The Political Theatre of the "Buddhist bin Laden"

On the 28^th May, The Myanmar government issued a warrant for the arrest of the ultra-nationalist Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu. Wirathu, who has referred to himself as the “Buddhist bin Laden”, has been widely criticised by the international community for his racist, inflammatory, and dangerous rhetoric aimed at the Rohingya minority of Rakhine State. Wirathu’s Islamophobic speeches are absolutely an incitement to violence against the Rohingya, pouring fuel on the fire of the “textbook ethnic cleansing” undertaken by the military in 2017 and continuing today. Acting as a mouthpiece for the campaign of hatred directed towards the beleaguered minority group, Wirathu has claimed he is proud of being referred to as “a radical Buddhist”.

This is a title that he has made sure he earned. In various speeches dating back to 2012, he has laid plain his disdain for the Rohingya through many hateful and dehumanising comments. In 2013 he compared Muslims in Myanmar to a “mad dog”. In a 2018 interview he claimed that the 1 million displaced Rohingya “don’t exist”, and that the images of destitute and starving refugees in camps across the border in Bangladesh were staged for the camera. In a 2017 interview with the Guardian, where he was asked about the allegations of the widespread rape of Rohingya women in the government-led ethnic cleansing, he responded that it was impossible, because “their bodies are too disgusting”. In 2012, a riot broke out following one of his speeches in Meiktila, resulting in the burning of a mosque and over 100 dead.

And yet none of these incidents led to the issuing of the warrant of Wirathu’s arrest. Instead, the warrant has been issued under article 124(a) of the legal code. This covers sedition, defined as “attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the government” [emphasis my own]. He is to be arrested for supposed inflammatory remarks made regarding allegations of corruption by de-facto government leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Not only has he been a vocal proponent of the military-led crackdown on the Rohingya, but he has repeatedly accused Aung San Suu Kyi of not being hard-line enough in her repression of the group. This is despite the fact that she has overtly, and repeatedly, demonstrated her explicit consent and complicity in the violence. Now, his accusations of her supposed corruption has finally seen him fall foul of law enforcement.

The message is clear: Allegations of corruption against a disgraced government official with murky political connections are a crime. Deliberately inflammatory incitements to violence against a persecuted minority are not.

That criticism of the civilian government of Myanmar would result in such a swift backlash is unsurprising. The response to Wirathu echoes the treatment of the two Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who were sentenced to seven years imprisonment for their role in uncovering a massacre of 10 Rohingya men by the Myanmar military and Buddhist villagers in September 2017. Though they were later released after international condemnation of the arrest, this action sent an important message at a time of great political upheaval in Myanmar. Accusations of wrongdoing against the government will not be tolerated.

This sort of reaction is to be expected from a government that cares only about retaining the power it has. As Myanmar’s first civilian government following the brutal military regime that imprisoned Suu Kyi herself for decades, it could be argued that the current ruling party has every right to be nervous about threats to their leadership. But it is becoming increasingly clear that such self-interested political manoeuvring directly contributes to the marginalisation of the Rohingya.

I wrote in 2017 that Aung San Suu Kyi had been forced into a corner by the military action to remove the Rohingya from Rakhine because to condemn such action would be an unpopular move in a political climate defined by mistrust of Muslim groups within the majority-Buddhist country. Such a political climate has been curated by extremists like Wirathu, meaning that since her rise to power in 2016 he has been quietly pulling the strings as she makes decisions designed to consolidate and solidify her position.

Now, with her political future challenged by allegations of corruption, she is forced to act against a figure who has at least to some degree dictated her tenure in office so far. The ugly head of the Burmese ruling class emerges as the ultra-nationalists and the government butt heads. The tit-for-tat attacks between the populist hate-monger Wirathu and atrocity-apologist Suu Kyi plunges Myanmar deeper into turmoil and confusion as the military continues its ethnic cleansing unimpeded.

The rich and powerful scramble for supremacy whilst the Rohingya die.

Suu Kyi will let them die for as long as it is politically expedient to do so. She will also continue to let the likes of Wirathu spew their vile hatred, providing they leave her name out of it.

