Picture it:A poor neighborhood where the people work so hard they get old young, just to eat. Just to live. One hot July night in this dusty small town, two men commit a home invasion. The father is beaten, bound and forced to watch his son killed and every female member of his family beaten and raped repeatedly...even his five-year-old daughter, who dies from her wounds before the men are finished with her.
Are you offended? Do you want them caught? Do you want them to stand trial? Do you want to see them jailed for their crimes, or face the death penalty? No matter your idea of punishment, we can all agree they should be stopped, yes? Before they pick another house...before they pick my house, or yours.
Well, it wasn't two men. It was two hundred. And it wasn't one family, it was two hundred women and girls and babies. And this wasn't the first time. This is rape as a weapon of war.
Are you scared now?
I am.
And I want someone to stop them. NOW.
They are my neighbors, my friends, these girls. These families. In this globally connected world, they are all my neighbors. It could've been my house. Dumb luck made me the daughter of my parents and not the daughter of her parents. There, but for the grace of God go I. It could've been me. They could've ALL been me. Or my little girl.
Did you see the headlines in the news? I know CNN reported it. Did you understand what's happening out there? They're praying for help. Those are somebody's babies. That is somebody's mother. Somebody's wife. It's me, and it's you. Why aren't there protests, and demands for answers...for solutions? Why aren't we screaming for blood, for help, for it to stop?
Some of us are. We need your voice too. THEY need your voice. The Congo, Rwanda, Darfur...it's happening right now. The whole world swore after Hitler that we'd never let such a thing happen again. Did we only mean we'll never let somebody kill using gas chambers again? That it's OK, as long as they don't use concentration camps? It's happening, Gentle Reader. Last night,
right now, this VERY minute. Do you get it? Somebody should have saved the Jews. Somebody should have STOPPED IT. Dontcha think?
Photo by Jack Corn, courtesy of The US National Archives; no known copyright restrictions.
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