Their expressions- a mixture of fear and innocence, suffering and oblivion. They should be playing after a ball, instead, they are fleeing to escape the bombs. They walk reaching out for life but they have Death as their close buddy who all the more is resting his freezing cold hand upon them obscuring the future from their eyes. He kidnaps them from a beach while they try to pretend living, or while they are sleeping at home; or even drags them away from the streets, crushing them under the rubble. And those who survive often act as mutilated. The weapon used to perpetrate this harm (to do “evil”) is called the “barometric fuse”: it explodes 30metres above the ground, hurling splinters of so-called “cast lead”, and acts as a butcher’s axe on the people. Three of these bombs hit a UN school open to Palestinian refugees in Beit Hanoun a few days ago. The mangled and devasted bodies of the children were strewn around: in Palestine, in Ukraine, in Iraq: The suffering of these children plunged into the horrors and violence brought about by the wars is no longer bearable.
It is not the uniforms of the army to be stained red, which is, in itself, an atrocity already, but the horizontal-striped jersies that get soaked in blood. And if the responsibility of those governments involved in the conflicts is more than obvious, equal responsibility lies on the international institutions who act scandalized only in words and then allow the inevitable to happen, those same states that in the name of some alliance or economic policy have given their justification for the use of weapons.
A Kindergarten was recently struck in Ukraine: at least ten children have been killed. In Gaza, a missile accidentally hit a house where there were about twenty people: a child of 2 died. These are but just the bottom lines on a long list of small women and men who will never grow to adulthood: just this morning, other children were wiped out in an attack in Gaza. According to Unicef , 600,000 children fall victims in the ongoing conflicts in the Central African Republic.
The word is “Death.” This is the term that even television would rather not use at times. It prefers the more softer term “victim”. It’s more aseptic and impersonal. Each and everyone of us is more or less a “victim” of something, but we do not reckon with death. The word used has less implications, sounds less evil, it arouses our indignation and excuses us for switching over to another channel, for rather looking at a photo and then turning our gaze to the other side. If governments are to blame, people too are no less responsible. We are heedless, almost “addicted” to the tragedies occurring around us. We are witnesses of the images of thousands of child-refugees on-board ships, across deserts, caught under the rubble from the bombings; and yet, we are not touched an inch. Merely abulic.
Making the exception is the voice of Pope Francis who strongly spoke of “children whose hope for a life worthy of a future has been taken: dead children, wounded children, children maimed, orphaned , children taken for play-things, remnants of war, children who can smile no more”. The Pope’s appeal to the powerful on earth is clear: “Stop, please!”. Didn’t he say “talk to each other, negotiate”? He said: “Stop!” The world must be returned to children.