It may be the military that are acting with genocidal intent. But it is the words of Ashin Wirathu and the complicity of Aung San Suu Kyi that make their actions possible. Now that they have turned on each other the waters of political discourse in Myanmar become murkier and the complicated web of conditions that allow this violence to continue becomes more impenetrable.

Whoever wins, humanity loses.  

The International War on Women

A report from the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack, released on the 20^th May, has shed light on the devastating consequences of the violence in the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo on girls and young women in schooling. Between 2016 and 2017, dozens of schools across the region were attacked by militia groups, and children were massacred, recruited as child soldiers, or forced from their homes.

Whilst the fighting affected all children in the area, girls were particularly harmed. As the report states, girls were abducted and “used as “magical” forces that would ward off bullets despite being unarmed, and raped and forcibly “married” to troops”. Spiritual beliefs on the part of militia fighters led them to believe that the kidnapped girls would protect them in fighting with the government forces. As a result, these girls were gunned down, having been used as human shields. Those that survived were more likely to suffer with psychological consequences of the trauma, less likely to return to school, and more likely to have suffered other medical consequences such as sexually transmitted infections than their male counterparts.

Sexual- and gender-based violence is prevalent in all conflicts globally. From the high-profile cases of SGBV such as the kidnapping of girls by Boko Haram in Nigeria, down to the fundamentally different experiences of male and female civilians in warzones, the fact remains that women and girls are more exposed to threats and vulnerable to harm in times of crisis. They are also drastically underrepresented in peacebuilding and development activities, despite the fact that increased female participation in such programmes consistently leads to longer, more sustainable peace.

But the restriction of the agency of women is not unique to warzones. Over the last few weeks, the US state of Alabama has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons. State Governor Kay Ivey passed the Alabama Human Life Protection Act into law on the 15^th May 2019. The law is the toughest piece of anti-abortion legislation in the country, punishing abortion doctors with up to life in prison for performing the procedure, with no exemptions for women who are victims of rape or incest. The Bill was passed with a majority of 25 – 6 in the Alabama state legislature. All 25 Republicans who voted on the Bill were men.

Eric Johnston, Chair of the Alabama Pro-Life Coalition, explained that the inclusion of victims of rape and incest in the legislation was acceptable because the Bill needed to send a message, saying: “If this exception was added to the bill, it would have killed the bill. Whether you were raped or a victim of incest or get pregnant by consent or accident or even artificial insemination, [the foetus is] still a person. We could not argue to the court with a straight face that it’s a person in one instance but not in another.” But what about the person who will now be forced to carry the baby of their rapist?

In Alabama, Missouri, Georgia, and other US states trying to pass these laws, the fertilised egg and developing foetus are given more rights than the woman bearing them. But it would appear that the right of the egg doesn’t matter unless there is a woman who can be punished as well. In response to a question regarding the fate of IVF clinics under the new law, Senator Clyde Chambliss responded that the destruction of fertilised eggs in clinics would not result in criminal conviction, saying “The egg in the lab doesn’t apply. It’s not in a woman. She’s not pregnant”. So this really isn’t about the fertilised egg or the foetus that will grow into a person at all. This is about the woman’s body in which the egg resides.

Much like the militiamen in Kasai, the female body is viewed by these legislators as something spiritual and sacred, inextricably linked to life itself. In the Congo, the body of a girl can save you from bullets. In Alabama, the body of a woman is the factor that decides if a fertilised egg is a human life or not. In both cases, this seemingly makes the body far more important than the person inside it.

The issues women and girls face in Kasai and Alabama are vastly different, and in many ways incomparable. But they both stem from a desire to control a body without the effort to understand it. They are symptoms of a system built by and for men, in which women play a role to create life and to protect it, without regard for their own.

When a girl is considered a “magical force” that can protect a man from death, she has been dehumanised.

When a girl is abducted and forced to marry a soldier, she has been dehumanised.

When a woman is viewed as a vessel for a new human life, without regard for that woman’s own feelings, she has been dehumanised.

When women are legislated against, discriminated against, and ultimately told that their own experience does not matter, that is dehumanisation.

If we value the rights of human beings to control their own destinies, then we must acknowledge that 50% of the global population are systematically prevented from taking ownership of the things they should have control over; their own body and their own future.

