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Four years ago, as I sat in a cozy coffee shop writing an article about the Syrian Civil War that remains depressingly relevant today, people died in Syria. They died for no other crime than for being more powerless than their executioners. They died, and the world did nothing. Our country did nothing. As masked men strode through Houla and Idlib and Homs and Latakia, as they raped wives and murdered husbands and pressed cold guns against the soft cheeks of children whom parents had coddled only a small while before, the world watched.
That it’s in human nature to push a pistol against a child’s head and squeeze the trigger is terrifying. Yet this is happening today—right now—as I sit typing this new entry in a new coffee shop, privileged, and as you sit reading my words.
Shortly before leaving office, and long after any real action could occur, Secretary of State John Kerry admitted that the slaughter of both pro and anti-government Syrians constituted genocide.
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Unfortunately, there are two truths about humanity: (1) Humanity often exhibits inhumanity. (2) We have short memories.
Thus, in today’s Myanmar, the Syrian tragedy recurs: Genocide proliferates. A brutal regime persecutes a population for nothing more than their Muslim faith. The world’s response is a non-response. Silence.
Alas, what surprises me about Syria and Myanmar is not that humans are acting inhuman. Again, the irony of the term “humanity” is that its fruits are so often contrary to its connotations of emphatic kindness. Myanmar’s Buddhists and Msulims, like Syria’s Alawaites, Sunnis, Yazidis, and Christians, are only human. Of course tensions simmer. What surprises me is the international response—well, the lack of a response. The utter lack of any concern.
When powerful governments kill political minorities, those minorities depend on external aid. Their own governments have abandoned them. They’ve shredded the social contract that binds a people to its government, becoming not protectors but persecutors. In Myanmar, where nearly 870,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh and at least 10,000 have perished, “their government [hasn’t just] failed to protect them. It … appears directly culpable.”
Unfortunately, while Syria’s factions have help from international actors playing realpolitik (namely, Russia and the United States), no nations seem to have a vested interest in Myanmar or in the powerless Rohingya sufficient to spur concrete action. We can’t even look to the United Nations, as it’s quite likely that China would block any positive step by the Security Council due to its own geopolitical interests in the region, just as Russia blocked concerted action against al-Assad in the early stages of the Syrian conflict.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images