Panorama documentary on Syria a powerful piece of TV

TV Watch with Bernie Ni Fhlatharta

The overload of images from war torn places all over the world have made many of us practically immune to horror, but Saving Syria’s Children on BBC last Monday was one of the most upsetting and powerful documentaries aired in recent times.

With the remote control almost always at our fingertips, it is so easy to switch channels when upsetting programmes flash up on our television screens.

But because Syria and what happened recently to so many children when they were killed or injured with a chemical bomb, its topicality made it compulsive viewing, so the remote went untouched.

As it happens a team from the BBC Panorama programme happened to be following two English based doctors volunteering in Syria. One of them had Syrian heritage. Both usually worked in a busy A&E in London. Both had done voluntary work in other war zones but neither of them had ever experienced atrocities like this.

A local school was bombed while they were there and suddenly the basic hospital was overwhelmed with the burn injuries of mostly teenagers. Ten of them died, and three of those were featured on the programme, putting a human face on war.

It was upsetting because it involved young people and very powerful because it was footage taken just weeks ago.

This was pure journalism at its best as it was showing it as it is. It showed how schools and hospitals are being targeted, basically civilians trying to go about their daily lives.

Earlier in the programme before the bombing happened, it showed an old man now homeless because of the war. Though he was dressed in traditional Syrian attire and spoke in a different language, he could have been an elderly man from anywhere. All he wanted was the comfort of his own home, now gone.

The tears on his line etched face would have touched the hardest heart, though obviously not those who continue in violence, in war.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.