
Not Synced
I don't play checkers anymore.
-
Not Synced
I was tormented by the thoughts
of my family and my colleague,
-
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the guard, Edik.
-
Not Synced
I didn't know what had happened to him.
-
Not Synced
While trying not to think,
-
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I tried to fill up my time
by doing all sorts
-
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of physical exercises on the spot.
-
Not Synced
I tried to pray, I tried all sorts
of memorization games.
-
Not Synced
But darkness also creates images
and thoughts that are not normal.
-
Not Synced
One part of brain wants you
to resist, to shout, to cry,
-
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and the other part of the brain
orders you to shut up
-
Not Synced
and just go through it.
-
Not Synced
It's a constant internal debate:
-
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there is no one to arbitrate.
-
Not Synced
Once a guard came to me,
-
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very aggressively, and he told me,
-
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"Today you're going to kneel
and beg for your food."
-
Not Synced
I wasn't in a good mood,
so I insulted him.
-
Not Synced
I insulted his mother,
I insulted his ancestor.
-
Not Synced
The consequence was moderate:
-
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he threw the food into my waste.
-
Not Synced
The day after he came back
with the same demand.
-
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He got the same answer,
-
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which had the same consequence.
-
Not Synced
Four days later,
the body was full of pain.
-
Not Synced
I didn't know hunger hurt so much
when you have so little.
-
Not Synced
So when the guards came down,
-
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I knelt.
-
Not Synced
I begged for my food.
-
Not Synced
Submission was the only way for me
-
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to make it to another candle.
-
Not Synced
After my kidnapping,
I was transferred
-
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from North Ossetia to Chechnya,
-
Not Synced
three days of slow travel
in the trunks of different cars,
-
Not Synced
and upon arrival, I was interrogated
-
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for 11 days by a guy called Ruslan.
-
Not Synced
The routine was always the same:
-
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a bit more light, 45 minutes.
-
Not Synced
He would come down to the cellar,
-
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he would ask the guards
to tie me on the chair,
-
Not Synced
and he would turn on the music loud,
-
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and then he would yell questions.
-
Not Synced
He would scream. He would beat me.
-
Not Synced
I'll spare you the details.
-
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There are many questions
I could not understand,
-
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and there are some questions
I did not want to understand.
-
Not Synced
The length of the interrogation
was the duration of the tape:
-
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15 songs, 45 minutes.
-
Not Synced
I would always long for the last song.
-
Not Synced
On one day, one night in that cellar,
-
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I don't know where it was,
-
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I heard a child crying above my head,
-
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a boy, maybe two or three years old.
-
Not Synced
Footsteps, confusion, people running.
-
Not Synced
So when Ruslan came the day after,
-
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before he put the first question to me,
-
Not Synced
I asked him, "How is your son today?
Is he feeling better?"
-
Not Synced
Ruslan was taken by surprise.
-
Not Synced
He was furious that the guards
may have leaked some details
-
Not Synced
about his private life.
-
Not Synced
I kept talking about NGOs
supplying medicines to local clinics
-
Not Synced
that may help his son to get better,
and we talked about education.
-
Not Synced
We talked about families.
-
Not Synced
He talked to me about his children.
-
Not Synced
I talked to him about my daughters.
-
Not Synced
And then he'd talk about guns,
about cars, about women,
-
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and I had to talk about guns,
about cars, about women.
-
Not Synced
And we talked until
the last song on the tape.
-
Not Synced
Ruslan was the most brutal man I ever met.
-
Not Synced
He did not touch me anymore.
-
Not Synced
He did not ask any other questions.
-
Not Synced
I was no longer just a commodity.
-
Not Synced
Two days after, I was transferred
to another place.
-
Not Synced
There, a guard came to me,
-
Not Synced
very close, it's quite unusual,
-
Not Synced
and he said with
a very soft voice, he said,
-
Not Synced
"I'd like to thank you
-
Not Synced
for the assistance your organization
provided my family
-
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when we were displaced
in nearby Dagestan."
-
Not Synced
What could I possibly reply?
-
Not Synced
It was so painful.
It was like a blade in the belly.
-
Not Synced
It took me weeks of internal thinking
to try to reconcile
-
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the good reasons we had
to assist that family
-
Not Synced
and the soldier of fortune he became.
-
Not Synced
He was young, he was shy.
-
Not Synced
I never saw his face.
-
Not Synced
He probably meant well.
-
Not Synced
But in those 15 seconds,
-
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he made me question everything we did,
-
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all the sacrifices.
-
Not Synced
He made me think also how they see us.
