Season’s greetings to all Refugees

17
0

Screen Shot 2015-09-04 at 6.53.20 am

Dear Refugees,

You have risked your lives and endured much suffering and pain to escape war and persecution in your countries. You have travelled far in search of safety, peace and human compassion.

Some of you have left behind your worried and tearful families who were too weak to travel with you.

They pray for you everyday, and every time the bombs fall and the fighting resumes, they give thanks that, at least someone in their family, will live to remember the happy songs children sang before the war and the laughter that echoed in people’s hearts.

That was when the bombs did not flatten your towns to rubble, when the drones did not hover above, when patients were safe in hospitals, and children could play joyfully in playgrounds without fearing death.

Your enemies can destroy everything but they cannot destroy the beauty of your ancient culture that will live forever in the hearts and minds of your people.

As I give blessings for my own fortunes of living in peace and amongst free and loving people, I will not forget to shed a tear for you.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

I will not forget that my taxes are being used to fuel perpetual wars that have forced you out of your beloved countries and have made our world less secure.

I will not forget how the Western powers have turned ‘democracy’ into a self-serving hungry monster that feeds on your blood and your oil.

I will not forget that your children live in crowded, dirty camps and do not have enough blankets, clothes, shoes and heaters to keep them warm and dry through winter.

I will not forget that my own Government is prepared to spend $60m dollars on feeding a war that contributed to making you refugees instead of spending the same amount on doubling our refugee quota.

I will not forget that my country, instead of showing moral leadership in helping you, wastes money on unwanted flag referendums and making fruitless deals with Saudi dictators who have beheaded more people than ISIS has.

I will not forget that our individual and collective responses, to this biggest humanitarian crisis of our times, will be recorded in history and judged by the future generations.

Your biggest wish is for safety and dignity. I hope we are able to welcome some of you to this amazing country that is home to many of the world’s most generous and kind-hearted people.

One day the birds will return to their trees and you will, once again, be able to smell the earth that held your home.

Until then, stay safe and know that there is always a place for you in our hearts.

With much love
Donna Miles-Mojab

 

 

17 COMMENTS

  1. Well said Donna and very accurate. If we put the 60 million we are spending on war in the area into health and education of the people in the camps in Turkey and Lebanon we would be helping to restrict the recruitment of the next generation of ISIS killers, and giving the people a chance to improve their situation.

    Despite the call that this refugee crisis is the greatest ever, it is minor compared to the movement of people after WW2. At that time 4 million German speakers were drive from what was Konigsburg and is Kaliningrad but that was only one incident in many.

    Europe dealt with it then and we can deal with the numbers now if we have the will.

    • Those Germans on the whole went to countries where the culture and language was the same. The people from Syria and Iraq seem to want to go to nations where the language and culture is very different. For some reason they are not heading for wealthy and peaceful nations that share their language and culture. Why do you think that is?

      • According to Amnesty International, 97% of Syrian refugees are hosted by Turkey, along with other Islamic countries like Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt.It simply is not true that all Syrian refugees are heading towards the West. Also, you are wrong to assume that Arab nations have the same culture. Syrian Muslims are very secular and, in many ways, would feel more at home in Europe than say in Saudi Arabia. Rich Arab nations like Qatar, UAE and Kuwait already have a very high number of expatriate workers compared to the total population (94%, 93% and 83% respectively). Increased foreigners in those countries can potentially be disruptive. Saudi Arabia claims to have taken 2.5 million refugees since 2011.The number seems highly exaggerated but it is true that both SA and Qatar have taken Syrian refugees (not under UN refugee program) and have given some of them residency status which allows them to access free medical care. Having said that, rich Arab nations can and must do more

  2. Thanks Donna – totally agree. And some refugee camps are being torched so how low can we go as a humanity to treat our equals, our fellow men and woman with such disdain in their time of dire need.

    I fault the war mongers and corporate and criminal banksters; the upper 1% elite ( NWO psychopaths ) — who have brought economic and psychological havoc to the world just to garnish their pockets. And then the laws, that they write ! , protect them from any liability and what they do pay in fines is covered mostly by the tax payers. This madness has to stop and we all hope that in 2016 there will be justice and fairness ruling more — instead of greed and hatred and fear.

  3. While I appreciate the authors sentiment, have they stopped to appreciate that there is almost an insurmountable number of potential migrants / refugees worldwide?

    Given increasing population pressures coupled with war and finite resources I do not foresee a simple solution to this predicament, in fact I will bet large amounts of money that these situations will only increase as time goes on.
    Your heart is in the right place but we literally ‘can’t save them all’. The world is now full and with increasing climate disruption and our ever-depleting resources it’s going to be impossible to keep up with the potential demand.

    If you want to blame anything you should blame our own inability to comprehend compounding / exponential growth.

