Woman's Hour - Emma Barnett covers the reaction to Sarah Everard’s vigil and the actions of the Metropolitan Police

Episode Date: March 15, 2021

Reaction to Sarah Everard’s vigil and the actions of the Metropolitan Police . Among the thousands who came to Clapham Common in South London on Saturday night to pay their respects to her were feminist writer and member of Southall Black Sister, Rahila Gupta and campaigner and columnist at the i, Kate Maltby. Emma speaks to them both, and to Sir Peter Fahy, retired former Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police about the policing of the event. Plus we hear from Jan Royall, Baroness Royall about the idea of putting together a data base of offenders convicted of harassment, coercive control and stalking similar to the sex offenders register. This month marks the 10th anniversary of a conflict in Syria that has devastated the country and the Syrian people. In a country whose population in 2011 was estimated at about 21 million - more than half the population has been displaced: 6.6 million Syrian have been forced to flee their country since 2011. Another 6 million have been uprooted from their homes but remain displaced inside the country. It's impossible to estimate the number of people who have been killed. In 2014 the UN stopped counting, saying it was too difficult to verify the number of people killed. Their last estimate in 2016 was 400,000. It is by any standards a humanitarian crisis of unspeakable proportions. Dr. Rola Hallam, CEO and Founder of CanDo, a charity set up to deliver health humanitarian aid in warzones joins Emma Barnett.Jacqueline Springer who's a music journalist and broadcaster gives up a round up of last night's Grammy's .Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Lucinda Montefiore

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning. Strong, principled and a shining example to us all. That is how Sarah Everard is described by her parents and older siblings in their only public statement. The discovery of Sarah's body at the end of last week in a Kent woodland after she disappeared walking home in South London has prompted vigils and protests over the weekend, and police clashes, something we shall get to shortly. Over the weekend, thousands of largely women felt compelled

to visit Clapham Common with flowers and signs, from students to activists to mothers, grandmothers, daughters, even a future queen in the shape of the Duchess of Cambridge, where a memorial for Sarah Everard has sprung up on the bandstand, with many more unable to go or not able to go due to the Covid restrictions, not feeling like they can, lighting a candle at home or standing on their doorstep. To remember the 33-year-old woman, sister, daughter, niece, girlfriend and friend who was just walking home. Her aunt, Andrea Everard, has told the Sun newspaper that it's not right that women don't feel safe on the street. She talked about those

who'd gone along to Clapham as all they were doing was showing support for Sarah and other women victims of appalling crime. She said, I hope Sarah's death can bring about some positive change. Nick Everard, Sarah's uncle, thanked well-wishers who left flowers at the vigil saying, We're grateful for all the love. The support is overwhelming. Thank you to everybody. The newspaper understands that the family, Sarah's parents, Jeremy and Sue, and her siblings, James and Kate, also plan to pay tribute at the common. Keeping Sarah Everard at the forefront of our minds this morning, we want to ask you how you feel today. What her death has perhaps meant to you, to those around you. What change should it bring, could

it bring in our society, in our laws, how we handle violence and threats of attack? Perhaps you went along to either the vigil on Saturday evening or the protest at Parliament Square yesterday, or maybe you lit a candle for Sarah. Text us here at Women's Hour, 84844. Texts will be charged at your standard message rate of course on social media we're at BBC Women's Hour or email us your experiences your views through our website

and we'll look out for those messages already coming in so thank you for those also on today's programme 10 years on from the Syria conflict we talked to one woman who's dedicated her working life ever since to helping women and children in particular who were affected. And the Grammys, a night for the women, also something defined by protest. But first.

