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Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights for 2002—Teleconference April 17, 2002

From: Dr. Nils Daulaire, President and CEO of Global Health Council (Washington, D.C.)
To: Dr. Ruchama Marton and Slah Haj Yehya (Tel Aviv)

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Operator: This is Sherry*. From this point on, I would like to remind everyone that today's conference call is being recorded for transcription purposes. So, before speaking please state your name. Thank you for using Sprint, Ma'am.

Terry: Okay. This is Terry Fisher. I was asking you, Dr. Marton, how long is it from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem?

Dr. Marton: By kilometers, I do not how to translate it into miles, it is about 60 to 65 kilometers. By time, it depends very much on the transportation. It can be less than an hour and it can be more than two hours; it depends.

Terry: Dr. Marton and Mr. Salah Haj Yehya, I would like to introduce Dr. Nils Daulaire, our President and CEO of the Global Health Council.

Unknown: Thank you.

Arthur: It is a little early.

Nils: Should we wait a few minutes, Arthur?

Arthur: Yes, because this is billed at 10:15.

Nils: Okay. Dr. Marton, we will start in just a moment, if you will excuse me. This is Nils Daulaire, and it is a pleasure to hear your voice, but we will stop for the moment and wait until the press is on the line.

Dr. Marton: Okay.

Terry: Dr. Marton, this is Terry Fisher again. Are you traveling? Are you serious? Having never been to the Middle East or never to Israel, do you drive down to Jerusalem?

Dr. Marton: Yes, yes.

Terry: Is it a difficult journey considering the circumstances now?

Dr. Marton: Yes. I must go there. My first cousin, and I have a very small family, she is getting today the highest Israel award for science. So, I must be there, and they are closing the door at 7:15 our time. So, I have to be really lucky to get there in time.

Terry: I bet. Do you have to worry about speeding? Do you have a speed limit?

Dr. Marton: Yes, of course, we have. I am not worried as long as I am not, the police do not see, but the public transportation is such a bad one that you need three hours to get there.

Terry: Is it by train or (inaudible)…?

Dr. Marton: There is train, but the train is very slow and not very frequent, and the buses are much better, but it takes time. The (inaudible)… station is an ugly one.

Terry: Are there any checkpoints between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem?

Dr. Marton: Usually not. Only in the entrance to Jerusalem. That is also time consuming. I hope it will not be too late today.

Terry: What does that consist of?

Dr. Marton: It is policemen or Army, the border frontier guards, the board guards, and they are stopping every car and checking for ID cards or all kinds of other things.

Terry: Does Mr. Yehya have any problems going through any of these checkpoints?

Dr. Marton: Salah is not going with me. It is a very closed ceremony, only for family members and some celebrities, and you need to identify yourself and all kinds of things. It is only me and my daughter who are going down.

Terry: And what is this award? For what science achievement?

Dr. Marton: She is a chemist, chemistry, molecular chemistry, and she is really internationally known. She is working on DNA, sorting the structure of the DNA, and (inaudible)…. It is very complicated, and she is one of perhaps three or four people in the whole world who are dealing with it.

Terry: It is very interesting. How wonderful for her.

Dr. Marton: Yes, yes. She is almost my age, two years younger.

Terry: You have a small family. I am sure you all are very proud and very involved.

Dr. Marton: Yes.

Terry: Was your family able to come to the ceremony when you received the ML Grossly* Award?

Dr. Marton: Yes. At that time, my son was in Israel and my daughter also. My parents are dead long ago. So, they came and a bunch of friends. It was really lovely. That was also in Jerusalem at the Knessett.

Terry: Is that where this award is given, at the Knessett?

Dr. Marton: Yes, for the first time it was given in the Knessett.

Terry: I really do not want to really preempt any of the questions that you might receive, but I am interested, Dr. Marton, in how you and Salah became connected and started these local clinics.

Dr. Marton: Sorry, Terry, are you talking to me?

Terry: No, I am sorry. (inaudible)… on that question.

Dr. Marton: Okay.

Terry: I was speaking with you. I apologize.

Dr. Marton: Fine.

Terry: Dr. Marton?

Dr. Marton: Yes?

Terry: This is Terry. I always like to know this question. What is the weather like?

Dr. Marton: The weather is pretty warm, like 24, perhaps 25 Celsius degrees, and we waiting the summer.

Terry: We are, too.

Dr. Marton: Yes, but you are welcoming the summer; we are not.

Terry: (inaudible)…?

Dr. Marton: Yes, because we have practically no winter.

Terry: Oh. Yes, all winter I wait for summer.

Unknown: Two minutes.

Terry: Do you do much gardening? Do you have any time for that?

Dr. Marton: (inaudible)….[foreign language]

Arthur: Terry, would you introduce Dr. Daulaire, please?

Terry: Certainly. Dr. Marton?

