In ‘The conclave of 2024’, VTM NIEUWS journalist Robin Ramaekers (49) looks back on the attack on him and his cameraman Stijn in early October, while shooting a report in Beirut. “We sat there in handcuffs for three or four hours.”
The interview continues on Ramaekers’ boat, where he goes when he wants to find some peace. That is a report about an Israeli airstrike in Beirut. Cameraman Stijn De Smet was shot in the leg, Ramaekers was beaten up by a crowd and even kidnapped.
“I had a plastic bag put over my head. Ali, our fixer and I, have been taken into a basement. We sat there in handcuffs for three or four hours. That interrogation, if you can call it that, was accompanied by quite a bit of violence. And always the same question: are you spies, do you work for Israel? I heard Ali’s head being hit against the wall, mine were blows with the flat of his hand.”
READ ALSO: Attack on VTM team brings back nasty memories for war journalists: “When I came home, I couldn’t talk to anyone for a week”
Broken four places
One of those blows caused a ruptured eardrum. “But when they let us go, perhaps out of frustration, I suddenly received a hard blow to my eye socket with the butt of a revolver. I saw a flash, and then the light went out for a moment. I lay on the ground and had to gasp very hard to regain consciousness.” Result: his eye is broken in four places and still not completely healed.
Yet there is not a trace of doubt: Ramaekers will return. “In the twelve years that I have worked as a war journalist, I have never had the feeling that this is not what I want to do. There is no obligation or coercion behind it. It is from a constant curiosity to be where the stories lie. People in war situations are often the most open-minded in opening up their inner feelings. It’s about life and death, the essence.”(dewo)