How many more? How many more? How many more? How many more? Among the thousands who came to Clapham Common in South London on Saturday day through into the night to pay their respects to Sarah Everard were feminist writer and member of Southall Black Sisters, Rahila Gupta, and the campaigner and columnist at the iPaper, Kate Maltby, who are on the line with me now. Rahila, good morning. If I could start with you, what moved you to go? Well, I guess a number of emotions. I went in anger. I went in sorrow, frustration and solidarity. I've been active around violence against women for nearly 40 years. I've been to several memorials for dead women killed by both strangers and intimates. I've participated in Reclaim the Night marches and been sexually harassed myself on the streets. I've walked in fear at night coming home after 11pm, for example. My eyes would be all around my head. The streets don't belong to us. We are second-class citizens. Already as a black woman, I feel like a second-class citizen. And then the misogyny compounds it. So I felt I had to go. I absolutely had to be there to show solidarity with other women who were there. sense of déjà vu is somewhat wearing and frustrating but for every change in attitude

or policy or law that happens as a result of this kind of outpouring of anger and so on I think it makes it worthwhile if we can make things better for the next generation. Kate let me extend the same question to you. And good morning. What was your motivation and what did you see when you arrived? Well, I think Rahila's expressed it very well in that I had, like her, mixed emotions, multiple motivations. And I think most of the women I spoke to, they didn't just have one single reason for being there. I went officially as a journalist, which meant it was lawful for me to be there um because I write about feminist issues and I knew it was going to be important to what other women had to say talk to other women about the experience but obviously I'd be lying if I said um I wasn't

drawn there out of a personal sympathy and in particular I had spoken a lot and I'm sure many of your listeners will have this experience of with my other female friends all week I'd been talking to my female friends about this they'd been calling in tears this had brought up for them memories of sexual violence they'd experienced and what we all have when this is when some when we are reminded of the extent of sexual and gender-based violence against women is an overwhelming urge to be around other women, to be in female spaces, to have the support of female friends. And that had been denied to us.

That is in part, of course, because we're in a pandemic. But that has been, I think, very, very difficult for people. There's also, there was a huge amount of anger that the police had told women to stay at home and that there had been this encouragement to light a candle on the doorstep. I mean, literally not leaving the boundaries of your home and your household. a lot of the women I've spoken to this week shared what for me was an overwhelming drive to get out of the house, to go there, to engage with other women, which is just an absolute refusal to stay indoors in order to be safe as women, to be told by the police, to be told by the establishment, to be told by the powers that be, that women need to behave, that we belong in the domestic sphere. And this is obviously a historical thing. I mean, all the way back to ancient Greece, I mean, feminist historians for years have been looking at the

division that takes place across all societies traditional societies between the public space which belongs to men and that includes parks and open spaces in the town and the domestic space inside the boundaries of the household behind your doorstep which is where women but they're allowed to be there if you go out of that you won be safe. And I think we're fed up with being told to stay indoors. There's an additional element to stay at home with the message at the moment, of course, which is the Covid restrictions, which has led to a great debate, which some have said has taken the attention away from Sarah Everard and the violence here around how police handled those, that vigil. And as you put it actually in one of your tweets, Kate,

for some it was a vigil and for some it was a protest. And that's OK. It can be different things to different people. Raheela, to come back to you, what is your view on what happened with the police? Because as some have put it, the police's actions turned it from a vigil into a protest. What's your reading on that?

Yeah, I agree. I just wanted to come back quickly on what Kate was saying, to say that also the domestic space has never really been a safe space for women in any case. So there is that additional irony. But from what I saw, I mean, a lot of people have already commented on the fact that the police were manhandling women when women were out there to protest against the violence of, you know, several police officers towards them. So I think I saw, for example, that the police moved in on the bandstand where there were women leading the slogans and pushed them off the bandstand into a huddle, which if they were that anxious about the fact that we ought to be following, you know, social distancing,

what they were actually doing was pushing crowds together. So I think it was a complete nonsense. I think it was an attempt to stop women from having their voices heard. And I'm really hoping that this alleged police officer who has carried out this horrendous crime will show younger white women, you know, the entrenched misogyny in all our institutions. I do feel that there has, as a black woman, again, I have to say that I've been alive to the racism of police and how dangerous it is as an institution to migrants and black people.

