“Inhumanity, it seems, is contagious. In Italy,
babies and children have been repeatedly kept at sea for days by a government that fears—hates, even—migrants, no matter
their age. In Turkey, authorities are cracking down on the Syrian refugees that Europe didn’t want. Globally, more people have been
forcibly displaced from their homes in the past five years than at any previous
time in history, and more than half of the world’s 26 million
refugees are children. Many are met with systematic dehumanization
coupled with apathy in the places where they hoped they would be safe.
This suffering cannot be blamed on politics alone.
There’s a silent majority that is allowing it to continue—not protesting, not
calling our representatives, not taking to the streets. Hundreds of millions of
us who keep going about our days as if children weren’t being treated as less
than humans in our own countries. There’s a word for this: complicity.” —Annalisa
Merelli and Annaliese Griffin in the Quartz.
We have heard about cruelty
against animals, but globally, there is cruelty against fellow human beings as
well. It could be government policies in many regimes or the social norms in intolerant
and prejudiced societies.
Mob justice by beatings or
lynching is now more frequent in recent years embolden by Hindutva infestation
ravaging the secular image of India. And despite the laws and provisions in the
Indian constitution, the low-caste communities continue to endure sufferings
and traditionally accepted segregation. There is inhumanity in the escalating
and uncontrolled incidents of rape and violence against women in the country. And
when people are disfranchised as is happening in the Assam state of India, that
is inhumanity based on bigoted and fanatic apprehensions of minorities by the
majority and its government.
Here in Canada, there is
inhumanity when the polls suggest a majority of Canadians are against poor and
desperate refugees getting entry into the country. There is inhumanity too when
Canadians reject the idea of apology for all the serious wrongs previous
governments did against aboriginal peoples, Chinese, Japanese, Indian citizens,
and migrants.
In the south of the border,
inhumanity is a visible scene at the asylum-seekers detention camps. According
to the Quartz, there are chilling details of dehumanization of those seeking
asylum in the United States. The worst sufferers are the children “crammed in sleeping areas too small for
everyone to lie down, without blankets, in cold rooms…” This is “in line with
the directives of a government intent on turning cruelty into policy.”
Inhumanity is a serious
global situation in which both governments and majority populations are
involved against fellow human beings.
-Promod Puri