Dr. Marton: Yes.

Terry: Salah? I would like to introduce you to Dr. Nils Daulaire, the President and CEO of the Global Health Council.

Dr. Marton: Thank you very much. Salah is here and myself, too, and we are waiting for it.

Nils: Wonderful. This is Dr. Nils Daulaire, and it is an enormous pleasure and privilege for me to be speaking with the two of you, Dr. Ruchama Marton and Mr. Salah Haj Yehya. I want to let you know how extraordinarily pleased we are at the Global Health Council as well as the two other partner organizations to administer the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights. Those are the associates (inaudible)… and Doctors of the World. In informing you that you are the joint winners of the 2002 Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights. This is an award which, while it has had a fairly short lifespan so far, has recognized the very highest courage and the most remarkable performance among people working in the health care fields in protecting both human lives and health and also supporting human dignity. We find that among the more than 90 nominees who were considered for the award this year, the work that Dr. Marton and Mr. Yehya are doing in protecting the health and dignity of Palestinians across lines of fire is extraordinarily worthy and one that rises to the high level that this award has set in the past. Let me begin first by congratulating the two of you, and I would particularly like to thank you for being willing to interrupt a very busy day, I know, to be on this conference call with ourselves and with members of the press.

Dr. Marton: Thank you very much. We are really excited to get this award and to talk to you and to the rest of your team.

Nils: Thank you. I want to point out that as you probably know already, the Jonathan Mann Award was created in the memory of Jonathan Mann, a remarkable human rights physician who was the first Director of the Global Programme on AIDS, the Director of Harvard University's Center for Health and Human Rights and who, as you know, was killed in the Swiss air crash that took place in the fall of 1998. Dr. Mann was a close friend of many of us and put health and human rights on the same page, and through his life's work, he focused on the linkages, the fact that health can truly not be accomplished without a respect for human dignity and human rights. Again, this is what we looked for in judging candidates for the award, and I would like to mention just briefly some of the past winners so you can get a sense of the company that you are in. Dr. Cynthia Maung is a Burmese refugee who runs a refugee camp along the Thai-Burmese border for the Koran* tribal group who have been evicted from their traditional lands by the Burmese military junta. She operates her clinic under great personal danger, often coming under fire and attack from the Burmese military. She won the award in 1999. In the year 2000, Dr. Flora Brovena and Dr. Vjosa Dobruna, who are both Kosovar Albanian physicians, currently won the award. At the time, this was during the middle of the war in Kosovo. In fact, one of them, Dr. Brovena, was in prison at the time that the award was granted, having been charged as a terrorist by Milosevic's Yugoslav regime. She was released subsequently in part because of the publicity generated by her receipt of the Mann Award. And then in 2001, just last year, Dr. Gao Yaojie, a Chinese physician, who really had broken the silence on AIDS in China and particularly the complicity of provincial health officials in spreading HIV/AIDS through illegal and unsanitary blood donations. She won the award, and this has led to a change in the entire policy of the Chinese government with respect to AIDS. So, you are in extraordinary company. The previous winners have made a huge difference in the lives of the oppressed in their countries, and I recognize you for what you are doing and for what I know you will do across the borders of violence and terrorism between Israel and the Palestinian people in supporting their health and rights.

Dr. Marton: Thank you so very much. It's really a great honor for both of us and for the Physicians for Human Rights Israel. The first name of our association was Israeli Palestinian Physicians for Human Rights. Two years after the Oslo Agreement started (inaudible)…. In 1995, we decided to take out the nationalities over the name and rename it Physicians for Human Rights co-working with our Palestinian colleagues.

Nils: Dr. Marton, I know that Mr. Yehya is not comfortable in English and so you are speaking on behalf of both of you.

Dr. Marton: Correct.

Nils: I wonder if you could tell us a bit about the conditions of your work, particularly in the last several weeks as the violence in the Middle East has reached a remarkable level.

Dr. Marton: Thank you very much. I will pass the question to Mr. Salah, and I will translate it. Is it okay?

Nils: Yes, that is fine.

Dr. Marton: (inaudible)…. [translating] According to Salah, who is working with the PHR starting 14 years ago, the few last weeks are the most difficult and the most dangerous and most terrible also time along these 14 years. The violations of human rights have been always since the occupation, but in the last few weeks, it is exceeding every standard that we used to know before. Along these few weeks, which are - hello?

Nils: Yes, we are here.

Dr. Marton: Along these two months, we did not stop for even one day, I dare to say for even one minute our activities with Palestinian colleagues and men, women, children, elderly people in the West Bank mostly but also in Gaza Strip. We are crossing the border although it is illegal for us as Israelis to cross the border. We are taking the risk of being arrested for three years for crossing the border, and Salah is doing this at least three, four, from time to time even five times a week. Both of us, Salah and myself, went to Bethlehem and (inaudible)… and Bajala* in Nablus when fire was on, and we survived it, but not to go there or stopping our activity in times like this is really to let down not to mention to let down our human rights activities, and there are a lot of personal friends for us there. So, we really feel obliged to continue every activity possible even under fire. So, I believe that Salah and myself just answered your question?