So I think this is a really important moment from that point of view. And it's probably one of the reasons why we've had such a massive outpouring of anger. That here was a woman who did, by all the patriarchal standards of how women should protect themselves and keep themselves safe, dressed in the appropriate way, made the appropriate phone calls, etc, etc. And then the institution that we should look to for

protection and support is actually the aggressor. And, you know, Sorry, in one instance, we have to stress very much the alleged aggressor at this point. But with regards to what's going on with what happened on Saturday, that's a separate discussion around what people have said is an irony around women coming to reclaim the space and reclaim the night. And then what happened with the police, because obviously there are also female police officers there. Kate, could I get your view on what happened with the police and the handling of this? Because we're going to talk to a former chief constable in just a moment on

this. Well, I agree with a lot of what Raheela has said. I had supported the initial plans for a vigil with COVID marshalling. There was an organisation called Reclaim the Streets, which came together and put proposals forward to the metropolitan police or frankly what I think would have been a much safer vigil um not because people behave badly in any way at the event on Saturday night but because they're simply the fact that it was unofficial meant that you couldn't have official stewards encouraging social distancing because they risked being arrested if they turned up even if what they were actually coming to do was to try and help people protest in a safer fashion. I also just wanted to re-echo what Rahila says

about the racialized dimensions of this. A lot of the women I spoke to were women of color who had come to protest, who were very aware also of the cases of Nicole Smallman and Biba Henry, who were murdered in a park and whose bodies were then treated horrifically inappropriately. Allegedly, I think we again have to say. Yeah, I was going to say there's still

an outstanding investigation into that. And I do, I will finally say, and I know I'm sitting here as a pretty posh white woman myself, but I find it very striking that the picture that has been splashed across all the papers is of a white woman being arrested. She was not the only woman arrested there.

This was not a protest that was by any means led by white women. And I think we have to keep that. It's important for us in particular, actually, to step back and to acknowledge the leadership of women of colour who have been pushed out of this conversation. Kate, what do you think needs to change after this? And if possible, to put that briefly, because we want to get onto the police side of this and speak to a former chief constable and also hear about the political side of this. But what do you think needs to change after what has been, everyone can agree, a real moment? So the police need to take sexual violence seriously and that's whether it's someone coming to them and saying I've experienced sexual harassment in the street and being told it's not a police priority, which happens all the time at

the moment. Separately but relatedly they need a change of attitude and a change of culture in their ranks that means that someone who might end up being an offender is noticed when he's serving in their ranks and not part of a generalised misogynistic culture, which is what we all really fear. I also think we need to separate slightly. I'm glad you talked a lot about Sarah Everard's family. I think there is a difference between the mourning of Sarah Everard as an individual young woman, which belongs first and foremost to her family and her friends, and then the broader context of sustained violence and sexual harassment against women. I don't know entirely how we honour both without marginalising one or the other.

But I think it's important to recognise that the political conversation is a conversation being had by women across the country, but that we also don't own Sarah Everard as a human being and that we can't make statements on behalf of her or her family. Yes, that's why I was keen to share what Sarah Everard's family have said so far. Kate Maltby, thank you for your time. Raheela, you have been doing this for a long time in your own campaigning work. Is there something top of list that you would like to see change at this point? There's no one thing that can actually deal with this issue. I think what is the most heartening thing is that there has been a shift in the culture of disbelief. I think all these

years that I've been active, I found that women actually, when they complain about whatever it is that they bring the police about whether it's domestic violence whether it's rape I mean unfortunately we haven't actually seen the impact of this shift you know that the culture of disbelief is dissipated we haven't seen it in our rape statistics for example which are horrendously low but I think that that is that is so important that across the board, across the population, that women are taken seriously when they say that they have been facing abuse and harassment. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he's deeply concerned by footage showing police officers detaining women at Saturday's vigil. The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, has called for an independent inquiry and is expected to give a statement to the House of Commons on the matter this afternoon.

Cressida Dick, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, has dismissed calls for her to resign and defended her police officer's actions. So were the police put in an impossible situation by people gathering on Clapham Common despite the official vigil being cancelled earlier in the day because of COVID restrictions? Did the officers on the ground handle things poorly, insensitively,

or were they simply doing their job in trying to enforce COVID safety laws? I can now speak to Sir Peter Farhi, retired former Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police. Good morning. Good morning. From what you've seen and heard, I recognise not everything will have been in front of you. Would you have handled this vigil of largely women in the same way? I think the only choice open to me, Kate, would have been to say, right, well, I'm just going to ignore the event completely, given the strength of the motion, given that it was a police officer accused, given the tragedy, would have been to say, well, although a lot of people are going to break the law

and possibly put themselves in danger, we're just going to ignore the event. And undoubtedly the independent inquiry will have to look at that. There is always an option in policing to use your discretion to say no no not is that now is not the time to confront this particular piece of breaking the law you know from the police point of view the legislation is very clear you can only be outside your house for very specific reasons and that doesn't include a protest indeed you know the government didn't include any exemption for protest in this latest version of the legislation. So the police really put an impossible position. The court refused to give a clear option.

And on this particular issue about why they didn't negotiate with organisers, the trouble was that it is illegal to organise a public event. Sorry, just to be clear, are you saying you would have ignored it? Well, that was the only other option. And what do you think you would have done? Because we're seeing Cressida Dick double down on the decision of her officers. And yet there are others, exactly what you're just saying there, saying the police have professional discretion. Considering the context, it wasn't used well. Well, all I'm saying is that that is the only other option that I can see that was open to the police on that night to say, despite the fact that the law has been blatantly broken in front of us and that people are potentially being put in danger because of the strength of feeling, because of the impact our actions might have on the confidence of women, we are not going to intervene. The police tried to adopt a more sensitive approach on Black Lives Matter and extension rebellion, recognising the strength of feeling in those protests.

They've been severely criticised only last week in a report from the same body that's now going to investigate this, the policing of this event. They were criticised for not being robust enough. So, you know, it comes back to exactly as your previous speakers have said, this is an enormous infringement on human rights. All the pandemic legislation is an enormous infringement on human rights, saying we've got to stay in our homes. And then when there was this strength of feeling and people understandably want to protest and be together, and women want to be together, the trouble is it quite blatantly breaches the law, and so the police either intervene

as best they can, or they say, no, we're going to show discretion. What's your view? What's your view of the decision that was taken here? What was your professional or personal view or both? Without being there, Emma, it's very hard for me to say. And the trouble is as well, anything you do now in policing, you've got to take into account this is going to be subject to mobile phone footage. It's going to be broadcast around the world. How is this going to look? And also when police officers are arresting people, particularly women, they will use four or five officers to make sure somebody's got each limb and somebody's got the head because that's the best way to avoid injury. The trouble is when you put that on a newspaper

page, it looks very dramatic and heavy handed. So I think the inquiry will have to look at... Did you cringe when you put that on a newspaper page, it looks very dramatic and heavy-handed. So I think the inquiry will have to look at it. Did you cringe when you saw it? Well, not in a way, because I understand how policing and police officers have to police this sort of demonstration. I've spoken to several police officers about this, who aren't based in London, saying, you know, what happens with the Met always reflects elsewhere elsewhere and there is a feeling of huge frustration amongst certain

police officers not about the the way you arrest people exactly as you described but the discretion wasn't used that there wasn't uh if you like the emotional intellect here to realize that perhaps this could have been an opportunity to to really listen to what had gone on and use that discretion differently? Well, I think what happened during the whole of Saturday, lots and lots of people came to Clapham Common, and I know some of those spoke to police officers, you know, and even a member of the Royal Family turned up. So there's no question that when it was a matter of something closer to a vigil, lots and lots of people were able to do that and the police were there and undoubtedly engaged and talked to people and the trouble was when it got to the hours of darkness it very clearly became a big public

gathering and something closer to a protest and the officers on the ground decided they had to intervene whatever the reason at that particular point was and they're going to have to be accountable and explain that just final word christaressida Dick, should she stay in the job? Well, I think not. You know, I mean, I know Cressida very well. I work with her very closely on counterterrorism. She's the first female commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. I think she's one of the most outstanding officers I've worked with,

somebody of enormous principle. And I know we'll feel desperate about this whole case and about how this demonstration has turned out. Should she stay in the job? Absolutely absolutely she should stay in the job very very clear from you we've got many messages if you don't mind me getting to those from people getting in touch so Peter Fahey thank you retired former chief constable of Greater Manchester Police Julie says I feel very angry about the way the Met behaved at the vigil I would have gone myself um but and support the women who felt that they needed to go violence against women and girls is a massive problem and the police and the criminal justice

system isn't fair to women uh women are still second-class citizens says this message i've worked supporting victims of abuse harassment and violence for over decades and i think things are getting worse austerity cuts to refuges and women's services haven't helped i lit a candle for sarah and i wept with sadness and frustration. Another message here, they're saying, oh my gosh, this was always going to happen because activists turned it into a protest, not a respectful vigil.

Do not witch hunt Cressida. Where is Sadiq Khan, the London mayor in all of this, to whom obviously Cressida Dick is answerable. I felt absolute disgust at the hypocrisy shown towards the women at the vigil. This other message, the policing was heavy-handed and unnecessary the home secretary priti patel needs to resign yes i see the irony more messages coming in with regards to how women and girls can be made to feel safer ideas that are being looked at and one idea emerging from the outcry over

several sarah everard's death is the idea of a national register to monitor violent men. The idea would be to create a database of offenders convicted of harassment, coercive control and stalking modelled on the idea of the Sex Offenders Register which has been running since 1997. We did ask the government to put up a minister to talk to Woman's Hour this morning to talk about the case specifically,

the issue of policing, a lot to talk about and this Hour this morning to talk about the case specifically, the issue of policing, a lot to talk about, and this idea of a new register. But they were unable to provide anybody to Woman's Hour today. Instead, we're joined now by Jan Royal, Baroness Royal, a Labour peer, who has the idea of this, who was also involved, I should say, with the idea of a database and is putting down an amendment to the Domestic Abuse Bill on the issue later today. Could you tell us first just about this amendment and the idea of the database? Yeah, thank you very much for inviting me on.

This is an idea that's been going for an awful long time. Since 2017 and earlier, I have been calling for a database or for a register which would enable all police forces proper coordination of information about perpetrators. At the moment, victims are static, quite understandably. They're told to stay in their homes, even when it's not the safest place to be. But perpetrators travel and information about the perpetrator does not travel. Therefore, we need a register. But my amendment is more than that. It's also about having a proper perpetrator strategy so that they are assessed and identified and they can be dealt with

appropriately. And it's also about the exchange of data. At the moment, there are... My colleague in the House of Commons, Yvette Cooper, tabled a very similar amendment in the House of Commons, but it was, of course, defeated. I hope that this time we are going to win in the House of Lords. Women deserve nothing less. The government also, we understand, coming up with a similar idea, Boris Johnson meeting this morning around this issue and women's safety. How will this be similar or different? Do you have any understanding of that? I haven't got a clue what the government are coming up with, but we have got a ready-made amendment and a system which has been carefully worked out by experts. And so I don't know why they wouldn't just take on board the system that I am suggesting, proposing in my amendment. But as I say, even if they give us the register,

there is more to be done in terms of my amendment, in terms of perpetrator strategy and the dissemination of information. How long would you stay on the register? Well, how long a sexual... I don't honestly know. Sexual offenders are on a register now and we are arguing for the extension of that register. So I don't know know but I imagine it would be a hell of a long time. That's what I was asking about which is that is there enough

deterrent you know that's that's the other side of this isn't it? Yeah well I imagine they would be on there for at least well for the same amount of time as people are on the register if they are sexual predators. Yes it must be a deterrent I mean it must be a deterrent. I mean, it should be a deterrent for the perpetrators, but most importantly, it's a means of keeping women safe. And there's all this talk about women's safety, but what we really need to talk about is violent men. I think there's just also people wanting to understand what might be different about it with Claire's law, named after Claire Wood, who was killed by her boyfriend in 2009. How would this database be different? Because it's very sad to say this, but we've been here before where women have lost their