-
Not Synced
Until then, I had assumed
that they know why we are there
-
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and what we are doing.
-
Not Synced
One cannot assume this.
-
Not Synced
Well, explaining why we do this
is not that easy,
-
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even to our closest relatives.
-
Not Synced
We are not perfect, we are not superior,
-
Not Synced
we are not the world's fire brigade,
-
Not Synced
we are not superheroes,
-
Not Synced
we don't stop wars,
-
Not Synced
we know that humanitarian response
are not substitute for political solution.
-
Not Synced
Yet we do this because one life matters.
-
Not Synced
Sometimes that's the only
difference you make,
-
Not Synced
one individual, one family,
a small group of individuals,
-
Not Synced
and it matters.
-
Not Synced
When you have a tsunami, an earthquake,
or a typhoon, you see teams of rescuers
-
Not Synced
coming from all over the world,
-
Not Synced
searching for survivors for weeks.
-
Not Synced
Why? Nobody questions this.
-
Not Synced
Every life matters,
-
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or every life should matter.
-
Not Synced
This is the same for us
when we help refugees,
-
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people displaced within their country
by conflict, or stateless persons,
-
Not Synced
I know many people,
when they are confronted
-
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to overwhelming suffering,
they feel powerless,
-
Not Synced
and they stop there.
-
Not Synced
It's a pity, because there are
so many ways people can help.
-
Not Synced
We don't stop with that feeling.
-
Not Synced
We try to do whatever we can
to provide some assistance,
-
Not Synced
some protection, some comfort.
-
Not Synced
We have to.
-
Not Synced
We can't do otherwise.
-
Not Synced
It makes us feel, I don't know,
simply human.
-
Not Synced
That's a picture of me
the day of my release.
-
Not Synced
Months after my release,
I met the then-French Prime Minister.
-
Not Synced
The second thing he told me, he said,
"You were totally responsible
-
Not Synced
to go to the North Caucasus.
-
Not Synced
You don't know how many
problems you've created for us."
-
Not Synced
It was a short meeting.
-
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(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
I think helping people
in danger is responsible.
-
Not Synced
In that war, that nobody
seriously wanted to stop,
-
Not Synced
and we have many of these today,
-
Not Synced
bringing some assistance
to people in need
-
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on a bit of protection
-
Not Synced
was not just an act of humanity,
-
Not Synced
it was making a real difference
for the people.
-
Not Synced
Why he could not understand this?
-
Not Synced
We have a responsibility to try.
-
Not Synced
You've heard about that concept:
Responsibility to Protect.
-
Not Synced
Outcomes may depend
on various parameters.
-
Not Synced
We may even fail,
but there is worse than failing,
-
Not Synced
it's not even trying when we can.
-
Not Synced
Well, if you are met this way,
-
Not Synced
if you sign up for this sort of job,
-
Not Synced
your life is going to be full
of joy and sadness,
-
Not Synced
because there are a lot of people
we cannot help,
-
Not Synced
a lot of people we cannot protect,
-
Not Synced
a lot of people we did not save.
-
Not Synced
I call them my ghost,
-
Not Synced
and by having witnessed
their suffering from close,
-
Not Synced
you take a bit of that suffering
-
Not Synced
on yourself.
-
Not Synced
Many young humanitarian workers
-
Not Synced
go through their first experience
with a lot of bitterness.
-
Not Synced
They are thrown into situations
where they are witness,
-
Not Synced
but they are powerless
to bring any change.
-
Not Synced
They have to learn to accept it
-
Not Synced
and gradually turn this
into positive energy.
-
Not Synced
It's difficult.
-
Not Synced
Many don't succeed,
-
Not Synced
but for those who do,
there is no other job like this.
-
Not Synced
You can see the difference
you make every day.
-
Not Synced
Humanitarian aid workers
know the risk they are taking
-
Not Synced
in conflict areas
-
Not Synced
or in post-conflict environments,
-
Not Synced
yet our life, our job,
-
Not Synced
is becoming increasingly life-threatening,
-
Not Synced
and the sanctity of our life is fading.
-
Not Synced
Do you know that since the millennium,
-
Not Synced
the number of attacks
on humanitarian aid workers
-
Not Synced
has tripled?
-
Not Synced
2013 broke new records:
-
Not Synced
155 colleagues killed,
-
Not Synced
171 seriously wounded,
-
Not Synced
134 abducted.
-
Not Synced
So many broken lives.