From boardrooms, to battlefields, to government offices, women’s perspectives are drastically underrepresented and misunderstood. For a world striving for peace, justice, and fairness, this is a failure.

An Attack on the Amazon's Indigenous Population

A recent UN report has confirmed many of our worst fears concerning the effect that human activity is having on the natural world. A tenfold increase in plastic pollution since 1980. A doubling of greenhouse gas emissions in the same period. 1 million new species at risk of extinction. More than a third of the world’s land surface and nearly 75% of freshwater resources are now devoted to crop or livestock production.

We are no longer blind to the effect we are having on our planet. The global climate strike movement, led by the inspirational Greta Thunberg, has resulted in an increased pressure on governments across the world to take measures to meet climate targets, and connected disparate climate activists and ordinary citizens in a way previously unseen. But as international attention turns towards finding solutions to this crisis, the fate of one of the planet’s largest and most precious natural resources grows increasingly precarious.

A few days before the release of the UN paper, Amnesty International reported on an imminent risk of violent clashes with Indigenous people in the Brazilian Amazon unless illegal logging and land seizures are curtailed in the area. The Amazon, home to 10% of the world’s wildlife species, is at greater risk of the effects of land degradation and climate change than almost anywhere else in the world, and little is being done to protect it. About 3,050 square miles of the world's largest rainforest was destroyed between August 2017 and July 2018 – an area roughly equivalent to five times the size of London – mostly due to illegal logging.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who now controls the 60% of the Amazon which falls into Brazilian territory, is no friend to the climate activist movement. Rising to power on a platform supported by what he refers to as the “Three Bs” – beef, bullets, and bibles, representing his base of supporters in the agribusiness industry, military, and religious right – Bolsonaro quickly moved to position himself as a pro-business leader. In a Tweet shortly after his inauguration he stated that “More than 15% of national territory is demarcated as indigenous land... Less than a million people live in these places, isolated from true Brazil, exploited and manipulated by NGOs. Together we will integrate these citizens” [emphasis my own]. In doing so, he not only aligned himself with the agribusiness industry but very firmly in opposition to the Indigenous people of the Amazon. The suggestion that such groups are not a part of “true Brazil” demonstrates a political stance based on identity politics set to divide the urban majority from the Indigenous tribal population.

Bolsonaro’s attitudes towards Brazil’s Indigenous peoples are well documented. In a 1998 interview he compared the Brazilian situation with that of the United States, saying “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry hasn’t been as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated the Indians”. His attitude did not become more conciliatory as he began his assent to power in Brazil. In 2015, he stated in an interview with Campo Grande News “There is no indigenous territory where there aren’t minerals. Gold, tin and magnesium are in these lands, especially in the Amazon, the richest area in the world. I’m not getting into this nonsense of defending land for Indians”.

Such rhetoric empowers agribusiness to take more extreme action in achieving its goals. As Amnesty describes, Indigenous leaders have reported receiving death threats for defending their land from developers. One incident noted in the report is as follows: “Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau people told Amnesty International that on 11 January 2019 they confronted about 40 invaders, who were armed with sickles and machetes, cutting a path into their territory... When told to leave, the intruders allegedly replied that more intruders would be coming and threatened to kill the Indigenous children.” In April, the intruders returned, this time with numbers estimated at around 500 people. The Indigenous groups no longer feel they can rely on the government to protect them from illegal loggers, as Bolsonaro has promised to allow continued exploitation of lands near their homes and to rollback Indigenous rights.

This is a two-pronged attack on the lands of the Brazilian Amazon, against its wildlife and resources through the loosening of regulations around agribusiness and against its people through an increasingly toxic discourse aimed at turning public sentiment against them. As some environmentalists have noted, thanks to the coalition government in Brazil it is unlikely that Bolsonaro will be able to convert all of his campaign promises into policy, but the language he uses to attack Indigenous people only serves to embolden the illegal loggers that threaten their homes, who now have ever-less reason to fear reprisals.

If Bolsonaro cannot enact his deforestation policies himself, it seems he will simply turn his back while the Amazon burns.

In another territory, a 26-year-old Karipuna man told Amnesty “If government doesn’t act, we might lose our territory, it might be the end of the Karipuna. I don’t know if there are new paths, because we don’t patrol so often to avoid contact with intruders. They are armed with guns.”

