RUSSIA: Helplessness is a common response for most of us when confronted with horrifying images on the television news, never more so than the massacre of 340 children and adults at Russia's Beslan High School in September.
School Number I: Mission To Beslan, showing tonight on RTÉ, is proof that sometimes something can be done. In this case, the people of Ireland raised half a million euro for a charity, From Russia With Love. This programme follows the charity's director, Debbie Deegan, to Beslan, taking books of condolence with her.
She arrives as the town finishes its traditional 40-day mourning period, to find that the shock of the massacre has been replaced by a numb pain.
Grief sits heavy under a leaden sky. It is there in the howls of a bereaved mother crying, unseen, in the corridors of the ruined school.You see children talking matter-of-factly about how it was to watch a man shot in front of them, or how some were so thirsty in the three-day siege that they scooped water from a toilet cistern. One boy, so neat in blazer and well-scrubbed face he might be in a Dublin high school, describes surviving the siege, only to find his father's body lying in the ruins.
If there is a criticism of this programme it is that we are left in the dark about what From Russia with Love will actually do. It ends with the information that the Barretstown children's charity will use the money for a recreational rehabilitation programme, but gives no further details.
Having reported on the Beslan massacre for this newspaper, I can attest to the importance of groups like Barretstown. The survivors will need years of therapy and the viewers back home who have already helped make this possible should be shown something of how it will work.