This week Dr Lisa Searle left Tasmania to again enter yet another war zone.
For the next three to six months Searle will be working with Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans frontières) in the war-torn country of Ethiopia. The nation is Africa’s second-most populous country with about 115 million people.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed – despite being a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for his role in ending the decades of ‘cold war’ tension over the northern border with Eritrea – began a sweeping military operation against one of his own regions in November 2020.
This new conflict has seen “very credible reports of human rights abuses and atrocities” according to United States’ Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. It risks creating an immense humanitarian and political crisis that involves neighbouring countries and could destabilise the entire Horn of Africa.
Only this week Ethiopia’s military prosecutors have convicted three soldiers of rape and pressed charges against 28 others suspected of killing civilians in the ongoing conflict in the northern Tigray region, the attorney general’s office announced. In addition, 25 other soldiers are charged with rape and other forms of sexual violence, according to a statement on Friday.
Dr Searle is especially trained to treat victims of rape.
Regarding her early days of humanitarian work, “I didn’t realise how important the field of sexual violence would become for me,” she says.
“Now it is one of my great passions and I feel so grateful to possess the skills, knowledge and the experience to be able to provide high-quality healthcare to people who have been victims of abuse.”
Searle featured recently in the short film They Say I’m A Terrorist by Anna Brozek and Matthew Newton.
Matthew Newton is a Director, Cinematographer and Photographer and is Co-Director of Rummin Productions, a Tasmanian based film and digital media production company specialising in cinematic documentary. Prior to Rummin he worked on documentaries overseas. He has been a finalist in the National Portrait Prize, the Moran Prize for Contemporary Photography and the Bowness Photographic Prize on a number of occasions. He regularly photographs for editorial and news publications throughout Australia and has been recognised for his work, as a finalist in the Australian of the Year awards and the Walkley awards for journalism.
Documenting frontline activism has become the crux of Anna Brozek’s work, a fierce new voice in conversations surrounding Tasmania’s wild lands. As an independent photographer, filmmaker and writer her work explores the ongoing resistance in the environment movement, as well as exposing the carnage left behind by industries, Viscerally, it speaks to the force that drives human beings to put every thing on the line for a greater purpose.
