I’m used to dealing with trolls and vitriolic posts. After all, I write for the Salt Lake Tribune and I’ve been involved with politics for more than 15 years. I mean, have you seen the comment boards??
This week, though, even I was taken aback when some really ugly biases showed up on a social media post I made.
In the midst of news about earthquakes and hurricanes, another disaster is taking place, this one definitely man-made. Over the last three weeks, over 400,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar for Bangledesh, as a(nother) genocide is underway. It’s appalling.
Rohingya Muslims have been living under increasingly oppressive conditions in Myanmar (used to be Burma) for years. They have been segregated, some of them corralled into camps and not allowed to leave. In 1982, they were stripped of citizenship, even though some of them had been there for generations. They have land confiscated, are not allowed to work, not allowed to vote, not allowed to have more than two children and not allowed to freely practice their religion. They are required to ask permission of the Myanmar government to marry, are subject to “supply checks” and raids on their homes. Their legal documents have been revoked.
Sexual violence is rampant, with over half of the women interviewed in a recent United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights saying they had been raped. Doctors Without Borders was kicked out of the country, not allowed to help in the Rohingya camps. It’s been teetering on the edge of genocide for years.
In 2014, award-winning New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof visited those so-called “refugee” camps. The Times posted a video of his experience called “21st Century Concentration Camps.” It’s worth your 10 minutes.
The Rohingya have been systematically dehumanized. One young boy in Kristof’s video was asked what he would do if came across a Rohingya his age. His response? “I would kill him.”
Two years ago, researchers from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide visited Myanmar and found a powder keg.
They detailed “human rights violations [that] have put this population at grave risk for additional mass atrocities and even genocide,” noting “We saw firsthand the Rohingya’s physical segregation, which has resulted in a modern form of apartheid, and the devastating impact that official policies of persecution are having on them. We left Burma deeply concerned that so many preconditions for genocide are already in place.”
News reports indicate that over 200 Rohingya villages have been burned to the ground. Survivors saw loved ones burned alive, children hacked to death and “rivers of blood” flowing in the streets.
If this scenario sounds familiar, it should. The propaganda campaign against “others” happened in Germany in the 1930s. It happened in Rwanda in the 1990s, where one million people died in one hundred days, murdered in the most gruesome ways by neighbors and even family members. In every genocide, there has been a methodical de-humanization and vilification of a group of people so that once the scales finally tip, people feel entirely justified in eradicating an entire group of “others.”
When early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints were in Missouri, little Sardius Smith was shot and killed at point-blank range. The gunman then bragged about the deed, saying “Nits become lice.” Most people are rightly outraged by such a sentiment.
I was appalled, then, to see similar sentiments about a one-month old baby who died while his family fled ethnic cleansing in Myanmar when I shared a link about his death.
“Good riddance,” said one commenter. “Ah, too bad,” said another sarcastically, “one less suicide bomber.”
Profanity-laced comments filled my Facebook wall when some mysterious Facebook algorithm promoted my post to a much larger audience than normal. Thankfully, the people commenting aren’t my “friends” and aren’t even friends with my friends. In the end, I deleted the entire thread, Facebook’s way of flushing away all that crap.
I can’t delete the hatred behind the comments, however. That makes me sad. That there are people who cannot feel compassion for a mother whose baby died makes me sad. Does it have to be said? Genocide is wrong. Ethnic cleansing is wrong. Celebrating the death of a baby is wrong.
The Dalai Lama said “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.”
Amen.
Holly Richardson knows she will never meet the Rohingya mother who lost her baby boy, but as one bereaved mother to another, I can grieve with her, even from a distance.