We all matter - A remarkable response to some forthright words
16 November 2015
KEITH JACKSON & GARY JUFFA
GOVERNOR Gary Juffa, an eminent Papua New Guinean provincial and national politician, is well-known to regular readers of PNG Attitude for his occasional essays on integrity in public life, his compassion and his sensitivity to humanity.
Gary Juffa is not a reserved man gently tending the garden of civilisation. He is bold, often uncompromising and he always tells things as they are.
Now he has had a remarkable response to a short, angry Facebook message about the situation in West Papua.
His post followed the Paris massacres and was shared by more than 7,500 people and received more than 4,000 likes.
“I was most amazed, said Gary. “My words spoke of the dual standards and hypocrisy of the world in how it reacts to such situations.”
Here’s what Gary Juffa wrote:
I hear the silence for West Papua profoundly louder than the uproar for Paris.
Every human life is equal and valuable regardless of colour, race, religion, geographic location, economic status, but incidents like the recent attack in Paris remind all of us that many subscribe to the view that while all of us are equal, some are more equal than others.
And again it highlights the exceptional culture of racism that is very much alive and well in our world today.
Here now we see the real terrorists: racism, double standards, dualism, elitism. Many of us unwittingly subscribe to these.
Yes, all of us were born equal and equally we die with nothing. But the inequality throughout our lifetime is defined by perceptions created by a minority ruling elite who highlight differences for their inconsiderate greed so as to quench their insatiable appetite for more.
If you recognise the evil reality of racism, double standards, dualism, elitism, share this.
The fact is, we all matter...
Photo: Indonesian authorities register bodies following a recent bloody episode of the continuing genocide in West Papua
So true.
Posted by: Diane Bohlen | 17 November 2015 at 06:25 PM
Sometimes we are too slow to admit our own hypocrisy and racism. There is some racism in all of us, the challenge is to work at admitting that and getting rid of that racism in ourselves.
There is a report in today's National (Tuesday 17th) on the huge number of civilian deaths caused by airstrikes in Syria.
Posted by: Garry Roche | 17 November 2015 at 11:20 AM
The awful events in Paris have underlined the cruelty and irrationality of the criminals who the Arab world call Daesh.
Dreadful as this outrage was, I agree with Gary Juffa that other criminals, freed from both official restraint and media scrutiny, continue their evil work in West Papua.
It says a lot about human nature that our responses to similar events in different places can be so different.
We see those harmed in Paris as being like "us" and so their suffering and death resonates powerfully.
Those being killed, beaten and imprisoned in West Papua are part of the great, undifferentiated "them", who live lives that we do not comprehend nor much care about.
Such apparent indifference is, in part at least, why the world's many authoritarian regimes can get away with their routine inhumanity and criminality.
It seems to me that the sum total of human avirice, cruelty and stupidity so grossly exceeds our psychological ability to cope with its consequences that we deliberately numb ourselves to it.
We instinctively know that trying to right every wrong in the world is a task that is beyond even our collective capacity: even open warfare against truly evil regimes rarely solves such problems.
We cannot impose peace and the rule of law: only those suffering under oppressive regimes can do this for themselves, usually at enormous cost.
We can lend moral and material support to West Papuans and others in the same situation, but the task of fighting and dying for freedom will inevitably fall to them.
As for Daesh, we can help others kill it only if they are minded to do so.
Posted by: Chris Overland | 17 November 2015 at 07:28 AM