As a Christian, as a person interested in social justice, and as a person environmentally concerned, what is my role in speaking up about points I find to be unjust? What is yours?
The easiest way for me to speak up is through my writing. No, this blog post is not about where I am going on the World Race, but it is about what God is preparing inside of me.
God working in my life was so radically evident this early march, as I attended a Day of Learning at a Holocaust Center in San Francisco on Sunday 3/6. During this time, I participated in a workshop on the genocide in Myanmar, spoke with a Holocaust survivor, and enjoyed clam chowder on the water with my dear friend (the latter two will be in a following blog post). All of these discussions and experiences relating to social justice, religion, and the environment intersect on a major sticking point of hurt and confusion for me: the Myanmar genocide.
You may have otherwise heard this called “an ethnic cleansing”. While I am not going to Myanmar on the World Race, I will be going to Thailand, one of the bordering countries. So what seems like a distant problem currently, will soon be not so physically distant. And I do not want it to be emotionally distant either. Currently in Myanmar, an ethnic and religious group, the Rohdingya, are exiled in their own country, where they have been living as minority Muslims for centuries. Hundreds of thousands of Rohdingya have fled to Bangladesh as refugees, as their homes were being burned, women raped, men killed, and citizen rights stripped in “clearance operations”. The U.S. and the U.N. are calling this genocide, “an ethnic cleansing”- in using this terminology, the responsibility to respond is removed from countries and organizations that could be doing something. The genocide in Myanmar is becoming a global crisis across the board: diplomats are avoiding their responsibility to speak up for minority voices in the world, who are without means to stand up for themselves. The refugee camps were built so qucikly due to the mass influx of refugees, forests were being clearcut (an environmental crisis everywhere). These refugees are without steady food supply, education, clean water, and health care. They have no voice in the country they came from, or reside in. And no one wants them.
Why I am writing about this on a missionary blog?
Christians have been both persecuters and persecuted throughout the centuries. But Jesus teaches a message of love and hospitality. We have a responsibility to prioritize people in need of love and hospitality: one way to do that with the people of Myanmar, is calling this a genocide, and sharing about it. Psalm 24:1-2 says, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; 2 for he founded it on the seas and established it on the waters.” God made this world, and gave it to man to take care of. Not simply the land, but everything in it. Environmentally, that area of clear cut forests will soon be a muddy flood ground, rampant with disease. Not only have animals lost their habitats there, because no one will speak up about this crisis, but a whole sector of people have lost their habitats as well.
This frustration and desire to share about what is going on in Myanmar, is not something to be ignored. I do not want to know about all of this oppression, and do nothing. We are global citizens, and we can try to put ourselves in bubbles and stay silent, but reaching out to love one another and make the world a better place is so much more fulfilling. Blog 1 of 2 from the Day of Learning.
If you would like to know more about what the heck is happening in Myanmar, some articles below are interesting reads:
