In the News
October 2006
Physicians for Human Rights Honors ICCC Chairman
Marking the organization's 20th anniversary, Physicians for Human
Rights honored ICCC Chairman Dr. Khassan Baiev at a dinner at the
Boston Public Library this October. Read more.
Actor Noah Wyle, who starred as a doctor on the TV show "ER," presented
awards to Dr. Baiev, Dr. Julian Atim, and Dr. Jack Geiger. Dr. Baiev
was honored for risking his life countless times in serving his
patients during the two Russian-Chechen wars.
Physicians for Human Rights mobilizes health professionals to advance
health, dignity and justice and promotes the right to health for all.
October 2006
Boston Globe Editorial Recognizes ICCC Chairman
In the afternmath of the Cold War, there were optimists who thought history had come to a happy ending. A mere 15 years later, lucid minds cannot cling to that illusion. The news from Baghdad, Gaza, Kandahar, and Pyongyang mocks the notion that history follows an arc of progress. But the light emanating from the human rights movement is an enduring flare of hope in this dark time.
The ideal of human solidarity at the core of that movement will be celebrated at the Boston Public Library tonight, when Physicians for Human Rights holds a 20th- anniversary dinner and honors some extraordinary figures who have infused medicine with the spirit and practice of human rights.
The physician Khassan Baiev gave up an elite Moscow practice in plastic surgery after Russian troops invaded his native Chechnya in 1994. Rising above the passions of religion and ethnic identity, he returned to Chechnya and treated Russians and Chechens alike, operating on uniformed soldiers, wounded guerrilla fighters, and civilians caught in the crossfires of a savage war. Baiev, who has visited the Globe, saved videos from the war that show him performing surgery under the most trying conditions, often without electricity, without antiseptics, and without proper surgical instruments. The Russian invaders wanted to punish him for treating Chechen fighters, and there were Chechen extremists who wanted to kill him for ministering to Russian soldiers.
Julian Atim, a 26-year-old doctor in Uganda, has led groups of medical students caring for some of the 2 million people who are living in refugee camps, having been displaced by their country's long civil war. Atim, whose parents both died of AIDS, has been active in the Uganda AIDS Advocacy Network. In a country that has 1.6 million people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, she has organized a student conference to address the human rights issue linked to that plague : the need for public health programs and access to medical care.
Dr. H. Jack Geiger stood at a crossroads of medicine and human rights during the Freedom Summer of 1964, when he helped organize a team of doctors to treat civil rights activists and people of color in destitute areas of the segregated South. His experiences there led him to develop the concept of neighborhood health centers serving poor urban and rural communities. Today some 15 million patients are being cared for in a national network of more than 1,000 such health centers.
In an era of clashing fanaticisms, these practitioners of human rights are a saving remnant trying to light the way to a better time. Original publication in Boston Globe, October 21.
June 2006
ICCC Receives Prestigious Grant
Through its Hilton/Perkins Program, the Perkins School for the Blind in Massachusetts has given ICCC a grant to be used to help provide equipment for Grozny's Republican Boarding School for Deaf and Hearing Impaired Children. In addition to the grant, staff from the Perkins School have provided ICCC with invaluable advice on the technical aspects of equipping and training teachers of the deaf. Their actions and concern are much appreciated.
April 2006
Fate of Children Triggers Student Action
By David Ashby
Special to the Herald News
When Jeff Chamberlain, professor of history at the University of St. Francis, assigned the memoirs of a physician during the wars in Chechnya as required reading for his Modern European History class, he had no idea how much it would inspire his students.
After reading "The Oath: A Surgeon Under Fire" and listening to the book's author, Dr. Khassan Baiev, speak at the university last month, about 20 students joined to raise money for the International Committee for the Children of Chechnya (ICCC), of which Baiev is the director.
Each of the students hopes to raise at least $100, with baby bottles serving as cash cans. The group also staged a luau and a Tupperware sale on campus to help raise money.
For their next fund-raiser, the students plan a karaoke night at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the university's Marian Hall Abbey in which faculty members will square off in a singing skirmish.
Reading and discussing Baiev's book was one thing but, for the students, meeting the human rights advocate and listening to him recount his experiences touched a nerve.
"The stories he told were just amazing," said student Brandy Malone. "It's hard to believe that something like this can be happening in the world today, and it opened up all of our eyes. We just felt like we had to do something, even if it's small."
The four students leading the fund-raising effort are Jessica Wilbanks and Brandy Malone, of Minooka, and Heather Heermann and Gandhi Schlote, of Joliet, two of which have children of their own. They said the photos of maimed and disfigured children that Baiev included in his lecture were difficult to look at.
Nicole Louis, a representative of the university's student government, made one of the biggest contributions to the effort when she asked the council for a donation.
