geoff: A new documentary aims to
draw attention to the wars,
fighting and atrocities
happening around the world that
are often under-covered or
forgotten.
Correspondent Ali rogin sat down
with French philosopher,
journalist and author Bernard
henry-levi to discuss his film.
Ali: Bernard-henri levy, thank
you so much for joining us.
This film and the book that
accompanies it are based on your
travels in late 2019, well into
2020, to some of the most
dangerous places around the
world.
Why did you take this on?
Bernard: Because I wanted to
meet ladies and gentlemen who
fight Putin, erdogan, Iran,
China and the islamic caliphate.
This is a topic of this movie.
Those who fight these five
authoritarian regimes, all
groups threatening democracy all
over the world.
I felt that my duty, my task as
a public intellectual was to go
there to bear testimony on what
is happening there, the carnage
and the resistance, which is
confronting the carnage and the
massacres.
Ali: And, of course, each of
these countries is unique.
They have their own
characteristics.
But what is your sense of what
the people there want outside
observers to understand about
the conditions in which they are
living?
Bernard: The people I met can be
in Bangladesh, in kurdistan, in
donbas, in Ukraine.
What they want is to live
normally like us in democracy,
in a state of transparency.
Without the freedom, without
these authoritarian boots on
their head and sometimes on
their body.
This is what they want.
To raise their families, to rule
their house, to rule their life
in a in a normal and liberal
way.
Ali: In Bangladesh, there are a
group of women who are known as
national heroines for what they
endured.
Can you tell me about what they
went through to earn essentially
that title.
Bernard: 50 years ago, at the
moment of the liberation of
Bangladesh from Pakistani rule,
the Pakistani soldiers used rape
as a weapon of war.
They raped ladies on a large
scale.
And of course, a nine month
after that, when the country was
freed, they gave birth to, to
babies.
And as often in traditional
countries, they -- the first
reaction was to damn them, to
curse them, to ban them from the
society and sometimes their
families.
And there was in Bangladesh a
great leader named mujibur
rahman, whom I knew well.
And mujibur rahman took the
great decision to name these
ladies who had been raped and
who were giving birth to those
babies, not cursed ladies, but
biranghona, heroines of the
nation.
And in the movie, I -- 50 years
after I see them again and I
meet again, these young
teenagers, who are now of my
age, of course, who have
changed.
But I see in their eyes the same
magnificent light of spirit, of
hope and of resistance.
50 years after, in a way that
did not change.
Ali: You had a lot of dark
moments throughout your
journeys.
But I know that you also
observed things that gave you
hope.
What are the things that most
gave you hope about the places
and the people that you visited?
Bernard: The incredible dignity
of the victims whom I film.
The Christians of Nigeria facing
Boko Haram and facing the fulani
militias.
They keep hope.
They keep standing on their feet
and on their values.
The kurds of Syria and of Iraq
of krg, same.
They keep resisting with a
dignity, which is an example for
the rest of the world.
So this dignity of the victims
gives me hope in in darkness.
Ali: The film and the book by
the same name is "The will to
see."
Bernard-henri levy, thank you so
much for your time.
Bernard: Thank you, Ali.
Thank you.