Today on the homepage, I have a piece about Syria, and specifically about an extraordinary Syrian journalist and filmmaker, in exile: Waad al-Kateab. With Edward Watts, she made a documentary called “For Sama.” (“Sama” is the name of her first daughter.) The film is about the Siege of Aleppo, and related matters. It has won important awards (including Best Documentary at Cannes).
In addition to writing about Waad al-Kateab, I have podcasted with her: here. On the Corner, I’d like to say something about an old subject of mine: human-rights fashion. An interesting subject. Why do some human-rights causes catch public attention while others are largely ignored? In 2012, I wrote an essay on this general theme: “Many Boots, Many Faces.”
For a long time, South Africa — apartheid South Africa — was a great world concern. There were other governments that abused human rights as grossly, or more so. Yet concern was not as great.
When I was in college, an Ethiopian famine was hot. (Forgive my glibness.) In Ethiopia right this second, terrible things are happening — many use the word “genocide,” and not carelessly — yet the issue is not “hot.”
Darfur was an intense world concern for a while. (This is the region in western Sudan where governmental forces have carried out mass murder, and mass rape.) Yet concern faded, even as horror continued.
Today, a lot of people know the word “Uyghurs.” Not long ago, however, people snickered when they heard it. At least this was my experience. Also, they would tell me, “You care about China so much? Why don’t you strap on a gun and go over and fight them?” Getting along with Beijing was the priority of the day; rocking the boat was frowned on.
Now people lecture me about the Uyghurs and the evil of the PRC. Go figure.
“Rohingya” is hard to pronounce — plus, aren’t they ISIS-like separatists? Consider North Korea, too. That is an ongoing emergency — and when an emergency is ongoing, people tend to yawn. Except for the people in the emergency.
In my piece today, I write,
For a few years after the current horrors in Syria began — in 2011 — that country was a great world concern. But world concern is hard to sustain. Shock wears off, the news seems repetitive, and the world is ready to move on.
Also, if people, or governments, are unwilling to do something about a problem — or think a problem is untreatable — they would probably rather not hear about it. In fact, they may get angry, when they hear about it. (I have seen this on more than one occasion.)
What many human-rights advocates face is apathy, and a sense of futility. Also the irritation of those who would rather not be bothered.
But on the matter of futility, specifically: Syria is not ravaged by earthquakes, hurricanes, or other natural phenomena, as Waad al-Kateab points out. It is ravaged by a dictatorship. Cannot men restrain it, dislodge it?
I also have a “glance at the grim statistics”:
Before the war, Syria’s population was 22 million. Since 2011, between 500,000 and 600,000 people have been killed. About 12 million have been displaced. Roughly half of these have fled abroad, and the other half have been displaced internally. Abroad, a million refugee children have been born.
At home, an estimated 2.1 million civilians have been injured, some severely and permanently. This is not to mention all the rape, torture, psychosis, poverty, and starvation. Along with North Korea — a perennial — Syria is pretty much the most battered place on earth.
One of the staples of journalism is the anniversary piece. Accordingly, there were some tenth-anniversary pieces earlier this year. I mean pieces marking ten years since the Syrian uprising began, in March 2011. But there were very few. The world “moved on” from Syria long ago.
Also, many people have the idea that there aren’t victimizers and victims in Syria. They are all “bad guys,” in a sense: tribe fighting tribe, in a struggle to the death. In 2013, Americans were debating intervention, as the Assad regime was using chemical weapons against the population. Sarah Palin let her views be known in a Facebook post, which she headed “LET ALLAH SORT IT OUT.” That line thrilled many people, and would today.
I remember a different line, a line from Bill Buckley. It went something like this: No one has an inexhaustible supply of indignation. Everyone has a tank, so to speak. What do you spend your tank on? You cannot keep your eye on every sparrow, injured or killed. Which ones do you choose to watch, and comment on? Or be an “activist” about?
Anyway, human-rights fashion is an interesting subject, and I think it would make a fitting subject for a book. As for Syria, no one cares about it, sure — except the Syrians. And their well-wishers, wherever they may be. Again, my piece on Waad al-Kateab — “Witness from Syria” — is here.