This is an attack on a civilian population who are now afraid to stay in their own homes.

But this is also an attack on all of us.

The Amazon is one the great wonders of the world. It is home to over a million Indigenous people who just want to live. It is home to 10% of the world’s biodiversity. Its 5.5 million square mile landmass absorbs a massive amount of global CO2 emissions, helping reduce the effects of climate change.

It must be protected.

See what can be done to protect the Amazon here. Find out more about the ongoing global climate strikes here.

A Cry of Despair and an Unheeded Warning

To walk through the gates at the infamous Birkenau II death camp in Poland is to follow the footsteps of around 1.5 million murdered human beings who were deemed to be “undesirable” by a perverse political movement that had lost its mind. To see the hair of the inhabitants of the camp, shaved off upon their arrival and used to create sleeping bags and clothing for Nazi officers, or the little shoes of the thousands of children, barely old enough to walk, gassed because they were too weak to work, or the urn of ashes of just some of those that were wiped from history on this desolate piece of ground, is to witness the depths of what humans can do to one another. This is us at our very worst. And the overwhelming question that burns throughout the journey into the darkness is simply how? How could we have let this happen?

The monument in Auschwitz-Birkenau to the 1.5 million people murdered in its grounds begins “For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity”. And yet this is a warning we have not heeded.

After the scale of the horrors of the Holocaust became clear, the international community was unequivocal in its condemnation. Never again. Since 1945 we have witnessed the “killing fields” of Cambodia claim 2 million lives, the vicious massacre of 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda decimate a whole country, over 8,000 souls murdered whilst under UN “protection” at Srebrenica in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the systematic murder of over 300,000 civilians in Darfur. Today, over 1 million Rohingya people have been and continue to be forced out of their homes in Myanmar by the ruthless military regime. The phenomenon of identity-based mass murder, in the forms of crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, is ubiquitous across the globe. And still we say never again.

Seeing first-hand the mechanisms by which the Holocaust was perpetrated is a shocking reminder of the efficiency with which humans are capable of killing each other. But it should not be a viewed simply as a horror of our past. The camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau was the logical conclusion of years of systematic marginalisation and dehumanisation of the Jewish people in Europe by the Nazi party. When Hitler rose to power in 1933 the idea of a death-camp run by German soldiers in Poland was laughable. But by May 1940 it was sickening reality.

As Philip Gourevitch writes in his excellent, if harrowing, account of the Rwandan genocide We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow we will be Killed with our Families, “What distinguishes genocide from murder, and even from acts of political murder that claim as many victims, is the intent. The crime is wanting to make a people extinct. The idea is the crime”. The idea is the crime. The so-called “inhuman” violence witnessed in countless crimes against humanity perpetrated globally is the product of an idea that has festered and spread among a population. One of the biggest questions following the Rwandan genocide, where there were no death camps but rather the killing was done with machetes by mobs in the streets, was how on earth it was possible to seemingly turn an entire population against one another over the course of just a few short weeks.

But the Rwandan Genocide did not occur just between the 7^th April and 15^th July 1994, in which the majority of the killing took place. Intergroup rivalry between Hutus and Tutsis had been instilled in the population by the German and Belgian colonial powers over 100 years before the massacres of 1994. These tensions were exacerbated by economic hardship and an increasingly inflammatory political landscape that culminated in a civil conflict between 1990 and 1993. The process of turning Tutsi people from neighbours, friends, and family members, into “cockroaches” and “tall trees” took decades. The process of dehumanisation, of turning a Jewish person into a “rat”, or innocent Bosnian civilians at Srebrenica into “hardened and violent criminals”, does not occur overnight. You do not pick up a machete and murder your neighbour after hearing a news broadcast telling you to do so. The thoughtcrime of identity-based violence is far more insidious than that.

So when you hear Donald Trump equating economic migrants at the US-Mexico border with criminal gangs and “animals”, or Nigel Farage standing in front of his infamous “Breaking Point” campaign billboard, depicting refugees and migrants as a looming existential threat to the UK, remember that this is a deliberate incitement to hatred. Left unchecked, that becomes an incitement to violence. Indeed, with the Christchurch mosque attacker citing Trump as a “symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose” in his manifesto, and a shocking increase in white extremist hate crimes across the US and Europe since 2015, it would appear that the more volatile and antagonistic political landscape we find ourselves in is already having destructive consequences.