Nils: Yes, and thank you. I want to have an opportunity for any members of the press who have come on the line to ask any questions, and I know you only have about 15 minutes before you have to leave for Jerusalem.

Dr. Marton: Correct.

Nils: But I did want to particularly point out how your courage and specifically the courage of Mr. Yehya who as a Palestinian Israeli I think runs very (inaudible)… risks in his border crossings, how much we respect and honor that courage in defending the health and the rights of everyone, no matter what their nationality or religion. I would like to extend an invitation to the two of you now that you have been designated as the winners of this award, to come to Washington, DC, at the end of May to receive the award in person at a special ceremony that the Global Health Council hosts on the evening of May 30th. We would love to have you come also as our guests for that entire week because the Awards Ceremony is the peak end of a week-long conference that the Council hosts each year in Washington with about 1,600 global health advocates, practitioners, policymakers, and researchers who assemble to discuss the key issues in health worldwide. This year's conference is on the theme, "Global Health in Times of Crisis," and I think your own experience and the work that you have done is particularly pertinent to the overall conference theme. So, I hope you will join us not only on the night of the 30th but from the 28th of May through the 31st of May, and we will work with you to arrange the travel and accommodations if you are able to attend.

Dr. Marton: It is a great honor for both of us, if I may speak for Salah and myself. Not only the honor of getting this award, but we see really lucky to get this kind of recognition. We are really grateful for it because here in Israel it is very, very difficult for us to cross another kind of line, the line of media. We are on a regular basis giving all kinds of information about what is going on in the occupied territories and about what we are doing there, and it is really rare that the Israeli media is giving us time and find what we are trying to deliver good enough for broadcasting. For example, I can tell you that Salah personally brought a damaged ambulance while the ambulance driver was killed in this ambulance, from the town of Tukarem*, and we brought it to the central square in Tel Aviv, the Museum Square, and it was there. Many members of our team, wearing white shirts of doctors, were there. It was in the middle of a really nice day, I mean the sun was shining and so on, and a lot of TV and journalists were there. It was broadcast all over Europe. I do not know what happened in the United States, but not one word in Israel, and we tried to protest this horrible situation that medical teams cannot work. The ambulance cannot get to wounded or sick people, and we were confronted with a total silence. So, with an award like the Jonathan Mann and this global health conflict, it is a great push for us, and it is really so good for us to get this kind of support. We are really grateful, and unless something terrible will happen, which I hope will not, we surely will come to Washington for this week. And, once again, thank you very much for it.

Nils: Well, I am most pleased, and I should also mention in addition to the award itself, there is a $20,000 prize that comes with the award which we hope you will be able to put to good use in extending and expanding the important that you are doing.

Dr. Marton: I do share with you and I am speaking, of course, of Salah Haj Yehya as well, and once again, thank you so very much.

Nils: Let me now open the lines for any members of the press who have joined us. If they have any questions, I would appreciate in asking their questions if they would identify themselves and their organization.

Dr. Marton: Yes, please.

Arthur: They may be shy. Let me begin. This is Arthur Jones. You mentioned that you have been attempting to administer to the wounded as a result of the turmoil over there, but I wonder to what extent the work load, your regular medical work load has been affected by the recent turmoil. Has it increased? Or has the volume just remained level?

Dr. Marton: It has increased by I do not know how many times. I myself and Salah Haj Yehya (inaudible)…. We are getting phone calls one hour, two hours after midnight at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, and even more from time to time. Desperate phone calls. There is a bleeding person there or there is a pregnant woman there, and they have no outlet and ambulances cannot go. "Please, please, please do something about it." So then we are trying to call to all kinds of Knessett members and to the Army itself. From time to time, we succeed; from time to time we fail. Along in the daytime, our people are starting to work like 8:00 o'clock in the morning, and many days we are staying there for 10 or 12 hours. So, people are really exhausted. We have to deal with people who need dialysis where every delay is like a death sentence for them and all kinds of other very severe medical problems.

Arthur: I see.

Nils: Dr. Marton, I understand - this is Dr. Daulaire again - that health care workers have actually come under fire themselves (inaudible)… just carrying out their duties.

Dr. Marton: Yes.

Nils: Can you tell us a little bit about that and the dangers that are being faced by health care workers today?

