J’accuse! J’accuse!
I will not draw my curtains!
J’accuse! J’accuse!
I will not draw my curtains!
Someone who deliberately and knowingly kills a lot of people is a mass murderer. The term ‘mass’ is vague and obscure. It could mean five, or five million. Stalin, one of history’s worst mass murderers said, “A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”
Anne Frank, a child victim of the holocaust, wrote about the people of Netherlands drawing their curtains, so they didn’t have to watch the round up of Jews who were to be murdered by Hitler’s soldiers.
There are lists of genocides in my own lifetime that are shameful, one example was the massacre in Srebrenica, when the UN, with troops on the ground, shamefully and metaphorically, ‘drew their curtains’. I saw my weakened young soldiers die of malaria in Mozambique because their food was stolen. I saw children starve because aid was purloined and sold offshore. I saw children dying of measles saved by the actions of a virtuous leader. I saw Polio and TB kill hundreds because no one cared. I treated Amerindians in Guyana for malaria with drugs from Canada. I coordinated with Medicine sans Frontier and Christian aid groups to get supplies to rural families. Most of these achievements were accomplished because of aid programs or charities. People who do not draw their curtains.
Depriving humans of food, clean water, and medicine over a protracted period is a form of mass murder. If aid programs are withdrawn from countries like Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo, and other countries where climate change or war have caused people to be deprived of land, family and support, thousands will be condemned to death. Mothers who have carried starving babies fifty miles in the hope of food, old people who die at fifty years from the lack of antibiotics and children that go blind for the same reasons will all suffer. Mosquito nets that save more lives than drugs are supplied by world aid programs and they work. Mosquito borne diseases are still the world’s leading killers.
If a tyrant arbitrarily halts aid programs and deprives people of food water and medicine, I am justified is describing him or her as a ‘mass murderer’ and calling for that person to be ostracised from the civilised world in the same way that Pol Pot, Cambodia’s mass murderer was excluded from international relations, or Idi Amin (that ‘devout’ Muslim) who hid in Saudi Arabia until he died. We must not draw our curtains!
Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and Elon Musk have arbitrarily halted USAID to the neediest people of the world. The richest people taking food from the mouths of the poorest. The rich stopping life saving medicines for dying children. Not because there is a greater need at home, but simply because they hate different people, especially poor people. A particularly perverted form of ethnic cleansing, by a particularly perverted government.
Many years ago, in the middle of the Omani desert, I stopped to speak to a Bedouin. We made our traditional greetings. He had one camel, a wife, a water bag and a small food sack containing coffee and dates. He insisted on sharing all he had with me and humbled me with his generosity. One Christmas in Africa, a child aged about two, with a round belly and ginger hair from malnutrition, offered to share his piece of bread with me. His gesture made me cry.
Is it only the poor who know how to share?
I will not draw my curtains!
J’accuse! J’accuse! I accuse Donald Trump!
Thousands will die tomorrow because of his executive order to halt USAID.
Who Dares Shares!
Robin Horsfall
Robin, once again you wear your heart on your sleeve and I applaud you for it. I too have witnessed the kindness, and courage, of strangers in the Balkans, Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa and recognise that the, in my view, petty, spiteful and easy adherances to election slogan promises that are taking place will cause harm in the poorest of countries which are 'out of sight and out of mind' of the takers of such decisions. However, I have also seen the in-country leaderships of the countries where such needs are uppermost 'eat the money' that is required to help their population, which is equally as cruel. The most baffling element of the chopping of aid and support to other nations for me is that, usually, in excess of 75+% of the monies allocated either remain or is to the benefit of donor nations, be it in the form of weapon/equipment manufacture or peoples employed so cutting aid, be it USAID, or in the case of the UK DFID, affects far more companies and individuals 'at home' than abroad so is in effect a political statement of self-harm! Just a thought!