Redemption out of dysfunction, beauty out of ashes
“God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.” –Bono, lead singer of U2
“Why is it that a child’s death amounts to a tragedy, but the death of millions is merely a statistic?” –Patrick McDonald, Founder, Viva Network
There are times I feel like I have reasons to say my life sucks. It rains on my day off. We run out of money too often. I get the flu. How would it be if I had nowhere to live when the rain came? How would it be if there were no doctors, and no medicine when my children or I got sick?
In detention for three years and without food; the Rohingya people plan their escape and accept the terrible risk.
How would it be if I was not just penniless, but also stateless, and imprisoned in a concentration-like camp with no prospects of a better life? In fact, my most likely prospect would be this: Death. What would I do?
Partners has been told that helping the Rohingya is close to impossible. The government of Burma/Myanmar forbids helping them. Ironically they will tell the world that they are helping them on their own. They may as well add: We are helping them die. Partners is proud to break the rules in order to do the impossible. Before the rains came this season we were able to give tarps and bamboo to construct shelters for 6,065 refugees. It may seem like a drop in the ocean, literally, but for these 6,065 it has meant protection from the rain, from diseases and a limited feeling of security.
But what is the value of a tarp when there is no food, no doctors, no work, no freedom to leave the camp, and no school for the children? For many the situation is so desperate that they are willing to risk their lives to leave. Thousands are paying bribes to “brokers”, packing their belongings, and strengthening their resolve to board a boat and risk the seas, human traffickers, and corrupt state powers who have caused unbelievable suffering for people who have already lost everything.
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
Their dream is to make it to Malaysia and seek asylum. Conservative estimates say that more than 50,000 Rohingya refugees have done just this in 2013 alone. In meetings over the last two days I heard the sickening stories and watched video footage that proves the terrible price they have had to pay. They are extorted, beaten, raped, starved, forced to squat in confinement for months; their daughters are taken, their sons become slaves, and they, when they can’t pay the price of freedom, become another casualty of visceral human desperation.
I am describing the well-documented journey of a people denied the right of existence. Right now, many of those same 6,065 people whom we helped shelter and feed through this rainy season are preparing to board ships with their families, little kids and pregnant women, knowing the dangers and accepting them because there is nothing left worth living for if not this sliver of hope created by an escape from the camps.
As they pack, our team prays, and we look for solutions to a problem so big and ugly that it overwhelms us. Some of us feel depressed; others work harder on our relief and development work to postpone the sense of trauma their deaths will produce in us and in their community. My wife, Oddny, grieves and blogs. My coping mechanism is a bit less healthy. I feel rage and a gnawing sense that many who actually know what is going on don’t care, that God Himself has abandoned them, and that there is a near total absence of resolve to do what can be done for them.
How do we overcome evil with good when evil seems to consistently win in the lives of so many people?
In my continued attempt to build compassionate community, I reach out to you. I am a desperate beggar. I beg you to spread the word, to send support, and to find a way to reach these wonderful people (millions of them if you count all the current victims of war and oppression in Asia) with the hand of love. Only when we act on love, do we prove that love has a hold on us.
“A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.” –Bob Dylan
My morning meditation in type = key words of Partners Relief & development’s vision and mission statements + some values from 1 John 3.
Our team at Partners Relief & Development just released a video featuring one of our projects in Kachin State, Northern Burma. Love Your Neighbor tells a sweet story that illustrates the simple power of the golden rule.
This blog, just posted to the Partners Relief & Development blog by one of our staff members, puts into narrative form what our core ethos is all about.
I do not give money but instead I look intently at his face. I don’t want to forget what Jesus looks like. We part with a handshake and my promise to do something to help.
I missed him the first time, on the railway platform at Brahmanbaria in Bangladesh. A kid of about 12, dragging himself along on his stomach, legs so badly twisted back up behind him that his feet touched his lower spine. He tugged at my trouser leg and I looked down in pity but with little respect or understanding. I asked a local staff member “What do we do in these kinds of situations.” “Give him a couple of Taka” was the reply. I reached into my pocket and ‘generously’ gave the kid 10 whole Taka. About 50 cents. His eyes and his incomprehensible words spoke gratitude. I felt sick inside though, and the Spirit gently tapped my shoulder “If you’d sat down and looked him in the eye you would have seen and talked with Jesus” He said. I’d missed my chance.
God is gracious. A couple of days ago and some 20 years later, I was in the concentration camps of Rakine (Arakan) State in Burma (Myanmar). We’d been visiting for a couple of days as I looked at what my friends in Partners Relief & Development had been up to, providing food, shelter, medicine and compassion to some very desperate people. We’d stopped to get a pair of crutches remodeled at a motorbike repair shop – as you do. This is for a kid whose leg was broken in a riot, the ends of the bones sticking out. Our friends had got him to a hospital where staff, doing nothing about the break at all, had sown up the flesh in the most careless, dismissive way.
