mass graves

Dear Samantha,

I hope you are staying strong and keeping yourself safe during this Covid 19 pandemic that has changed the shape of our world and set standards for a new normal around meetings and socializing with people. While we are together in this fight for survival, on certain accounts we human beings have also failed each other in many ways. Today I was trying to do my part of helping out Testimony Tailors which is a sewing cooperation in a Rohingya Refugee camp which is built and run by the survivors of genocide to earn a livelihood through the work of sewing dresses by a Rohingya refugee for a Rohingya refugee. My goal was to get gift donations for 13 young girls dresses. Not a whole lot, but I believe that something is better than nothing and we all should do our part in our own capacity of helping each other out and to raise awareness around issues that gets overlooked yet are equally important because lives are at stake. I really felt good when I was seeing that my tweets were making a difference and the dresses were being bought to support Rohingya Refugees. While my mind was busy in coming up with creative and encouraging words to raise more donations for Rohingya Refugees a news article that got circulated on Twitter shook me to the core. The title of the article was, “‘Kill All You See’: In a First, Myanmar Soldiers Tell of Rohingya Slaughter” by Hannah Beech, Saw Nang and Marlise Simons of New York Times. I saw my twitter feed flooded with similar reporting coming out of different news channels and news articles. All the humanitarians and activists around the world started to push the article and news out on various social media platforms to make the world aware of this turning point in the case of Rohingya Refugee and their journey to seek justice. The article entailed detailed accounts and confession of two Myanmar soldiers held in International Criminal Court at The Hague and their crimes against Muslim Rohingya civilians. While I was reading the article the word, “Mass Grave” spurned horrific images in my mind aside from other unthinkable brutalities that took place on fellow human beings.

What is a “mass grave”? According to the dictionary definition, “A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial” (Wikipedia). This word “mass grave” crossed my eyes when I was trying to understand some of the atrocities that took place in history which includes but are not limited to Rwanda Genocide, Jewish Holocaust, Rohingya Genocide, 1984 Sikhs Genocide. When I watched the movie “Anne Frank: Parallel Stories”, my mind could not register that how can a human mind think of such horrific ways of killing another human being and then dumping their bodies showing no respect to the deceased. Who gave rights to these people to inflict pain and torture on fellow human being based on their color, religion, ethnic background and beliefs?

I can’t help myself but to say that although we say we live in modern times but the truth is words like genocide, ethnic cleansing, rape, mass graves, still exist. When I was reading the confession of two Myanmar soldiers I couldn’t help myself to compare their gruesome actions with those who were responsible for the Jewish Holocaust, 2002 Gujarat Riots, 1984 Sikhs Genocide, 2020 Delhi Riots, Rwanda Genocide, Palestine Genocide, Yemen War, Black Genocide, and many other atrocities that I am yet unfamiliar with. It occurs to me that the people who are committing these heinous crimes are worse than animals. However, I am sure that after witnessing these accounts animals would also quiver.

Jungle book is one of my favorite movie of all times and one thing that always intrigued me after watching it was that even in Animal Kingdom kindness and empathy existed when Mowgli was rescued by an animal. Even though it is a fictional movie but the producer/director of the movie promoted acceptance, and love through a story for us humans to understand.

I could only wish and pray that before committing these gruesome acts one should pause for a second and just think if someone was doing this to them and to their families how would they feel? The message that I have been taught from childhood is “Treat others the way you want to be treated”.

I only hope that in coming years and for our generation to come that the mentality of genocidal mindset gets extinct just like dinosaurs became extinct from face of this earth and their accounts are only found in books and museums for us humans to see how nature evolved.

Regards,

Yours truly

Noor Reflection

Article written and published by Noor Reflection

Disclaimer: The letter is addressed to a fictional character that is the product of writer’s imagination. Any resemblance with living or dead is totally coincidental and writer of this post will not take any responsibility for it.

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