With the recent Bullet Train incident in China, we forget the famine in Africa that is killing thousands of people.
We tend to forget/ignore what we cannot see. When they are not in the news. When these people are so poor they cannot tweet/facebook about it. When these people are dying daily. Silently.
Of course like everything in the real world, the cause is multifactorial.
We can blame those African governments (or the lack of a Somalian government) for how they cannot manage the drought.
Why don’t Somalia has a government?? It is because this is against the interests of the US and Europe. They do not want someone to be able to control the oil there and they do not want security for commerce through the sea for emerging powers like China and India.
Reference: 索馬利亞:海盜國家的真相──訪談學運領袖穆罕默德．哈珊
And it is also partly because how a “modern” way of life is forced unto a group of people who should be leading nomadic life. As drought is part of the normal climate cycle in that region and their way of life was a good adaptation for this climate cycle. (This reminds me of the story of Abraham in Genesis, how he needs to move in response to drought/famine.)
Reference: Is ‘development’ behind African famine?
Also, partly because of how Western speculators are robbing these people’s fertile farmland.
Reference: African Land Grabbing
When I read all these information, I can’t help but think what these speculators/governments do to the African people is just like what speculators/government do to people in mainland China. The only difference (?) might be the mainland government is doing this to its own people. (Actually some of the African governments as well, of course Western corporations do the same thing to China as well. Hence, no big difference at all?)
Is endangering lives of people in other countries marginally better than doing the same to people in your own country? Maybe we think we do not love people in a distant country as much as those in our own?
Or is it just because we cannot see it, it seems to make all these sufferings better (at least for our own conscience)?
And then I think about how EVERY one of us (at least everyone I know who lives in the developed world) endangers the lives of others, through the pollution we make, the products we buy… A lot of these others do not live far away from us, many of them are just in mainland China, maybe even in Guangdong Province. They are our own people. However, we do not seem to feel bad about what we do.
Does it make it better when we don’t see how they have to deal with our electronic waste, and how some of them work in a partially constructed factory 18 hours a day for all those iPad2/iPhone4, how we wear clothes from Nike/Adidas/other companies that produce tons of toxic chemicals in the rivers of China???
I remembered what I read a few days ago when John Stott (a preacher/author who was named by Time magazine as one of the world’s “100 Most Influential People”) passed away.
“We are called to double listening: listening to the Word, listening to the world.”
- John Stott (27 April 1921 to 27 July 2011)
Can we hear the cries of all these people?
World Vision Hong Kong: Donation for Africa Famine
The quote of John stott is inspiring.