After reading the Aug. 28 publication of the Edmonton Journal, my reaction was a complex mix of emotion, a concentrated mix of anger, frustration, sadness, hopelessness and heartfelt empathy for innocent human beings attempting to free themselves from the violence of war and injustice.
At the time, I felt the need to engage by submitting the following letter to the Journal. For whatever reasons, it was not published. So be it. Editorial privilege is a fact of life and I was prepared to place this exercise in file 13.
The recent pictures and story of Alan, Ghalib and Rehanna Kurdi, however, have resurrected and intensified my earlier feelings, thus the reason for resubmitting to our community newspaper. Along with all the important local issues that the Gazette covers, it is important to understand that we are all connected to a common humanity. We are a global family to which we all have responsibilities. How we engage with these issues is up to each of us but engage we must. Avoiding and dismissing this issue out of a sense of helplessness and with the attitude of “let them sort it out”, we do at the cost of our own peril. The triumph of evil is when good men and women do nothing.
Here is the Journal letter to the editor.
“Migrants found dead inside truck,” Journal Aug. 28, is a gruesome testimony that a systemic evil and rot is imbedded in our humanity. Despite the good will and works of millions of good people, the contagion of this cancerous evil has mutated into an increasingly destructive global plague and threatens the core of a just and caring world.
The fact that this article was headlined on page 18 of the Journal, following two full pages of political narcissism about our own federal election, demonstrates our own complicity and indifference to those who suffocated and perished in a closed container truck used for hauling chicken meat.
And the best we can do as a human family for the thousands fleeing from the corruption, violence and injustice taking place in Syria is to offer more babble from the high offices of power? This is like taking an aspirin to cure of cancer.
As global citizens, we must all be engaged in righting this wrong and do our part in ensuring that the voices and lives of those directly impacted by this contagion are given the hearing, care and support which is their just right as a human being. Indifference to this injustice, perpetrated by power, greed and the pursuit of self- serving wants over the basic needs of our brothers and sisters will only lead, in time, to finding ourselves in the back of that truck. It’s time for some serous intervention. By the United Nations! By Canadian leadership! Let’s make this an election issue.
As a footnote: It appears our Canadian leadership is finally taking this seriously. This by a country once recognized internationally for its peacekeeping, humanitarianism and progressive democratic governance.
Wilf Borgstede, St. Albert