In the UK, attacks on politicians have increased amidst the increasingly toxic debate surrounding Brexit. The murder of Jo Cox in 2016 appears to have heralded a new dawn of violence aimed at those with differing views. When two of the biggest political scandals in party politics concern accusations of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party and Islamophobia within the Conservatives, we have to ask ourselves where political discourse in this country is headed. Toxic identity politics are not new. We have been here before.

The monument at the death-camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau undoubtedly elicits a cry of despair from those who visit. But as a warning, it appears to have been less successful. It is up to every single one of us to pay attention to the stories of those who have been persecuted solely because of who they are. Because its very easy to say “never again”, and to genuinely feel it and to mean it. But it has happened again, and it is happening again, and it will continue to happen again unless we make a change.

The world around us has already taken its first baby steps down a dark road that we have walked a hundred times before. There is still time to divert our course, but it will take every individual person to pay attention to what is happening and to call out the behaviours that push us further down the path. Calling out this hatred now, while it is still relatively safe to do so, is the only way to prevent the physical crime from occurring down the line.

In visiting Krakow, I also heard the inspirational stories of Oskar Schindler and Tadeusz Pankiewicz, who saved many lives and gave hope to thousands of people in the ghetto at the time of the Nazi occupation. But they risked their lives, their livelihoods, and the lives of their families in order to do so. That kind of heroism is rare and extremely commendable. Those names should be remembered and celebrated to the same extent that Hitler’s, Eichmann’s, and Rudolf Hess’ names are remembered. But even those acts of incredible courage and strength could not turn the tide of history. By that point it was too late.

Right now, it is not too late.

Little changes now can prevent catastrophic ones later.

Never again.

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” – George Santayana.

Cyclone Idai and the Importance of Public Health Preparation

Cyclone Idai devastated Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Madagascar as it tore a path through South-Eastern Africa between the 4^th and 21^st March 2019. It was one of the worst cyclones ever to affect the southern hemisphere, with an estimated 1.7 million people directly affected by the storm and over $1 billion in damage caused. Flooding in the immediate aftermath caused the majority of deaths in Mozambique and Zimbabwe, and the overwhelming destruction led to a revised appeal on behalf of IFRC to cover the cost of the immense scale of the response.

Although the flood waters have now long subsided, the true magnitude of the disaster is still yet to be fully understood. Recent reports from agencies active on the ground in Beira, one of the worst-affected areas, have raised concerns over the potential for tremendous health crises in Idai’s wake.

Cases of cholera were reported in Beira just a week after Idai made landfall, as a result of water being contaminated by sewage in the flooding. By 4^th April, there were an estimated 4,000 cases of cholera in and around Beira, resulting in at least 7 deaths. Medecins sans Frontieres reported an estimated 200 new cases per day at the height of the response, with the Red Cross describing the threat of further outbreaks as a “ticking bomb”. Though cholera currently appears to be the biggest health threat to victims of Idai, a severe lack of clean drinking water means threats of typhoid and other diarrheal diseases remain high. The stagnant flood water also acts as a prime breeding ground for mosquitoes and other vectors, leading to an increased risk of malaria, which has seen 276 new cases reported in Mozambique as of 2^nd April.

These emerging health crises have been exacerbated by the massive damage to infrastructure in Beira and other severely affected areas. Beira’s main hospital suffered serious damage in the storm, leaving several of its operating theatres unusable, and an estimated 55 other health centres across Mozambique were affected. International NGOs and the World Health Organisation have responded quickly to try to plug the gaps, with the WHO distributing nearly 900,000 cholera vaccines and MSF doubling down on its programmes in the affected region, but the spiralling health implications of Idai are simply too large to contain completely.

As the recent Preventionweb report on Idai’s health consequences reports, the interruption of health services for communicable and non-communicable diseases is another major concern in affected communities. Mozambique has around 2.1 million HIV patients, many in hard-to-reach communities that may no longer have access to antiretroviral drugs. Similarly, those who require medications for long-standing diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and tuberculosis are facing medical shortages. The World Health Organisation, alongside many other international actors, are also increasingly focusing their attention on the treatment of the mental health consequences of disasters, which can have catastrophic effects on the development and resilience of affected communities.