    • David, you are absolutely right. We cannot accommodate them all but our humanity and our international responsibilities compel us to do our fair share. We can easily afford to double our annual intake of refugees to 1500.

  4. Do you really believe the west is the main cause of the sectarian violence that is driving these people from their homes in hordes?. All we did was remove the power structures that kept the tensions in check.

    We certainly played a big role in the current situation coming about but we do not harbor the majority of the blame, how about we blame the people doing most of the killing instead.

      • It appears though that ISIS or persons affiliated to them are keen to create a divide between Sunni and Shia:

        http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/kuwait-mosque-explosion-possible-isis-bomb-attack-launched-on-shia-muslims-during-ramadan-friday-10347740.html

        http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33805901

        As for your piece on stuff.co, that seems a bit simplistic a view that I detect in there.

        You wrote:
        ” The grieving French people might be too shocked by the recent Paris attacks to recall that it was their former president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing who facilitated the success of the Iranian revolution by offering political asylum to the champion of the instrumentalizatin-of-Islam-as-a-political-tool, Ayatollah Khomeini.

        Khomeini, who was kicked out of Iraq by Saddam Hussein in 1978, found his new home, in the suburbs of Paris, an excellent platform from which to spread his Islamic revolutionary messages to a worldwide audience.”

        The French were not that happy with having Khomeini stay and spread his rather radical Islamic views, so they were kind of glad to get rid of him. I argue, remembering those times, that they were not so sure whether Khomeini would have been received as he then did, on his return to Iran. No way would the French, a NATO member and ally of the US, have wanted to have a regime established that came after the Shah was virtually chased out of his country.

        But there is a valid point in ISIS having been one of the nasty consequences of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and what chaos happened afterwards. Overthrowing Saddam and then not having any capable alternative system in place, and occupying the country for years, during much bloodshed, that led to massive radicalisation of same, of which ISIS is just one expression.

        Yet the Shia and Sunni divide exists, and with the strict Wahhabi Saudis representing the holy places of Islam in their territory, being in strategic and other competition with Iran, the tensions between followers of both faiths will not vanish.

        In Iraq the divide surfaced after the fall of Saddam, and much revenge was dished out against Sunni, which also fueled the radicalisation of Sunni extremists there.

  5. I was recently responsible for transporting a group of refugees who had come to live in my city around for a short scenic trip. What nice, pleasant agreeable people they all were. Much nicer than the scowling individual who growled at me complaining about how they shouldn’t have been here at all.
    If that is what passes for public opinion in this country, then we are hardly the educated enlightened fair-minded society that we used to believe we were.
    Actually when I think more about it, hardly anyone bothers to spin that line now because it is so obviously false.
    New Zealand hasn’t progressed over the last 30 years, it has regressed.

    • Thank you Mike. I really think that there is a lot to be gained from people listening to and meeting refugees in person. Sometimes, that is the most effective way of changing people’s minds rather than trying to throw a myriad of facts and figures at them.

  6. HEY DONNA

    Is it RIGHT

    to

    INVITE

    PEOPLE to STAY at your place

    WHEN you

    CAN’T EVEN

    FEED YOUR OWN FAMILY?????

    And ……

    (YOUR answer is?????????)

    • Cassie, honouring the needs of your guests above your own needs is very much part of an Islamic tradition and Middle Eastern culture, so the idea is not entirely off-centre to me. The fact, however, is that we do not have to go without in order to help others. We can afford to do more for refugees, as well as our own people, by taking some simple steps, such as: (1)stop spending money on wars that help create refugees (2) wasting money on vanity projects like flag referendum (3) stop subsidising the rich (4) stop giving our taxes away to wealthy Saudi farmers (5) increasing military spending (6) Luxury NY apartments…the list goes on..

  7. …and to you my Palestinian brothers and sisters, I have not forgotten that for decades, you have suffered daily from being in captivity, under occupation and as refugees in your neighbouring countries. Your inhuman treatment is the epitome of global injustice that we must all try and fight against.

  8. “I will not forget that my country, instead of showing moral leadership in helping you, wastes money on unwanted flag referendums and making fruitless deals with Saudi dictators who have beheaded more people than ISIS has.”

    The Saudis have an appalling record, all right, but the more we learn about ISIS, the comparison may not be such a good one to use after all. There have been a number of mass graves discovered, where hundreds of Yesidis and other so-called “non believers” have been buried, after having been shot, beheaded or killed in other fashion.

    I doubt that the Saudi government can “compete” for that record, which will likely go into the thousands killed by way of nothing less than genocide.

    With saying that, I do excuse none of what the Saudi authorities are guilty of, also bombing places in Yemen, with high numbers of civilian casualties.

Comments are closed.