“I experienced in my flesh the distress of the hostages”

“That day, returning from my lunch break, I encountered an unusual commotion. Kurdish activists came to protest against the delivery of arms from France to Turkey. They quickly barricaded the building and told the press that the intervention of the police would put our lives in danger. Here we are hostages. We were released in the evening by the Raid teams. I told very little about this experience around me.

Twenty years later, while I work at the French embassy in La Paz, Bolivia, I receive two young French people released after a hostage-taking and hear me advise them: “Don’t bury your excess emotions, this generates anxiety for your loved ones and risks reverberating in an uncontrolled way.” I know how hard it is to put into words a violent experience where our humanity was swept away to transform us into simple currency. This attention to psychological mechanisms also guided me in supporting the families of the eleven humanitarian workers detained in the former Yugoslavia in 1994. During this long and traumatic wait, I had to reassure them without giving them false hope. I hope I have been able to alleviate, in my own way, their distress. »