THERE is a greater call to anger and action than the sight of a needlessly dead child. It’s knowing that within my short life there have been hundreds of thousands of others that we will never see.
The 500,000 children who died from sanctions against Iraq. The one million people slaughtered in Rwanda. The eighth of East Timor’s population exterminated. The 500 children killed in Gaza just last summer.
War, and the deadly harm it inflicts upon innocent children, has raged across the Middle East and North Africa. Twelve years on from the biggest peace march in British history, we have seen another great uprising of compassion towards refugees fleeing persecution and violence.
More than 427,000 people have signed a petition for greater asylum support. Local communities are organising. The sudden shift from media and government bigotry has been remarkable and overdue. Sadly, within the global context, civic compassion isn’t enough.
Food bank donations don’t reduce inequality. Providing refuge doesn’t end mass displacement. Instead, these acts are like sticking plasters on the wounds of domestic and international society.
We, as a Scottish society aiming to promote peace, must confront the international hypocrisies of this crisis, both past and present. Many of them lie at the doors of Downing Street. Yesterday, England’s top tabloid declared “Blitz ’em to hell”. David Cameron then boasted, as part of a “refugee statement”, that on August 21 – without parliamentary approval – UK citizens were bombed and killed in Syria. UK authorities will use this crisis to argue for war. This is a horrific error.
The abominations of Daesh grew from the power vacuum and sectarian conflicts of war that ravaged Iraq. Years of occupation, “collateral damage”, and resource exploitation was a potent force of radicalisation.
Likewise in Libya, another dictatorship Britain armed, the overthrow of a state left a bloody civil war and lawlessness on the coast of the Mediterranean. From that chaos refugees sought crossing to Italy. Last October, the UK Foreign Office opposed search and rescue support in the Med, claiming it could create a “pull factor” – 2,500 people have drowned this year.
Those disastrous wars destabilised the region. Britain’s continued support for dictatorships and the arms trade does the same.
The Saudis have used UK weapons to crush pro-democracy protestors in Bahrain and in alleged war crimes against Yemen. While spreading radical Wahhabism and violence across the Middle East, the country has beheaded over 100 of its own citizens this year. Britain stands by its side.
Arms companies such as BAE Systems, Raytheon and Thales – who all have Scottish-based operations – make massive profits from this industry of death and destruction.
Last year’s Committees on Arms Export Controls report identified £5.2 billion of UK arms exports to countries with concerning human rights issues, including Pakistan, Israel, Qatar, Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen. After the civil war in Syria had erupted, the UK still sold components for nerve gas chemical weapons to the Assad regime.
This is the sickening hypocrisy of UK politicians. Both Labour and the Tories have armed mass murderers for corporate gain, and then they whimper platitudes about a commitment to human rights and the rule of law.
If there is a hell, it is overflowing with arms traders and their apologists who use suffering to fuel the military-industrial complex.
Already the Westminster government has announced plans for more attacks in Syria. This is the rancid stench of British warmongers revving the engines of RAF bombers at the sight of a dead child.
Do we show these people our compassion? Do you expect them to care? Food parcels are not enough in the face of a fierce desire for violence. The injustices of the international system, and the UK’s complicity, must be confronted at every opportunity.
Tomorrow, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will face protests in London calling for an end to the siege of Gaza and justice for Palestine.
A week today, the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) will gather authoritarian regimes and arms companies in London. The Campaign Against the Arms Trade will protest for peace.
A possible coalition between a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party and the SNP could, for the first time in a generation, build an alternative foreign policy to influence the corridors of power.
That prospect, as much as the new wave of public humanitarianism, is cause for hope. Then a more serious consideration of the Syrian crisis – through diplomacy, the United Nations, regional stability and rights for Kurdistan – can take place.
Today, to the victims of our world, we say “welcome”. But we must do more. Stop the bombings. Stop arming the tyrants. Beat swords into ploughshares and stand by the Arab people over the tyrants Britain supports. There are many, many dead children we will never see. Our urgent duty, in their name, is to take action for a peaceful world.
Outrage as David Cameron admits approving RAF air strike that killed British jihadists in Syria
The National View: Transparency is vital now that Britain has entered war in Syria
Letters to The National, September 8: The images from Syria we do not see, or chose not to
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