Date: 20 September 2011
Time: 6.30pm
Where: Ian McKellen Hall, Lighthouse West London, 111-117 Lancaster Road, Ladbroke Grove, London W11 1QT
“Hostages” is the award-winning account, in their own words, of the harrowing ordeal suffered by five nurses abducted from the Benghazi hospital where they worked, then subjected to eight years of imprisonment and torture by Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi’s police state.
The film sheds light on one of the most complex international scandals of the past decade: how a handful of innocents – five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor – were sacrificed to the whims of a mercurial tyrant, condemned to death for a crime they did not commit, and rescued by a curious combination of Europolitics, scientific evidence and human rights activism.
Accused of deliberately infecting hundreds of children in their care with the HIV virus and for years used as bargaining chips in Gaddafi’s desperate quest for recognition and petrodollars, the nurses are at last free to tell us their own stories of fear, despair, courage and resilience, while the film itself provokes reflection on an intricate web of underlying issues such as Western medical assistance to the developing world, control of HIV in the face of official neglect and social stigma, the political and diplomatic paralysis that sets in when economic gain trumps human rights…even the Lockerbie bombing is part of this astonishing mix.
The film’s author, the broadcaster and journalist Velislava Dareva, occupies a unique place in Bulgarian public life. A former political prisoner herself, she is known throughout the country for her fiercely critical, independent voice. She was a key figure in bringing the issue of the “Benghazi Six” to prominence at a time when governments from Sofia to Washington preferred to look the other way.
Everyone will find echoes of dramatic events in today’s Arab world and reminders of the seemingly unending struggle to rid Libya of Gaddafi’s vicious rule in this powerful testimony of abduction and torture, of surreal injustice and bungled diplomacy – and of the extraordinary rescue mission that finally brought an end to the nurses’ nightmare.
There will be a Q&A session after the screening with Velislava Dareva. The event is hosted by the Terrence Higgins Trust and organised by Nishan Dzhingozyan and Paul Haviland of the Bulgarian Medics Solidarity Project (BMSP). It is also an opportunity for the BMSP to thank those people and organisations who supported our efforts on behalf of the nurses during the darkest days.
Nishan Dzhingozyan
4C Crescent Road
Finchley Central,
London
N3 1HP
Nishan_gj@yahoo.com
07758118609 – mobile