lives. And then there's an attempt to reflect that within the law, which leads to some people thinking it's got to be about cultural change, not this, but tell us perhaps how you see it. Well, there absolutely does have to be a cultural change. And we have been arguing for that for many years. But Clare's Law is not a register of all perpetrators of domestic violence and stalking. It's a very specific issue, Clare's Law, and people have to ask for information from the register. What we want is a register that enables police forces, probation, prison services up and down the country to look at the register to see if a man, because it usually is a man, 97% of perpetrators are men. If a man commits a crime which is unrelated to stalking or domestic abuse, they would be able to see from this register whether or not he has

in the past been a perpetrator in terms of domestic abuse. Because quite often these predators, they do other things alongside abusing women, stalking women. So it's important that all that information is there and that is available for people up and down the country, which at the moment it is not. Jan Royal, Baroness Royal of Lobapair, thank you for coming on. We'll follow what happens with that suggestion and also follow what the government's suggestion is as well. A message here just coming in saying, I'm a local woman in terms of this particular story with regards to Sarah Everard, a mother to a 15-year-old daughter. And I went to the vigil on Saturday. Sarah was abducted around 300 metres from my home. The vigil was relatively peaceful, a bit of shouting from young women who are angry for change.

I left at around 7.30. I can't believe it ended how it did with Ketling. She says, you couldn't have had a more law-abiding, mask-wearing, respectful crowd. I met my neighbours on the street aged from 20s to 70s. We came together in solidarity, reads this tweet, and all had stories. Sexism, racism, misogyny, patriarchy, violence, sex assault. We were all so angry. We had enough and we have enough of not feeling safe. And Suzanne says, for goodness sake, no one's saying we can't protest or have a vigil, but just not now due to COVID.

My male partner and I held a candle outside our home. We made a point and when it is safe to do so, we can get together with others. Keep your messages coming in on 84844. This month marks the 10th anniversary of a conflict in Syria that has devastated the country and the Syrian people. And we want to spend some time on this now, because in a country whose population in 2011 was estimated at about 21 million, more than half the population has been displaced. 6.6 million Syrians have been forced to flee their country over the decade.

Another 6 million have been uprooted from their homes, but remain displaced inside the country. And of this group, women have been affected disproportionately, two-thirds being women and children. It's impossible to estimate the number of people who have been killed. In 2014, the UN stopped counting, saying it was too difficult to verify the number. Its last estimate in 2016 was 400,000. Some say now the death count is as high as a million.

More conservative estimates put it at around half a million. It is by any standards a humanitarian crisis of unspeakable proportions. And over the weekend, in a development closer to home, the Times reported that Asma al-Assad, the first lady of Syria, who's also a former British investment banker and was schooled here in the UK, faces possible prosecution and the loss of her British citizenship after the Metropolitan Police opened a preliminary investigation into allegations that she'd incited and encouraged terrorist acts during the country's 10-year

civil war. Well, with me to discuss the situation is Dr. Rola Hallam, a British Syrian doctor and chief executive and founder of CanDo, which is a charity set up to deliver health humanitarian aid in war zones. Rola, welcome to the programme. Thank you very much for having me. Good morning. I wanted to just ask about what CanDo is, first of all, before we talk about the situation. CanDo is a charity, a not-for-profit organisation, and we work closely with frontline healthcare workers

to help them build hospitals, clinics and protect civilians, especially children And talk to us about women and children then in Syria and what you can say about this decade So I think the important thing to start by saying is that today marks 10 years of when Syrians, men, women, children, every type of sect took to the street to peacefully protest, to call for freedom and dignity. They were fed up with a 50-year rule of an authoritarian dictatorship and were shouting harriya karame, wanting their freedom and for their dignity. And the regime met those chants with a bloody crackdown, with

unleashing a war machine against its own civilians. And what we have now is not a civil war, as many people say, but a war on civilians. The regime has used as a core strategy, the bombing targeting of civilians, of women, of children, of hospitals and of schools as its main target so that you can either surrender or you will be killed. I think it's one of those conflicts, if I could describe it like that, that people find very hard to get their head around because it has been going on for so long. And it's got some unique characteristics to it that I know that you've been up close and personal to. And one of the defining characteristics of this conflict, incited by the UN as a blatant violation of international laws, is the attacks that have taken place over the years on medical centres and schools. And I know that you were involved in a particular attack in 2013.

