HOPE FOR A BETTER WORLD
A Call To Compassion For Victims Of Torture
Detail from The Torture of Prometheus by Gioacchino Assereto, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.1
Yesterday marked the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. In the words of former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan:
This is a day on which we pay our respects to those who have endured the unimaginable. This is an occasion for the world to speak up against the unspeakable. It is long overdue that a day be dedicated to remembering and supporting the many victims and survivors of torture around the world.”
Torture occurs in many forms, not only in physical form as depicted in the work by Gioacchino Assereto— and it can certainly be physical and horrendous. But it can be emotional, psychological, and spiritual suffering.
We have seen widespread migrations of human beings seeking refuge, fleeing torture in its many forms in their homelands. Many of those refugees, to their disappointment, came to the “land of the free” the “home of the brave” hoping that the home of the Statue of Liberty would welcome them and help them to rebuild their broken lives and heal their physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual wounds. The American people emanate from prior waves of immigrants that sought relief from the unacceptable conditions in which they found themselves.
Most Americans are generous and compassionate. Yet, it is shameful for the POTUS and his supporters to implement bigoted and racist policies. Those policies are torture, and exacerbate the suffering of those refugees through family separations, persecution, expulsions, and repatriation to countries where torture is normal. There, torture is used to enforce compliance to oppressive political regimes, or exercised by criminals who exploit human beings, stealing from them, driving them into lives of crime, including human trafficking.
It is unacceptable that officials at many local and state governments, as well as the U S federal government, forget our call to be generous and compassionate. That call was made by Jesus, whom so many government officials in this country claim to follow.
There are immense resources in America. We can misuse them for war, as we are doing in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to enrich the oligarchs, or we can use them for peace, to heal our suffering brothers and sisters, to build a better world.
Those resources, in the final analysis, were taken from the original inhabitants of these lands over decades. We can begin to express gratitude and repay the debt to those from whom our national wealth emanated. We can be kind and compassionate to refugees and victims of torture in its many forms— they share much with those ancestors, many “undocumented”, that brought us here.
#Compassion #NoKings #NoFascism #Resistance
#hope #compassion