All of that is another story for another time, but here we are in a bike repair tin shed and I see this kid come to watch. He moves by using his arms as crutches and his butt as a third leg. He’s 10, his legs are folded beneath him and clearly he is unable to straighten them. I’m not going to miss a second chance to meet Jesus! I get down and sit in the dirt, cross my legs as best a stiff overweight old man can, and look at this child.
Someone rushes over with a piece of flat polystyrene for me to sit on. A chair is bought. I get them to put the child on the chair and I hold his feet. We can get his legs to about 90 degrees before the pain is too obvious. I have no language and our translator is gone – we were on our way home – but with signs we figure out he’s been like this since about 2 or 3. I hold his knees, I pray silently pleading with God for healing and some insight, I look in his face and say “God loves you” and I get a glorious smile back. I do not give money but instead I look intently at his face. I don’t want to forget what Jesus looks like. We part with a handshake and my promise to do something to help.
I need to find an orthopaedic surgeon (I think) who wants to meet Jesus in a concentration camp in Burma. If you’re a medical person and can put me right in what I think I need that would be fine too. But I want to introduce you to my little friends. Two of them at least. One of them looks very like I imagine Jesus to look. If you’re that person please email me at info@partnersworld.org
Written by a Partners relief team leader .
People keep wanting to fix our logo. “It’s crooked, let me right it,” they say. Others helpfully point out what appears to be an obvious mistake, “Hey, someone in the design department made a mistake, your logo is messed up.” For you who have said nothing and wonder why the thing is not on a straight horizontal line, an editorial I wrote about 10 years ago explains why. Here is is:
Partners has a new logo. It may seem like a trivial change to you but to us at Partners it has been the stuff of warfare. Sides were formed and trenches dug. Positions were taken. It’s okay, there were no casualties and in the end we signed a peace treaty. Here are the terms of peace.
The new logo should be slightly off center, like us. Really. It should say that we are committed to the core to our normal-is-over ethos. When people say that we can’t help certain refugees because of politics or find a way to navigate to newly displaced people in a dangerous area, we want to give it a try. God belongs in scary places.
We also recognize that our greatest acts of faith are mingled with the tainted motives and sin that our humanity implies. Okay, so we aren’t perfect but we are in the arena fighting for God’s right to rule and reign. The logo had to be bent like us.
Prayer and action had to be visually represented. Hands are a symbol of people praying. More than that, two hands in an embrace suggest action and partnership. That’s us. While the hands may seem obscure in the logo, the red one joined with a white one (again, slightly tilted) represents our value of dynamic partnership with suffering people.
The logo is framed by four corners. The idea here is that it is a stamp. We want to make our mark on the world for God. We want to do it now, with a sense of urgency, not later when we can afford it or when it is safe.
I led the attack on our old logo. I was the General. I never liked the similarity it shared with the Nike swoosh and always stumbled around trying to explain to people why we chose it and what it meant.
So our team stormed the hill, tore the flag down, and raised this new standard. We hope that you like it as much as we do.
In this issue of Partners World you will find a lot to get your blood boiling. On a recent trip to visit displaced people in Burma my blood did just that. On my second day I met two 11 year olds who were raped by Burma Army soldiers and another who was brutally molested when she was just nine years old.
When you read this month’s articles, please try to keep in mind that the people on the other end of the text are people of value and substance, like your own loved ones. In the reports, updates, interviews, and accounts penned in this issue there are all the elements of our new logo: hands gripped in action and clasped in prayer, heart felt questions asked from our off center position, movement into new areas of Burma where we hope to make our mark for God, and yes, the rhythm of following a God who delights in keeping us on our toes in partnership.
Staying on our toes,
Steve Gumaer
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (James 1:27)
Genocide {or} “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matt 22:37-40)
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I am sharing this with you. What motivates me to write again is the golden rule. I want to do for children in conflict what I would want done for my own. Simple.
The systematic abuse of Rohingya people in West Burma has gone from bad to worse. Last week the remaining NGO’s who had an MOU with the government were forced to leave the area and fly back to Rangoon. Their buildings, including those belonging to the UN, were destroyed.
The survivors of recent massacres are largely unheard from as there are no observers of their suffering or the outcomes among the survivors. By government mandate, access to the Rohingya is blocked. For this reason there is very little detailed news about what is going on, but the news we get is much worse than anything we have ever heard before.
One of our friends in a large population of refugees sent word yesterday that “…doctors are treating muslim patients very badly now at Sittwe hospital. Most of the patients sent to Sittwe hospital die these days. I am afraid that people’s doubt about rakhine doctors killing muslim patients is true.”
Another friend is trying to help a boy who suffers from diabetes, asthma, and multiple health complications due to sustained denial of adequate food, shelter, and health services. The photos I have show an emaciated boy in the arms of his father, obviously close to death.
We are trying to help him get medical care but where will he get it, even if we can find the money to pay? When he suggested paying a bribe to the police to get him transported to the nearby government hospital, he wrote that it may be the quickest way to end his life, not save it. In his email this morning he wrote: “Also today there was a body returned from Sittwe hospital of a pregnant woman who died while in their care, and the child was lost as well. The injuries on her face suggest very much she was beaten or worse.”