I wondered if you could share something about that. And I should warn listeners that perhaps part of your answer could be quite graphic. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. That's been one of the most devastating features. So as a doctor based in the UK, I was doing medical missions between the UK and Syria to help rebuild hospitals, which, as you said, have been bombed. Physicians for Human Rights, a US-based human rights organization, say that nearly 600 attacks have happened against hospitals. Imagine over 900 of my colleagues have been killed, 40% of them under torture. And it has decimated our healthcare system. And so in 2013, I was on a medical mission. And I was in the north of the country, this is August 2013. And if you may remember, just a few days earlier, there had been a huge

chemical weapons attack, the biggest of the 21st century that the Assad regime had unleashed against a suburb in Damascus, murdering over 1,400 people, 420 of them were children. So during that time, I was in the north of Syria, and I was in one of seven hospitals I'd helped to set up, and I'd witnessed a war crime. A schoolyard full of children was aerially bombarded with an incendiary weapon, which is a napalm-like weapon that causes severe burns. And we had dozens of severely burnt children, teenagers who came wounded into my hospital. I'm shaking as I tell you this story. It really was a scene out of Armageddon. A gut-wrenching smell of burnt flesh and a chemical hung in the air and I'd never seen anything like this. The screams of one of the girls who was there that day injured in this attack still ring in my head.

Twelve kids died that day and dozens were severely injured. We treated them in the rudimentary hospital that we had set up, giving them fluids and painkillers and then transferred them to Turkey for intensive care therapy, which was beyond the means of the hospital I was working at. And I recently spoke to the father of this girl, Siham, who unfortunately passed away. She couldn't survive the devastating burns. She had over 60 percent burns to her body. And he told me that for six weeks in intensive care, he died 100 times each day watching her suffer like this as her skin literally melted off her.

Do you want to take a moment? I'm sorry to ask this, for you to recall this, but I suppose it's very important for people to hear what has been going on. It's so important. I mean, this instance was captured in a documentary called Saving Serious Children. And we're doing a follow-up documentary to that so people can actually hear these stories and listen to people's stories and hear them courageously tell them. I think it's so important because, you know, just as we so often need to face our own fears and our own darkness, our own shadows as individuals. We need to face it as a species or as humanity collectively outside, right? It's only when we look at these things and we face pain and we see the things that we do to each other that we can actually hope to bring any kind of healing and any kind of peace and justice to it. So it's absolutely

critical that we do that. But what I really want to say is that this school attack wasn't the only one. This has been a systematic, deliberate targeting of war to create fear and terrorise the population. This is one of over a thousand attacks on schools that has happened in the last 10 years. Just 59 of them in the last year, one happened just a couple of months ago. So we need to move away from a position where we as a globe have normalized the attacks. You know, these schools are protected by international humanitarian law for our collective protection. When they break for one, they break for all. We need to say it is not acceptable to commit these war crimes with impunity. And we need to bring the perpetrators to justice. And just on that, very briefly with what I just said about the First Lady of Syria,

just because it's linked to this country, Asma al-Assad, who faces possible prosecution, loss of British citizenship. Do you welcome something like that? Because you're talking about obviously peace, but also justice and accountability. I think we need to be not talking about stripping her of her citizenship, but putting her and any other potential war criminals to face justice for their war crimes. It's woefully inadequate for the father of Sihan, for all of the victims and all of the survivors to say, strip her of her citizenship. This needs to be going to the

international criminal courts and all to face justice. But I think, you know, one thing I really want to stress is that 10 years, Syrians have been getting inaction, apathy and silence. And it's time to change that. And we can do that. We can protect children's lives. We can save Syria's schools. And we have a plan to do that that I'd love to tell you about. Well, I was going to say, in terms of what you were just referring to, and people can find out more, Dr. Rola Hullum, thank you for your time the founder of can do you can search out her organization and you can actually see more detail and more insights there from the panorama update that rola referred to which is

called serious schools under attack it's going to be on bbc world news and bbc news channel this coming weekend and will also be available on bbc iplayer from saturday the 20th of March. So a lot more information there. Thank you for those insights though. In terms of music and the power to change and hope, that was very much on the agenda last night because history was made at the Grammys last night. History in terms of the Grammys, that is. More women than ever before won awards.

