Dr Rola
Contents
Who is Dr Rola?
Appearance on BBC Newsnight on 30 August 2013
Introduced to BBC Newsnight viewers as "A British Doctor just back from volunteering in Syria who wants to be called 'Dr Rola'" an attractive thirty-something lady described her experience of an alleged napalm attack in Aleppo, Syria as "...one of the most horrific few hours of my life". Speaking in an educated English - with just a trace of East Midlands - accent, she gave a bravura, restrained-emotional performance describing the horrors she had witnessed and advocating Western military intervention in support of Syrian anti-government forces. It is not too much of a stretch to say that, had her interview been broadcast before the UK House of Commons vote which had declined military action a few hours earlier, the outcome may well have been different. Her performance was that persuasive. Her access to funding for her cause is clearly no problem because, during the interview she pointedly offered to host a 7 day visit by Ed Milliband and his family to Aleppo "... to see for himself and at my expense" [1]
BBC Panorama Footage
In separate BBC Panorama footage which included video described as 'unverified' but shown nonetheless, she was filmed in Aleppo in the claimed aftermath of the alleged attack. In a related Daily Telegraph article she was again described as an 'English Doctor working at a London Hospital' and volunteering for relief work in Syria through 'Hand-in-Hand-for-Syria' [2]
Details of claimed role
It is claimed Dr Rola was volunteering through a UK registered charity 'Hand-in-Hand-for-Syria' [3]. The charity was incorporated on 13 February 2012. [4] and is yet [as at 13 August 2013] to file any accounting information. Its web site was set up on a shared hosting server in the Netherlands on 1 March 2012. [5]
The Nurse Nayirah affair
To those who remember the run-up to the first Iraq war in 1990, it carried disturbing echoes of the Nurse Nayirah episode, in which the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US, anonymously and fraudulently claimed that she had witnessed Iraqi troops "throwing new-born babies from incubators and leaving them to die on the cold floor". She had been coached by the US PR firm Hill & Knowlton, retained by the Kuwait government to make the case for war, and her father sat behind her as she delivered her testimony (as simply a volunteer 'student nurse' who, for security reasons, wished to remain anonymous) before the US Congress.
Public right to know
You do not volunteer to appear of a flag-ship politics TV program advocating for a military bombing campaign with any expectation - let alone right - to remain anonymous.
In the fraught circumstances of a rising drum-beat crescendo for military intervention in Syria, the public has an absolute right to know exactly who Dr Rola is.
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References
- ↑ Syria crisis: Doctor criticises Miliband over MPs' vote - BBC News 31 August 2013
- ↑ Syria: BBC Panorama films 'napalm' attack on school - Telegraph Friday 30 August 2013
- ↑ Hand in Hand for Syria - Home page
- ↑ Charity Commission - Statutory information on 'Hand-in-Hand-for-Syria' at 31 August 2013
- ↑ []