Another friend who lives in the camps wrote yesterday that, “There is no medical care at all for patients. Family members just have to sit and watch the patients dying. It has been more than a week now IDPs are facing food shortage. Many families are starving now.”
Genocide, according the Oxford Dictionaries is “The deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group:a campaign of genocide”
“It has been more than a week now IDPs are facing food shortage. Many families are starving now.”
What I write about today is that. Genocide. The proof is in Burma’s government policy, described in the recent report by Fortify Rights and confirmed by Human Rights Watch, the New York Times, and most of the worlds leading news services; it is in the well documented process of removal of rights and identity of an entire ethnic group; it is in the many violent massacres and riots that have resulted in a massive loss of life.
Why is this not making news headlines? April 7th was the 20th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, where the world community declared: “this will never happen again”.
It’s happening again.
I beg you to join Partners Relief & Development in our efforts to help the survivors and prevent the slaughter of these wonderful people. Please re post the news as it is released and raise your voice with local and federal politicians. Tweet, post, blog, and in every way spread the word.
And please, if you can, join us by giving funds. Our team is working on aid delivery and other survival enhancing actions now. This costs money.
One generous donor has given a $30,000. matching grant as incentive to help the Rohingya. That means the gift of $30.00 that I just donated turns to $60.00 to help the Rohingya people. Just go to this donation page, click one time gift, and in the drop down menu, select “emergency relief.” All funds donated to this crisis in the month of April will be matched.
I just gave $30.00 so the Rohingya children can experience the freedom and fullness that my daughters have every day. Please join me.
Rob Kilpatrick is Partners Relief & Development’s international Board Chairperson. This reflection about what his grand kids mean to him and how that makes him love the grand kids in Burma is a powerful reminder of why we do what we do.
Partners Relief & Development has a team member in Bangladesh right now who is meeting victims of the recent violence against Rohingya people in West Burma. Today he met Aisha,a survivor from yet another destroyed village. This posting describes how his village was attacked and burned down, and how members of his village were lost, killed or taken away, including his two year old daughter.
Aisha heard the military vehicles and then saw large army trucks full of soldiers and extremists who were armed with guns and clubs. They drove into Killadong Majarpara, his village in West Burma and home to 2,500 other Rohingya Muslims. It was 11:00 pm on the 22nd of January. Knowing the multiple and brutal attacks so far, he quickly found his way out of the village to look for a safe place to hide.
This woman’s husband drowned in a pond while trying to escape the police who were torturing him. Now she is destitute with 7 children. This is a common story with the Rohingya people of West Burma. Pray for them and share their story.
While he was running, the mob of soldiers and extremists beat and killed a number of his fellow villagers. Four bodies were found with gunshot wounds and 12 more are missing. The news he heard so far is that 700 women and children were taken in large trucks to a “prison.”
Finding a place in a nearby village he sent for his wife and 7 children. After they were reunited on the 23rd, they and 8 other families paid a boat owner to take them from the shores of Burma, to the Southern-most tip of Bangladesh. Once they were on board, Aisha took inventory. He found his mother, father, wife, and 5 of his children. He counted again and, frantically, a third time. His precious two-year-old daughter was not in the boat. He had no idea where she was.
The boat owner wouldn’t return because of the danger it would put him and the 8 other families in. Aisha sat sobbing on the floor today describing these events to our team leader. He recounted his ordeal, especially the trauma he continues to experience because he had to leave his two-year-old daughter behind.
They were fortunate to make it to the other shore and get away undetected by Bengali authorities, whose policy is to immediately deport them back across the thin strip of ocean that divides Burma from a peninsula of Bangladesh.
He begged for a place to stay in an unregistered camp of refugees numbering at least 100,000 souls outside of Cox’s bazar. With no food, clothes, blankets, or any other life-essential provision, they settled into their square footage of misery. A kind neighbor gave them a piece of plastic to keep the rain off of them.
Our team leader met Aisha today and heard his story. He ended with a description of his village being burned to the ground last night. “How do you know it was your village?” our team leader asked. Aisha replied that he talked to his brother who is still trapped on the Burma side of the border and he confirmed it. “We could see it from here too,” he said. “It’s only 28 kilometers away and it lit the sky.”
Our team leader then asked him if he had any news of his two-year-old daughter. Looking down at the floor, he just said “no.”
Our team leader gave Aisha enough money to get blankets for his family, for his mom and dad, and to buy cooking pots and the basics they will need to survive. He prayed for this Muslim leader. He asked God to bring peace to his country so he can go home, and that, somehow, peace can come to his heart so he can be comforted.
For those of you who support our work with the displaced people of Burma, thank you. Aisha is one of the thousands of people this month who can say they encountered true compassion this month; that a small faith inspired group reached out to them, embracing tremendous risk to find ways to help them and strive for justice.
It is your support that makes our work with victims of war possible. I am deeply grateful for you and offer this story as a reminder to pray, share this story, and give as you feel moved by the same spirit that moves us.
Your brother,
Steve Gumaer
