Indifference to the suffering of Syrian refugees is just one example. Can consciousness-raising cause a changeIJ It will be a long haul, if at all. However, a beginning must be made
lack of sympathy translating itself into effective ameliorative action is a major cause of much of the suffering the world over. An instance is the civil war in Syria, which has lasted for over seven years. The cold figures are staggering. According to Al Jazeera, the news channel, it has killed over 465,000 Syrians, wounded a million and displaced 12 million people — half of the country’s pre-war population.
According to figures with the Syria Regional Refugee Response, an inter-agency information sharing portal, the number of registered Syrian refugees, as updated on September 18, was 5,220,932. This figure includes two million registered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and lebanon, three million registered by the Government of Turkey, as well as more than 30,000 registered in North Africa.
It is not that there has been no sympathy for the victims, particularly refugees. The photograph of the body of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, lying on a beach in Turkey on September 2, 2015, deeply moved people the world over. His death by drowning, along with those of his brother Galib and mother Rehana, while trying cross the Mediterranean Sea from Bodrum in Turkey to the island of Kos in Greece, had triggered a global torrent of sympathy for refugees.
The then French President, Francois Hollande, observed that the picture must be a reminder of the world’s responsibility toward refugees. David Cameron, then Britain’s Prime Minister, said he was deeply moved by Kurdi’s image. Ireland’s Prime Minister Enda Kenny described the photograph as “absolutely shocking” and the refugee crisis as a “human catastrophe.” Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, did the most, allowing in a large number of arrivals while others were posting fences. Donations to NGOs dealing with refugees soared.
Unfortunately, expressions of sympathy by top leaders did not do much for the refugees. Monetary contributions have fallen. The European Union’s 2015 plan to relocate 106,000 refugees from Italy and Greece to other member countries by September 25 this year, has stumbled. Only 27 per cent of his number has been relocated, thanks mainly to opposition by Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, which have refused to take any. Earlier this month, the European Court of Justice dismissed Slovakia and Hungary’s challenge, backed by Poland, to the legality of the European Union’s 2015 scheme for the mandatory relocation of asylum seekers. It remains to be seen what follows.
Undoubtedly, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has set a remarkable example of compassion and humanitarian action by accepting perhaps over a million refugees in the teeth of pressure from Right-wing elements and their party, Alternative for Germany (AfD). The fact that the latter secured 13.3 per cent of the votes — the highest ever since 1949 — in the recent elections, shows how strong these pressures have been. Conversely, her remarkable election victory, shows that her policy, which was a major election issue, has majority support in the country and would continue.
There are doubtless many problems of integration and a small but significant section of asylum seekers, mainly from South Asia, are seeking economic opportunities rather than fleeing persecution or conflict. Yet, the fact remains that a very large number of people in Europe are not sensitive to the plight of the refugees — the dreadful threat that compel them to leave their homes and livelihoods for an uncertain journey, during which they constantly face dangers, such as drowning at sea, abuses at the hands of smugglers and others, or kidnapping for ransom, torture and rape in places like libya, where there is no Government but the rule of gangsters and militia. Nor do they have a picnic in the detention centres where the conditions are often terrible.
The war in Syria and the plight of the refugees fleeing it are, however, not the only examples of the indifference of a disturbingly large number of people to suffering that does not affect them. Numerous other ones can be cited — the massacres in Rwanda, the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, the horror unleashed by Boko Haram in Nigeria, and the indifference the world displayed for some time to the plight of the Yazidis at the hands of the Islamic State of Syria and levant. There is also the glaring instance of the Taliban who turned Afghanistan into a huge prison for women and a nightmarish place for men, by the restrictive pre-medieval social order they had imposed. Yet, the West did nothing more than clamp down sanctions — that the Taliban just ignored — before the horror of 9/11 led to the invasion by a US-led coalition in October, 2001, that liberated Afghanistan from the horror. Finally, despite all that the Western media has said and/or written, none of the Western powers has done anything effective to address the plight of the Rohingyas. Nor is there a surge of sympathy for them in India.
Is there something wrong with humansIJ Erich Fromm wrote in his monumental work, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, “Man is the only mammal who is a large-scale killer and sadist.” He further states, “If human aggression was more or less at the same level as that of other mammals — particularly that of our nearest relative, the chimpanzee — human society would be rather peaceful and non-violent. But this is not so. Man’s history is a history of extraordinary destructiveness and cruelty, and human aggression, it seems, far surpasses that of his animal ancestors, and man is in contrast to most animals, a real ‘killer’.”
What causes sadismIJ Erich Fromm writes in another of his classics, Fear of Freedom, “All the different forms of sadism go back to one essential impulse, namely, to have complete mastery over another person, to make him a helpless object of our will, to become the absolute ruler over him, to become his god, to deal with him as one pleases.” Control over life and death being the ultimate form of exercising such mastery, murder is the ultimate form of sadism, as is genocide.
Now, what makes a person a sadistIJ The answer, according to Fromm, is insecurity, a strong feeling of which envelops people as they grow out of their mothers’ secure world they inhabit during infancy and are assailed by the many dangers that the world holds forth as they grow up. Many cannot deal with the feeling the right way — relating to the world through love and creative work. Some try to do it by becoming a sadist seeking to control and dominate or a masochist, who surrenders his or her autonomy and judgement to a superior entity — a person, an organisation or an idea — and deriving a sense of security and reassurance as a part of a warm and inclusive whole.
Can consciousness-raising cause a changeIJ It will be a long haul, if at all. A beginning, however, must be made.
(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)
