As the world watches the escalating human catastrophe of the people of Iraq, in the name of Allah, ISIS continues in its unstoppable cold-blooded rampage, starving and murdering innocent children and massacring all non-Muslims.
The news headlines worldwide do not even come close to reporting the extreme brutality of what is going on. Even the local papers give minimal coverage. Marcus Tullius Cicero was never proven so right in his famous quote: “Laws are silent in times of war.”
Where are the street protests worldwide? Where is the international community? Why does no one intervene to stop this evident genocide? Why are we all eating and drinking and going on with our normal lives when our brothers and sisters are being brutally murdered? Are we not our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers?
It seems that Muslims elsewhere don’t seem all that bothered by this rampage. Ancient Catholic churches and relics of faith have been destroyed. Sacred manuscripts and sacred art is being systematically burned. Hundreds of thousands of Christians and other religious minorities have been sent fleeing for their lives in a reign of bloodshed and terror before the eyes of the world and, still, the international bodies remain complacent.
No sense of urgency seems to exist when every second is crucial to the innocent helpless victims who face certain death unless ISIS is stopped.
The Patriarch of the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East, Mar Dinkha IV, recently sent a letter to Ban Ki-Moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations, in which he outlined the grave situation facing the Christian communities in Iraq and imploring him to intervene urgently.
We remain indifferent to the suffering of the people of Iraq at our own peril
In his letter he begs: “This plea cannot go unheard by the United Nations. We are informed by our prelates in Iraq that, as the present situation and conditions continue to go from bad to worse, people are living in great fear and confusion, without any hope for a brighter and better future.”
Has this letter fallen on deaf ears? Has anyone bothered looking up the massacre on the internet? Graphic images of beheaded and starved children as well as beheaded and crucified adults are on show for the whole world to see. Assassins videotape themselves cutting people’s throats while screaming praises to their god and upload them on the internet. They exhibit their victims’ heads like trophies.
Where is the subsequent outcry in being witness to the annihilation of a people? The UNHRC remains tight-lipped.
Who will defend the human rights of these Christians? We remain indifferent to the suffering of the people of Iraq at our own peril. As John F. Kennedy once said: “The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.”
It seems to me that the distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, Denis MacEoin, was spot on in one of his articles when he said: “Politicians, churchmen and journalists proclaim that ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ while Islamists rampage across the globe, bringing ‘unpeace’ everywhere. Which of us can forget George Orwell’s 1984, in which the Ministry of Truth is really concerned with lies, the Ministry of Peace is devoted to war, the Ministry of Love is dedicated to torture and the Ministry of Plenty occupies itself with starvation?”
In face of the atrocities being committed on the people of Iraq, we cannot – nay, we must not – sit idly by while a genocide against Christians and other religious minorities is under way.
Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel states: “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” It is the least we can do in solidarity with all those who are suffering.
Miriam Sciberras is active in pro-life work.