The longer-term health implications of Idai are proving to be more destructive than the storm itself. The spiralling risk of epidemics, dramatic loss of health infrastructure in-country, and poorly understood mental health effects of a disaster like Idai demonstrate the importance of viewing disaster response through a public health lens. Medical assistance is one of the key life-saving priorities both in the immediate response phase and as affected populations start to rebuild their lives. Effective health and sanitation programmes make the difference between a one-off destructive natural event and a protracted, complex humanitarian crisis.

But as the scramble to find increased funds to meet the needs of the population also shows, a key focus for the future of disaster management needs to be in preparation and prevention, rather than in response. The speed with which the WHO was able to distribute almost 900,000 cholera vaccines was possible thanks to the Oral Cholera Vaccine Stockpile, administered by an international coordinating group and organised in preparation for quick response in areas at risk of epidemic. Around the world, hospitals and health providers are developing emergency preparedness plans to ensure they are able to continue working during and after a crisis. As the humanitarian sector more widely continues to acknowledge the importance of preparation in ensuring effective response, the factors that contribute to a resilient health system in developing countries must take priority.

IFRC estimates that for every $1 spent on preparation, up to $4 can be saved in recovery. The almost unprecedented fury of Cyclone Idai helped to demonstrate the snowball implications of a hazard that strikes an unprepared community. Building resilience to future disasters does not just mean building stronger structures (though that is obviously extremely important), but developing strategies to cope with disasters at a local level, implementing preparedness plans, engaging in health education and ensuring that at-risk communities know what to expect and where to go to get help in the event of a crisis, long before it occurs.

With climate change increasing the likelihood of more frequent and more destructive weather patterns globally, the need to make sure that everybody is prepared becomes increasingly pressing. When a system is vulnerable to disaster, threats can multiply exponentially. A compromised healthcare system has knock-on effects on those who may not have been affected by the initial event itself.

Disaster response must focus on long-term resilience as well as immediate life-saving care. It is not easy, but building long-term resilience will save money, time, and ultimately lives.

Building local communities’ resilience to disasters is a key focus of the Agenda for Humanity and of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. Viewing disasters through a holistic lens can help to identify vulnerabilities to be addressed, and also potential partnerships between sectors to tackle complex crises around the world.

QSAND is a shelter and settlement sustainability tool that provides a holistic framework to support resilient reconstruction following disasters.

LA 92 - Fighting a Cycle of Injustice

LA 92 is a National Geographic documentary covering the devastating Los Angeles riots that left 63 dead and over 2,000 injured, with more than $1 billion of damage done to properties across LA county between April 29^th and May 4^th 1992. The riots began as a response to the acquittal of 4 LAPD officers accused of excessive force in the arrest and beating of Rodney King, and the leniency in judgement afforded to a Korean shop owner who shot and killed a 16-year-old girl, Latasha Harlins, whom she wrongly suspected of attempting to rob her. The systematic and institutionalised racism this revealed in the heart of the justice system sparked angry protests, which swiftly degenerated into violent racially-motivated attacks against residents of Koreatown and white motorists on the intersection of Florence and Normandie, and widespread looting across LA. The chaos continued for 6 days, with the LAPD seemingly abandoning Koreatown in order to safeguard predominantly white and wealthy neighbourhoods in Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, before the California National Guard was called in to restore order.

Just as the documentary draws parallels between the 1992 riots and the 1965 Watts Rebellion, which saw 34 killed and $40 million in damage, it is difficult not to compare the spark of the 1992 unrest to the shooting of Michael Brown and strangulation of Eric Garner, both at the hands of US law enforcement, that catalysed the Black Lives Matter movement into a global campaign to tackle systemic racism towards black people in 2014. The antagonistic relationship between law enforcement and ethnic minorities in the US shows little sign of abating. More recently, the imprisoning and separation of families at the US border marks just the latest human rights violation committed under the guise of justice in the United States. As a news report cited in the documentary states: racism in the US is as American as apple pie.