-
Not Synced
Until the beginning of the civil war
in Somalia in the late '80s,
-
Not Synced
humanitarian aid workers
were sometimes victims
-
Not Synced
of what we call collateral damages,
-
Not Synced
but by and large we were not
the target of these attacks.
-
Not Synced
This has changed.
-
Not Synced
Look at these pictures.
-
Not Synced
Baghdad, August 2003:
-
Not Synced
24 colleagues were killed.
-
Not Synced
Gone are the days
when U.N. blue flag or Red Cross
-
Not Synced
would automatically protect us.
-
Not Synced
Criminal groups and some political groups
-
Not Synced
have cross-fertilized
over the last 20 years,
-
Not Synced
and they've created this sort of hybrids
-
Not Synced
with whom we have no way of communicating.
-
Not Synced
Humanitarian principles are tested,
questioned, and often ignored,
-
Not Synced
but perhaps more importantly,
-
Not Synced
we have abandoned the search for justice.
-
Not Synced
There seems to be
no consequence whatsoever
-
Not Synced
for attacks against
humanitarian aid workers.
-
Not Synced
After my release, I was told
not to seek any form of justice.
-
Not Synced
"It won't do any good to you."
That's what I was told.
-
Not Synced
"Plus, you're going to put in danger
the life of other colleagues."
-
Not Synced
It took me years
-
Not Synced
to see the sentencing of three people
-
Not Synced
associated to my kidnapping,
-
Not Synced
but this was the exception.
-
Not Synced
There was no justice
-
Not Synced
for any of the humanitarian
aid workers killed or abducted
-
Not Synced
in Chechnya between '95 and '99,
-
Not Synced
and it's the same all over the world.
-
Not Synced
This is unacceptable.
-
Not Synced
This is inexcusable.
-
Not Synced
Attacks of humanitarian aid workers
are war crimes in international law.
-
Not Synced
Those crimes should not go unpunished.
-
Not Synced
We must end this cycle of impunity.
-
Not Synced
We must consider that those attacks
against humanitarian aid workers
-
Not Synced
are attacks against humanity itself.
-
Not Synced
That makes me furious.
-
Not Synced
I know I'm very lucky
-
Not Synced
compared to the refugees I work for.
-
Not Synced
I don't know what it is to have seen
my whole town destroyed.
-
Not Synced
I don't know what it is to have seen
my relatives shot in front of me.
-
Not Synced
I don't know what it is to lose
the protection of my country.
-
Not Synced
I also know that I'm very lucky
compared to other hostages.
-
Not Synced
Four days before my eventful release,
-
Not Synced
four hostages were beheaded
-
Not Synced
a few miles away from where
I was kept in captivity.
-
Not Synced
Why them?
-
Not Synced
Why am I here today?
-
Not Synced
No easy answer.
-
Not Synced
I was received with a lot of support
-
Not Synced
that I got from my relatives,
-
Not Synced
from colleagues, from friends,
from people I didn't know.
-
Not Synced
They have helped me over years
to come out of the darkness.
-
Not Synced
Not everyone was treated
with the same attention.
-
Not Synced
How many of my colleagues,
after a traumatic incident,
-
Not Synced
took their own life?
-
Not Synced
I can count nine that I knew personally.
-
Not Synced
How many of my colleagues
went through a difficult divorce
-
Not Synced
after a traumatic experience
-
Not Synced
because they could not explain
anything anymore to their spouse?
-
Not Synced
I've lost that count.
-
Not Synced
There is a price for this type of life.
-
Not Synced
In Russia, all war monuments have
this beautiful inscription at the top.
-
Not Synced
It says, [In Russian].
-
Not Synced
No-one is forgotten,
nothing is forgotten.
-
Not Synced
I do not forget my lost colleagues.
-
Not Synced
I cannot forget anything.
-
Not Synced
I call on you to remember their dedication
-
Not Synced
and demand that humanitarian
aid workers around the world
-
Not Synced
be better protected.
-
Not Synced
We should not let that light of hope
they have brought to be switched off.
-
Not Synced
After my ordeal, a lot of colleagues
asked me, "But why do you continue?
-
Not Synced
Why do you do this sort of job?
-
Not Synced
Why do you have to go back to it?"
-
Not Synced
My answer was very simple:
-
Not Synced
if I had quit,
-
Not Synced
that would have meant
my kidnapper had won.
-
Not Synced
They would have taken my soul
-
Not Synced
and my humanity.
-
Not Synced
Thank you.
-
Not Synced
(Applause)
Krystian Aparta
At 05:10, "We are breaking my nails very slowly" was changed to "We are breaking my nerves very slowly."