out of touch

I realized this week how out of touch I am. 

This hit me when I was informed about what was going on in Myanmar in the past couple years. I am ashamed to say I had no idea about the atrocities against the Rohingya people and what the UN has described as "the world's fastest developing refugee emergency and a humanitarian and human rights nightmare". Not once had I heard (or taken time to hear) about the genocide allegations the country was receiving for inhumane crimes against the muslim minority group. 

Nearly one million refugees have fled through mountains into Bangladesh, which does not have the material resources or space to take in this stateless people group. These refugees are living in completely desperate conditions, with limited access to food, sanitation and health facilities. Not to mention that local Bangladeshi officials have felt the need to introduce family planning and sterilization by fear of resources being completely depleted. 

What shocks me is that the international community has remained seemingly silent and passive about this. 

How have we failed to classify what is going as as ethnic cleansing? When I search the definition of "ethnic cleansing", I read: the mass expulsion or killing of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group in a society. I don't quite understand how the burnt villages, the rapes, the murders and 900,000 refugees escaping the country and heading into Bangladesh aren't alarming enough to call this crisis what it is. 

How have so few countries urged for sanctions on Myanmar? How has its leader not lost her Nobel Peace Prize when clearly failing to protect this minority group from these human rights abuses? 

And why does Western media seem to have adopted this standard policy that persecution, brutality and horror isn't worth its time unless it affects its own people and countries? 

I confess that I have failed to make myself aware. I live in a bubble of ignorance, concerned with myself and futile issues that won't matter in a week. 

As a Jesus person, that just won't do. 

As Jesus people, we are called to actively fight for justice, to speak out for the silenced and oppressed, because that was what He did. Jesus was in the thick of it, and He never once turned a blind eye. 

Lord, let your Kingdom come. Please come. 

Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering. (Hebrews 13:13)