But by the 4^th May 1992 the LA riots were not a principled reaction to an unjust system, but an insight into the depravity of the worst of our human condition. As victims are dragged from their cars by mobs of angry young men and beaten – in some cases to death – or  forced to watch as their stores and homes are burned to the ground, the viewer is forced to confront not just the reality of a system built on racism and division, but the depths of humanity's capacity for violence when pushed to breaking point. At one point, a man stood on the Hollywood Hills, overlooking the burning city below, points out that this wasn’t just about racial prejudice or injustice, but that people of all races were rioting because of economic frustrations and a sense that they had been forgotten by the political system.

In an age when our politics is becoming more divisive across the world and where people of all social classes, religions, and ethnicities are again feeling as though they are not being listened to, we should take note of the cocktail of conditions that led to this explosion in LA in 1992. Where does inequality, injustice, and pent-up frustration eventually lead? Can this be channelled into peaceful, productive protest rather than the senseless violence showcased in LA 92? Is history destined to repeat itself again and again?

To prevent the repetition of a destructive cycle that keeps people separated by race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexuality, we should pay close attention to the message of hope that also runs through LA 92.

It wasn't the police or the national guard that ended the violence and restored order to LA. It wasn't the President. It was the people. Ordinary citizens with their brooms and their bin bags and their messages of peace and reconciliation, who came out to clean up the mess in a show of solidarity. People of all races, ages, religions. Defiant in the face of the violence, they worked together to restore their communities, to reject the divisive identity politics that had fuelled the madness of a week of chaos. They were not people in positions of power, and they had little to gain from standing up against a mob that had seemingly lost its mind. They put themselves at risk to try to mend a broken community. And they prevailed.

When violence occurs and horror seems to overwhelm the situation, look for the leaders. Look for those protesting against the tide, like the older man yelling at the looters that what they're doing isn't right, or the congresswoman regaining control of an angry crowd outside the post office during the riots by asking them politely to “work with her”. Or Rodney King himself, overcoming his own fear and shame at what had happened to plead for the violence to stop. Look for those who are trying to do good, even when everything around them is bad. They are always there. And they will bring us all back from the brink, usually with no support, no sense of self preservation, and no recognition.

LA 92 left me feeling shocked, angry, and sick to my stomach. But it also gave a glimpse of hope for how people are able to overcome our differences and reject prejudice, injustice, and violence in favour of the search for a better world together. We are a long way from a just, egalitarian, and peaceful utopia. But we will keep trying to find our way there.

Rodney King, in his emotional and powerful plea for calm towards the end of the riots, said it best:

"People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?

We're all stuck here for a while, let's try to work it out.”

LA 92 is available to watch on Netflix.

Fear and Falsehood - The Fallacy of Global War

The brutal massacre of 50 people as they attended Friday afternoon prayers in Christchurch by a white nationalist terrorist last week has dominated headlines across the world. Understandably, the worst terror incident in New Zealand’s history, which the attacker livestreamed on Facebook, has been impossible to ignore. For a peaceful nation, this was a tragedy of almost unprecedented scale.

As world leaders praise Jacinda Ardern’s leadership in response to the terror attack, and investigators pour over the killer’s “rambling, strangely written” and vehemently anti-Muslim manifesto, debate continues to rage over what this latest extreme act of violence means for the increasingly polarised global political and religious landscape. Just two days after the Christchurch shooting, there was another mass shooting, this time claiming the lives of three people and seriously injuring three more in Utrecht, Netherlands. Although there is currently little hard evidence that this attack was motivated by terror, the police announcement that this is an ongoing line of enquiry was quickly co-opted by various media outlets and prominent figures to highlight the “threat” of Muslim immigration to Europe (a threat that the Christchurch attacker also claimed as a motive).

It seems the violent terrorist attack by an “angelic boy” has led to a crisis of conscience in some western media outlets. In response to the extensive media coverage around Christchurch, Breitbart, the far-right American news website, bemoaned the supposed media silence of a massacre of Christians in Nigeria in the weeks running up to Christchurch. Citing sources from other right-wing outlets such as Christian Militant, the article highlights what it sees as hypocrisy in the mainstream media in its uneven coverage of the attacks in New Zealand and Nigeria: “The New York Times did not place this story on the front page; in fact, they did not cover it at all. Apparently, when assessing “all the news that’s fit to print,” the massacre of African Christians did not measure up”.