But Beyonce won for the track Black Parade in the Best R&B Performance category. Here's some of it. I'm going back to the South I'm going back, back, back, back say one for the track Black Parade in the best R&B performance category. Here's some of it. Beyonce has also set the world record too, now being awarded more Grammys than any other woman in the history of the gongs altogether. She's got 28. But to perhaps tell us a bit more about that track and also the other sorts of music that was awarded last night, Jacqueline Springer, music journalist and broadcaster.

What did you make of it being Women's Night overall before we talk about perhaps the type of music and what that music was saying? Well, I think the Women's Night is that we need, once the Grammys are over, we need the headlines for the Grammys and that's the way that Beyonce was awarded, that Taylor Swift also made history by winning album of the year for the third time. Those are the takeaway headlines, along with other accomplishments individualized with people like Billie Eilish and as well as Harry Styles. But fundamentally, I'm really interested in the idea that I really like the fact that you corrected yourself when you said it was an award for the awards because the Grammys gain traction.

The Grammys are a historic organisation, but fundamentally, we don't actually need awards to appreciate the value of music. Music is art and the way in which music is sold, is commoditized, it's into, it's been, you know, heralded, ushered into competitive lanes. And what we need to do is free ourselves, like, just fundamentally from the notion that award shows are actually needed in order for us to understand the sanctity of creativity, of the expression that these women and men make. So when Neil Portnow back in 2017, the former executive at the Recording Academy, when he said that women have to step up if they wanted to win awards, the real humility, the loss of humility just fell from his lips because the award shows, any awards, musical, dramatic, none of them would exist without the artists. And we need to refocus, I believe, our understanding of the way in which we're all socialised. So much of what you've been discussing today on the programme is about the socialisation of individuals,

where we are collectivised, the way we are oppressed, murdered, and the way that art actually gives voice to so many of those experiences. I was going to ask, though, on that, do you think, because Song of the Year was I Can't Breathe, which was written in response to George Floyd's death. Yes. And I wonder, do you think there is a limited role for awards

in shining a light onto songs which are trying to make those points, those political points points those bigger points i don't think award i don't think songs are created i think some some artists become indoctrinated into the idea wouldn't this be great if we won this because of what awards allow singers and songwriters and musicians to do to get more attention to get more to garner more sales that comes down once again to us having art competitively commoditized when the very idea that we that george freud's family have been compensated but they have not been given justice because the case is yet to to take place that that her and her songwriters have

were so moved so distressed to you know there's an expectation on the oppressed especially artistically you have to say something about all that is happening. When it is the organisations, the institutions, the powers that be that continue to not do anything about the oppressions that singers and songwriters are making. And I think it's really interesting that so many awards for Black artistry come on the back of the response to oppression when we need to tackle fundamentally the very totems that hold oppressive regimes and policies and legislations up because we're constantly looking at black art and black and the black experience through the

lenses of oppression and our resistance to it when there is so much more to the individual collective and global well we can talk more again i I hope, Jacqueline Springer. Thank you very much for coming on, music journalist and broadcast there. I think it's safe to say not possibly the biggest fan of the Grammys per se, but interested to talk about the bigger things there about awards. And I think we could talk again, Jacqueline. I hope we can do that. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. Are you fed up with the news? Next slide, please.

The skewer. The skewer. The skewer. The news chopped and channeled. Welcome to the repair shop. In the repair shop today, Matt needs help with a cherished possession. What have you brought us? A National Health Service. Oh, dear.

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After fish. The Skewer. The Skewer. The Skewer. Correlated chicken. Listen now on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered.

There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this?

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