A Light Onto The Darkness

A Voice For the Voiceless
(Part of the Darkness Visible series)

(Rohingya Boy Attacked By Burmese Buddhist)

As the world closes it's eyes to the horrors perpetrated against the Rohingya in Myanmar it leaves me to wonder where the voices of the honest will be when these sins come to haunt us once again. Can we forget now the deaths of millions to the furnaces and gas chambers of Hitler's insanity? Can we block it from our mind as we seem to have already forgotten the Rohingya? Or will we wait till this bloody tragedy has played itself out like we did in Rwanda? Will we set on the sidelines listening to the screams only to tell ourselves we did everything we could to stop the annihilation of the Rohingya? 

This is not an isolated tragedy however. Currently there are more genocides occurring at one time than the modern world can remember. Syria burns under Assad's command. Myanmar arms the Rakhine to do its bidding. Sudan starves thousands every day as an act of war. The Roma are prepped for deportation and dehumanization. 

Just to name a few. 

What have we... the almighty West... done to stop the killing? In Myanmar the West has started a "gold rush" in a race to get their hands on Burmese resources before China claims the genocide ridden territory. Barack Obama himself lifted sanctions on Myanmar despite the fact that the Burmese Junta was known to be arming Rakhine mobs to drive out the Rohingya. Hillary Clinton welcomed Burmese talks despite the fact that Myanmar's military was at that very moment launching roundups of Rohingya and organizing concentration camps and torture houses. Oh, and don't forget the Europeans... who paraded their token of democracy around despite the fact her country was slaughtering thousands of innocent people. 

Those who believe that China will for some reason step up and stop this immorality as it rises to a super power status seem to forget Tibet. Let alone the fact that it is China that fuels the genocide in Sudan by funding Omar al-Bashir's madness in exchange for oil. And it was China that stood with Russia and Iran as they blocked every UN effort to provide relief for the Syrian people. 

This is why it has become ever increasingly more important for the everyday person to lift their voices and speak out against the acts of brutal regimes and the atrocities they commit. It is in our conviction that we find our strengths. And it is with this conviction that we must speak so that our words will move others. That our message will educate those around us. And through this effort we might see those in command of our own governments finally be forced to act. 

Until we can make this cause an issue in our own political arenas it will never be made an issue in the politicians' minds who carry out these heinous acts. Until we force our leaders (from the state level on up) to look at call these acts by their rightful name... genocide... we can never expect them to act.

For these reasons I urge those who read this to contact their leaders in Congress and their elected state officials and tell them to recognize genocide both past and present. We must force them to come out with it in the public arena and admit when and where genocide is occurring. It is then and only then that we can force them to take actions to stop this sin against all humanity. 

In the past the people of the West have been reluctant to lift their voice. We have remained silent when we should have screamed. We have been timid when our bold actions could have saved the lives of millions. This sin of silence must end now. We must learn to speak for those who remain voiceless. We must learn to be a light in an ever increasingly dim world. 

Tell your representatives in Congress that you want the United States to stand firm on this issue. That we wish for the the United States to recognize the Armenian Genocide. We want them to recognize the Holocaust of the Native Americans who came before us. And that we want them to recognize the genocides that are occurring right now. But most of all, we want the United States to become the shining light of humanity... like the torch our Statue of Liberty holds so high. We want our country to scream out for those who are suffering. And we want our nation to fight for those who can no longer fight back. 

Do your part. Silence, after all, is a crime in and of itself.