It is true that the deaths of up to 120 Christians in Nigeria in February and March 2019 did not get the same headline coverage as the Christchurch massacre. I have not found one western media outlet that has reported on any one of the attacks against Christian farmers in northern or central Nigeria this year, by predominantly Muslim Fulani herdsmen. However, this is the extent of the accuracy in the Breitbart article.

The article goes on to incorrectly describe the attackers as “Fulani Jihadists”, when in fact the main motive for the prolonged violence between these groups is not a religious one. Nor is it a one-off terrorist act. Violence between Fulani Muslim herdsman and Christian farmer groups of various ethnicities in these areas of Nigeria is a result of a prolonged and increasingly desperate struggle for land ownership. International NGOs, such as International Crisis Group, have been reporting on the tit-for-tat violence since fighting escalated last year. In the same way that no western media outlets reported the attacks on Christian farmers by the Fulani in the last few months, the ICG report in summer of last year was largely ignored in the Western mainstream.

Unfortunately, such violence between groups that are in direct competition over increasingly sparse resources is becoming routine in Nigeria, and, as I argued in my Future of Climate Conflict post, will likely be exacerbated globally as climate change stretches the limits of our natural resources. As ICG noted in their analysis of the herdsman/pastoralist conflict in Nigeria, ethnic and religious differences between the disparate groups are easily exploited in a context of increasing uncertainty and economic fear, making violence more likely.

The Christian victims of the Fulani attacks were not killed because of their religion, and it is wrong to claim otherwise. An excellent Snopes fact-checking article adds that “while Breitbart’s article provided details of several reported attacks by Fulani herders on farmers in Kaduna State in February and March 2019, it did not mention the attack on the mainly Muslim Fula ethnic group, which was the single largest reported atrocity during the time period in question”. These attacks are part of a larger conflict, one that the western media has made no effort to report on since its very beginning. This in itself is a demonstration of the failings of the media to report on African conflict, but it is not an example of an agenda that somehow “favours” Muslim victimhood and silences violence against Christians, as Breitbart implies. In fact, the extensive coverage of the “bring back our girls” campaign that followed the abduction of 200 school girls in Nigeria by the terror group Boko Haram demonstrates that Jihadist violence features heavily in the global discourse on terrorism.

Religion- and ethnicity-based identity politics are the weapons used to encourage intergroup hostility and violence. What happened at Christchurch was a tragedy and a disgrace. Any deaths as a result of intergroup violence in Nigeria or Utrecht are equally horrifying. This is not a time for comparison, or finger pointing. The attack in New Zealand shook the world because of the visceral nature of an attack on such a scale in an otherwise peaceful country, that was livestreamed online for viewers around the world to watch. The attacks on Christian farmers in Nigeria have left thousands to struggle with the loss of a father, mother, partner, or child. Families across Utrecht now have to come to terms with lives that have been permanently damaged.

No good has come of any of this violence. All that has been left behind is sorrow, anguish, and in some cases likely a desire for revenge. People have been killed simply for being who they are. The motivation behind the act in no way justifies the consequences in any of these instances, but the context and nuance of each situation should not be ignored. If you are looking for evidence to suggest that Christianity and Islam are incompatible, then you will find it. But that does not mean it is actually there. This is not a point scoring exercise. This is not some apocalyptic endgame between Christians and Muslims. This is not a war. This is madness.

We are people. We live and work together. We stand side by side and help each other out and laugh together and muddle through and try to make something in the years we have here. For some of us, those years ran out too soon. 

Nobody is responsible for the deaths in Christchurch other than the terrorist who held the gun. But he was inspired by the exact rhetoric and sabre rattling that Breitbart and others have co-opted for their own ends. The attacker explicitly stated that his reasoning for killing 50 innocent people was because of the existential threat that Islam supposedly poses to Christian/Western values. This is the exact same rhetoric used by Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram and other Jihadi groups the world over. Deflecting from a terror attack committed in the name of white nationalism and Christianity by highlighting attacks on Christians reinforces the exact thinking that led to this brutality in the first place. Not only is this thinking wrong, it is incredibly dangerous. He killed them because they kill us.

He killed them because they kill us.

Where does this kind of thinking end?