Tomorrow night (Tues., Nov. 8) the estimable PBS series "Frontline" will air a riveting documentary on the state of affairs in Syria. Ramita Navai, a "Frontline" reporter, goes underground to report on the rebel insurgents in that country. Our associate editor Raymond A. Schroth, SJ, watched an advance copy of the show, and offers this review in an online Culture article. He writes:
Throughout all this the PBS documentary series “Frontline,” produced by Wael Dabbous at Boston’s WGBH, has been editing its report up to the last minute. It has sent its reporter Ramita Navai to risk her life by “going underground” with the insurgency. In Syria Undercover, a documentary to air on Tuesday Nov. 8, she moves in darkness from city to city, holding out for three days with one rebel band as government troops arrest and beat suspects in adjacent apartments. Viewers see no heads or faces, but only blurs or lips and beards of rebel spokespersons—the father of a 14-year-old boy tortured and shot in the head; a funeral broken up by gun fire; secret hospitals working with medicines smuggled in from Lebanon and doctors threatened with imprisonment for treating rebel patients; deserters who quit because they had been forced to shoot protesters, including women and children. “I saw with my own eyes,” says one, “when my buddy beside me refused to shoot at the protesters, a sniper shot him in the head.”
Read the rest here.
James Martin, S.J.