Dr. Marton: Yes. The fact that we really checked one by one, maybe there are more, but those that we checked, 165 ambulances were hit by live bullets; 135 medical people were wounded; 8 medical people among them 2 doctors were killed. I am talking, all these numbers are Palestinians, Palestinian ambulances and Palestinian health workers and doctors. This is very severe because medical people are afraid to take an ambulance and to go to bring a bleeding person or sick or ill person from its place to hospital. It is really a very severe situation.

Nils: Do you people or do you have any indication that medical personnel have been specifically targeted? Or is this simply a matter of a very high level of military activity which does not respect their neutrality?

Dr. Marton: The first possibility to my understanding, is the correct one, and it is not new. It is more of the same. Since 1988, ambulances are targeted by the IDF*. They could not get any electric connection 14 years ago when mobile cell phones were not available, and they were like blind, they could find a way. Now it is, not to compare, it is much more severe. Ambulances are hit specifically, and medical teams are hit specifically. It is not a part of the whole scene. I do not know the reason, but I can tell you that there are medical teams are especially arrested and also killed, not to mention sounded.

Nils: Let me once again invite any members of the press who are on this conference call to ask questions. You may choose to identify yourself or not, if you are (inaudible)….

Arthur: There being none….

Dr. Marton: Say it again, please?

Nils: We are giving them an opportunity. I have heard the beeps of people signing on, but we are happy to carry on this conversation ourselves. I have seen on the Web site, and I will cite the Web site for those who might like to check it out themselves, it is www.chr.org.il which I understand, Dr. Marton, is the Web site for your organization's, Physicians for Human Rights.

Dr. Marton: Correct.

Nils: There is a lengthy report with individual and well-documented cases of both health and human rights violations that you have cited. Can you tell us about other places that interested media might turn besides contacting you, which we will be happy to give them the opportunity to do, for further information on this situation?

Dr. Marton: Yes. First of all, in more or less a week's time from now, our Web site will be updated because we could not find the time to update it. Then there is a wonderful woman, and English is her first language, Neery* Van Garten*, working in Page* office which the phone number is 972-3-687-3718, and she will be happy to answer in English.

Nils: Could you give that number one more time?

Dr. Marton: Yes. 972-3-687-3718. It is the Page of our office in Tel Aviv, and her name is Neery Van Garten.

Nils: Alright. We have heard a great deal in the news in the past two days about the situation in Jenin. I wonder if you have any update on that situation yourself?

Dr. Marton: Not personally because it is impossible to get there. The information we have is via telephones which is also very difficult because most of the electricity is cut there, and people are using their cell phones which are dying naturally after a few hours. It is very difficult to give reliable information when you are not there. We always, like a rule, the information that we are distributing is the information that we checked personally on the place at the spot, and not just information getting by the phone. So, whatever you can see in the BBC or CNN, the European version, I do not know what you can see in the American version, is at least a kind of partial information of what is going on. We know that a lot of houses were demolished, some were demolished on the people who were living there, and (inaudible)… 3 up to 4,000 people who in no time became homeless, and they do not know where their family members are, if they are alive or dead or what happened to them.

Nils: Dr. Marton, you are an Israeli citizen.

Dr. Marton: Yes.

Nils: An Israeli Jew, and I understand that Mr. Yehya is also an Israeli citizen and an Israeli Palestinian.

Dr. Marton: Yes.

Nils: Can you tell me, with respect to your government, how you are being treated and handled? Are you being allowed to work freely and in peace? Or is there any oversight or harassment that you are undergoing?

Dr. Marton: Lately or recently I myself, and I am not alone, we are getting all kinds of awful phone calls threatening our lives and calling us by extremely bad names. Some of them are extremely sexist. This is a kind of an outcome of the central and rightist journalism in Israel that calls us traitors, and that we are like more for the Palestinian cause than for the Jewish Israeli cause, and it is written time and again and it has its impact on some of the Israeli citizens. We are unable to cross the lines between Israel and the occupied territories, but we are doing that; we are breaking the law. For the time being, no one of us has been arrested, but if it will go on like this and the situation is becoming severe more and more, from one day to the other, we might face even that kind of problem.

Nils: I again commend you for your courage in extraordinarily situations. I congratulate you for all that you have done for the health and the human rights of the people whom you serve. I know that you have to get, Dr. Marton, very quickly onto Jerusalem, and I had promised you that we would wrap up this phone call by a quarter of, and we are close to that time right now. So, once again, let me thank you and Mr. Yehya for all that you are doing on behalf of the people whom you serve, and I look very much forward to meeting you in person in Washington in May. We will do everything we can to make sure that your message and the work that you do become widely heard.

Dr. Marton: Thank you so very much, in my name and in Salah Haj Yehya's name. Really, thank you very, very much.

Nils: Thank you and good-bye.

Arthur: Thank you, Dr. Marton.

Dr. Marton: Good-bye.

S11976599/1091
Job #: 1220426
DT: April/19/02

*Please Note: Proper names/organizations not verified.

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