Insignificant Lives
Something of a little more substance today, partly because I received an e-mail from the Cabinda High Commission by atrocities perpetrated by the Angolan Armed Forces over the last week. Why do I have an interest in Cabinda ? Well, a while ago my interest was sparked in various exclaves around the world, of particular note was Ceuta and Melilla (Spanish) located in Morocco and Kaliningrad (Russian) located between Poland and Lithuania...anyway, these are whole other stories. Until 1975 Cabinda was a Portuguese Protectorate, known as the Portuguese Congo...that was until Marxist troops from Angola (a popular movement for the Liberation of Angola), invaded the state.
Now, as you can probably guess, like many states in Africa, there has been civil war, atrocities and wholescale abuses for over 30 years. For a state that is oil rich but small in terms of population and looking to secede from Angolan control, you can only imagine the type of hardship they've been required to endure. My reason for mentioning this isn't arbitary or to make mention of a trivial cause, it's simply to point out that around the world there are gross human rights abuses being perpetrated everywhere. There aren't enough adjectives in the dictionary to be able to significantly outline how delplorable this all is. What's worse, in a continent that's forgotten by the rest of the world, these people's lives are so cheap that really they are regarded as insignificant. We only need to think back 12 years to how the West acted in the instance of Rwanda, where an 'insignificant total of 1,000,000+ people were murdered', to realise that these people mean nothing.
I understand that the extent and breadth of human rights abuse means that it will never be stopped in its entirety, the point here is that there needs to be acknowledgment of abuse in all corners of the globe and then a real desire to curtail the problems that exist. One life is not less significant than another, more needs to be done in support of every persons right to live their life as they choose without fear of repression.
Something of a little more substance today, partly because I received an e-mail from the Cabinda High Commission by atrocities perpetrated by the Angolan Armed Forces over the last week. Why do I have an interest in Cabinda ? Well, a while ago my interest was sparked in various exclaves around the world, of particular note was Ceuta and Melilla (Spanish) located in Morocco and Kaliningrad (Russian) located between Poland and Lithuania...anyway, these are whole other stories. Until 1975 Cabinda was a Portuguese Protectorate, known as the Portuguese Congo...that was until Marxist troops from Angola (a popular movement for the Liberation of Angola), invaded the state.
Now, as you can probably guess, like many states in Africa, there has been civil war, atrocities and wholescale abuses for over 30 years. For a state that is oil rich but small in terms of population and looking to secede from Angolan control, you can only imagine the type of hardship they've been required to endure. My reason for mentioning this isn't arbitary or to make mention of a trivial cause, it's simply to point out that around the world there are gross human rights abuses being perpetrated everywhere. There aren't enough adjectives in the dictionary to be able to significantly outline how delplorable this all is. What's worse, in a continent that's forgotten by the rest of the world, these people's lives are so cheap that really they are regarded as insignificant. We only need to think back 12 years to how the West acted in the instance of Rwanda, where an 'insignificant total of 1,000,000+ people were murdered', to realise that these people mean nothing.
I understand that the extent and breadth of human rights abuse means that it will never be stopped in its entirety, the point here is that there needs to be acknowledgment of abuse in all corners of the globe and then a real desire to curtail the problems that exist. One life is not less significant than another, more needs to be done in support of every persons right to live their life as they choose without fear of repression.
posted by Helisher at 12:51 pm
2 Comments:
Amen to that. So I am guessing you saw the film "Hotel Rwanda"... your post makes me think of another movie I saw recently. In French it is called "Va, Vis et Deviens" which in English would be "Go, Live and Become". Beautiful film, it talks about something I had no idea happened... The secret mission by Israel to remove Ethiopian jews from Ethiopia/Sudan (at least I'm pretty sure it was Sudan?)
Your post also reminded me of a friend in Montreal... Robin. She studied agricultural economics and her goal was to work at helping Africa. She said the biggest problem there was that people were not even aware of "Human Rights". They don't fight because they don't know that they even have rights. As soon as she realised this she realised she also needed a Law degree so she is back at school.
Have definitely seen the film although I've had a morbid fascination in the concept of genocide since I was in high school....I think
originally the word itself captured my interest and then later an understanding of events such as the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia,
the Armenian genocide, Idi Amin in Uganda, Savimbi in Angola , Milosevic in Yugoslavia etc...etc. The concept of 'ethnic cleansing'
is so thoroughly repulsive and foreign, although strangely interesting in terms of individual/collective mindset.
Anyway, your friend sounds very similar to me in the sense that when I was doing Economics a few years back, especially when
I studied Welfare Economics, the idea was to someday to work in Africa....although that time has now passed I think from a legal/human
rights perspective there might be an angle for me somewhere down the track.
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