WHEN it comes to truly tragic humanitarian crises, who responds aside from the Philippines time and again? No one.
Oh sure, a fashionably spun humanitarian crisis with photo ops will get a showbiz reaction anytime. But a crisis that cannot be covered without risk, is sure to be dirty and difficult will always be passed over for crises where you can turn up wearing makeup and a sari under good lighting.
So it has been with the Rohingya boat people crisis. There’s been plenty of talk but only one concrete offer of help—ours. A boat crisis has one solution only: not talk but permission to come ashore.
But aside from the only Christian country on the planet, only common folk respond. That is because common people are simple people and simple people think simply about such things as life and death: how to save the one and avoid the other.
So it was with the Indonesian fishermen from Aceh who chanced upon the long missing boat of Rohingya refugees. The sight of them brought tears to the fishermen’s eyes as they reached out to help. “They came close to us,” said fisherman Muchtar Ali, breaking down again in tears. “They were shouting, calling for help. We looked at the boat and—Wow!—there were so many people onboard.” The stench must have been unbearable. Other fishing vessels in the area quickly responded. The migrant boat was towed closer to shore and then the passengers were loaded into trawlers so they could be taken ashore without violating the ban against letting refugee boats touch shore.
The Rohingya, says Agence France Presse, were starving and near dead from exposure after Malaysian gunboats repeatedly towed them back out to sea; finally telling them at gunpoint to stay away or they would kill them all. The Thai navy at least gave the boat people provisions but told them also to stay away.
Why did the Indonesian fishermen help? Simple. “We must help fellow Muslims,’ Muchtar Ali said. “How can we not help destitute people like this? It would be a big sin.” Listen to that, it would be a big sin. And here I was thinking that a sin is not taking communion on Easter.
That’s the sort of simple thinking that prompts the Philippines, alone in the world, not to wring its hands but reach out with them. We do not need a big green statue the color of asparagus to tell the huddled masses that we will not turn them away at immigration, be they Jews fleeing Nazis at turned away by the US before reaching Ellis Island; Vietnamese fleeing the American debacle in their country; Rohingyas set adrift by savage Buddhists; indeed, anyone needing a place of greater safety.
Oh, and by the way, this is why the Vatican has always condemned Buddhist transcendental meditation as a discipline totally bereft of moral scruple and religious value. If we don’t hear from that social climber, the Dalai Lama, on this issue by berating his fellow Buddhists for their barbarism, then clearly Tibet is better off as a province of China.
1 comment
Buddhist meditation is not transcendental and Transcendental Meditation is not of Buddhist origin.
https://www.truthabouttm.org/truth/TMResearch/ComparisonofTechniques/index.cfm