Their finance committee recommended donating $1,500 to the ICCC, but questioned whether the student body would support such a large contribution. Louis, believing students would back the issue, got a few classmates to help her circulate a petition.
"We had two days to get 50 signatures," she says, "so after running around and making a lot of friends, we had 141 (signatures) to show the finance committee that students were interested."
Through their efforts, students also hope to educate people about the horrors that continue to take place in the former Soviet Union. According to Malone, when she took her baby bottle to work to raise money, the most common question was, "where's Chechnya?"
"This is a region that gives off this image that (all the people there) are a bunch of horrible terrorists, and that's not always the case," she said. "There's a lot of innocent people there and a lot of innocent children being hurt by these conflicts."
Previous ICCC News
School Available for Deaf and Hearing-Impaired Children
Shock waves from exploding mines and other ordinance, infections from wounds, untreated childhood diseases, lack of vaccinations, and non-existent prenatal care: these are among the by-products of war, and these are among the causes of deafness in children.
In Gronzy, there is one school available for hearing-impaired and deaf children. The Republican Boarding School for the Deaf and Hearing-Impaired has about half-a-dozen staff members, and currently works with 75 children from the Grozny area. The staff knows of around 350 more children in need of their assistance, but conditions in and around Grozny make attendance at the school impossible.
The physical conditions at the school are unbelievably difficult. A medical doctor who visited the school in December 2003 reported that the school is currently located in a private house in a neighborhood where all the other houses have been destroyed. The school has no hot water, no indoor toilets, and erratic electrical service.
The school's director wrote in a letter: Conditions for learning are very difficult right now. It is crowded; we do not have enough classrooms. We have no technical equipment; we have no gym or sports equipment, game rooms or courtyards; there is no computer classroom and no sewing room or shop.
Most important, wrote the director, the school has none of the teaching equipment necessary to work with the deaf and hearing-impaired.
Donations to ICCC are being used to provide the teaching equipment needed by the school, and to provide specialized training for its staff.
ICCC Board Member Revisits Chechnya
At the end of November, I visited Grozny's School for the Deaf. It was my first trip back to Chechnya in ten years and I was depressed by the terrible devastation brought about by the ten- year war with Russia. . On the way to the school, located on the outskirts of Grozny, we passed rows of bombed-out buildings and empty lots filled with debris were buildings once stood. Khassan's sister Malika, who is the ICCC representative in Grozny, accompanied me. No one seemed to know where the school was. Eventually we turned off a main street onto a muddy street pocked with huge craters filled with water. After making several turns, we emerged into a small yard of the school building.
After the Deputy Director greeted us, she invited us to sit in on a class. There were 15 ten-year olds crammed into a small room with chairs and tables pressed together, a black board and a few visual aids on the walls.. The children greeted us with smiles and hand gestures. The teacher asked one little girl to recite a poem. She beamed as if given a prize. She used her hands to spell out the words, her face reflecting her struggle to pronounce the words she was spelling with her hands. The sounds came from her mouth with difficulty. Though I could hardly understand the little girl, I was moved by her struggle to speak and the joy on her face when she succeeded. “As they grow, the more we teach them and practice the better they speak,” said the teacher.
Later we sat down and talked with the teacher. “It is so great that there are people who care,” she said. “What would we have done if not for those people?”
We asked her what the school needed. It turns out there is not much they don't need. Text books are priority. For several subjects they only have one text book. The list goes on. Things we take for granted in America like copying machines, desks, basic office supplies are unavailable. They don't have specialized equipment for teaching the deaf. The school doesn't have a telephone. There is so much we can do for the school, I thought, as I looked around the place.
The main problem for the school right now is the building itself. Unfortunately, we can't do anything about that. The School for Deaf building, which used to be housed in the center of the city, was expropriated by the Russian military. “Despite pleading and lobbying, they refuse to give it back,” the teacher said.. It was the only school in Chechnya which provide elementary through highschool education for deaf children. If they had a larger building they could organize a boarding school. As it is, parents or relatives must bring the children daily from all corners of the republic. This requires enormous time and money from the parents. Most don't have the resources. With more space, the school could serve an estimated 500 children from all over Chechnya who need help. The School will have to vacate the current building which they rent, in a year. Where they will be after that is uncertain.
It was strange, after visiting the School for the Deaf, my spirits lifted. The world seemed a better place after meeting these children. Despite the terrible devastation of the war around them, the children smiled and struggled to overcome their handicap. Their courage was a example to us all. I realized there was hope. Chechnya has a chance and it lies in its children. Helping them is the best we can do to help this long suffering land.
Ramazan Magomedov is an ICCC Board member who visited Chechnya in Nov. 2004.
