FRANCAISMédecins du Monde - Comments
4) Public Relations
-At the beginning, MDM, influenced by Bernard Kouchner, draws the attention of the media on operations whose medical finality is not obvious. For instance, few Vietnamese refugees are rescued in the China Sea, if we are to consider the resources involved. Page 172 of their book, the journalists Pierre-Edouard Deldique and Catherine Ninin notice that “the conditions of health of the boat people are not alarming in general” when they get on MDM boats. In the same way, the actions undertaken in Poland and Chile in the 1980’s are motivated by questions of political involvement rather than of actual medical needs. Furthermore, in ex-Yugoslavia, MDM intervenes in Dubrovnik whereas civilians have been evacuated and, according to some sources, there are no more real needs: the convoy led by Bernard Jacquemart is the first to enter the town besieged by the Serbs, where fighting caused 150 deaths in November 1991, whereas in Vukovar the previous month 2 800 persons died. According to the journalists Bertrand Coq and Michel Floquet, the association helps the work of those in favour of ethnic cleansing and forwards the process of separating communities through the evacuation of Croat inhabitants of Dubrovnik onboard a French navy ship, La Rance, on the 5th of December 1991. The use of figures is also confusing regarding public health. David Rieff notices for instance that in Kosovo MDM puts forward the highest percentage of tuberculosis in Europe in 1998 when it is in fact lower than Lithuania’s, not to mention Sub-Saharan countries.
