Should I stay or should I go now?

For Sama (Arabic: من أجل سما‎ ‘min ajl sama‘)
(Syrian Documentary; 2019)

Recently I read of a young mother with her 4-month old infant participating in a civil objection against CAA and NRC at Shaheen Bhag in Southern Delhi. Soon after being in Delhi for a couple of days, the child fell ill and succumbed to pneumonia at the protest grounds. The mother said in a TV interview that she was not saddened by the demise. In fact, she felt proud that her son gave his life for the future of the country. Deep inside, she must be feeling like 'Mother India'. Given another chance, she would do it all over again.

Now, would you call that bad parenting or patriotism?

This is the same question the maker of the documentary 'For Sama' seems to be asking. Waad Al-Kateab, who started filming her life experiences as a university student in Aleppo, realised that her country, Syria, was slowly plunging into civil war. She started getting involved with students' resistance front against Bashar Al-Assad. As from 2011, as the violence by ruling regime against civilians escalated, she had to make a decision whether to stay and fight a good fight or escape the country. She opted to stay back. She soon met a similar-minded doctor Hamza, who made his personal mission to remain to treat the victims of the unrest. Waad continued filming her day-to-day events and sent it to Channel 4 of the BBC for broadcast.

Aleppo: Before and After Bombing pics
©boredpanda.com

Hamza and Waad decided to tie the knot despite the constant bombardment and destruction around them. All through her filming, she kept asking herself whether what she was doing was correct. The uncertainty became more acute as her daughter, Sama, for whom this documentary is dedicated, was born. She often wondered if she was ruining her daughter's future or depriving her of opportunities for a brighter future by her (Waad's) inactions.

All through the presentation, viewers are served with dead bodies, death and rubbles of what used to be buildings. Hamza, who ran make-shift hospitals with necessary facilities to treat victims, was bombed by Assad's and Russian bombers.

Finally, in 2015, Hamza, Sama and a pregnant Waad made a dash to Turkey as refugees. They eventually settled in the UK but has plans to return to Syria once normality returns.

When the comfort zone is rocked, what should one do? Should he run away from the offending agent or stand his ground and fight for his place that his ancestors had set foot, developed and attached their root deeply into the ground? Is it easier to maintain the peace and look elsewhere peace of mind? Anyway, discrimination, inequality and injustice are there all over the world. Deep inside, we are all entirely self-centred. Should we just mind our business, give a damn about others but just care for our loved ones?

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Fear makes the world go around?

The answers on Earth are not easy to come by, especially when it comes to questions about the purpose of Life and ways to steer it. Why some people are born with all the options in life, with a silver spoon, in a rose garden, but are too blind to use them for their benefit while others have all the zest to do all the things in life to better themselves without any opportunities.

Assoc Prof Munjed Al Muderi

This topic of discussion came up the other day when the story of an Iraqi doctor, now Assoc. Prof. Munjed Al Muderis, who was given a new lease on life in Australia after running away from his birth country flashed in a newsfeed somewhere. Dr Muderis was an ambitious young doctor in an Iraqi University when the Republican Guard showed up and ordered him to mutilate his patients who happened to be Iraqi soldiers. Refusing to conform, as it was against the Hippocratic Oath, he finally had to make a dash out of the country and eventually ended up in Christmas Islands as just another refugee with another number on his arm amongst the many Mohameds and Alis. Long story short, after enduring the denigration of being just another face in the list of exiles, the host country finally gave the good Professor a break to showcase what he had to offer to mankind.

Iraq's loss is Australia's gain. Or is it? His story is overshadowed by many who have been abusing the system as well. The Australian pioneers or any immigrant of the yesteryears to any country which is now successful had toiled blood, sweat and tears to make hay for their future generation to have what they did not. And sacrifices must have been aplenty - natural calamities, man-made disasters, diseases, freak accident, etcetera. All these were endured in the game of progress and stability.

Amongst the many of so-called refugees are shit-stirrers, who were the masterminds or were instrumental in the collapse of the country that they originated. The visitors had all the chances to make something out of the area that was marked out as a nation for them to prosper and mind their own businesses. But instead, they chose the path of annihilation. What assurances are there that they would not do the same for to their new host? These are difficult questions.

Jay Lakhani - Theoretical physicist and
Speaker on Spiritual Humanism.
Advocates rational thinking into religion,
not blind faith.

On the other end, should we just turn a blind eye to the human sufferings and walk away with our noses stuck up in the air? Can we blame the victims as just undergoing effects of the bad karma as if the fact as we, in the midst of all these are not being 'tested' on our karma chart ratings? Should we be altruistic and embrace everyone in a good spirit, pray Kumbayah and be convinced that love will save the day? Many a time we have seen mouths biting the hands that fed them, slaves slaying their owners and visitors overstaying their welcome but rule over the well-intended hosts to impose their failed ideology.

Should we build fences to keep them away or mend the broken fences that have plagued mankind since antiquity? Is that even possible? It seems that fear is the one that is making the world go around with all its drama, not love. Suspicion, greed, destruction and violence seem to delve Man deep into their thinking faculties to come up with innovations, not brotherly love.

https://www.amnesty.org.au/from-refugee-to-pioneering-surgeon-munjed-al-muderis/

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Nobody's child!

Selfie with the Prime Minister (2017)
Directors: Nor Arlene Tan, Grace Cho

At first I thought it was just a film to showcase the plight of the migrants and the hardship that they had to endure on a daily basis after being swindled by human traffickers and shunned by the Malaysian society at large. Well it is that and much more, but it tries putting it in a light hearted manner. It tells the tale of a selfie crazy migrant worker who goes around taking pictures of himself against the backdrop of the landscape around the country.

As he introduced himself, he made a blooper (or was it is on intention, I wondered!). He introduced himself as Ziaur Rahman from Bangla... er, Myanmar. What kind of person would forget his country of origin. Then it clicked. Ziaur is a Rohinya from Arakhine State whose people are is in great turmoil as we speak.

A bit of history on the origins of the Rohinyas. They occupy the Western part of Burma neighbouring Bengal and they were recruited by the British to fight the Japanese in World War 2. The rest of Burma, (as Myanmar was known then) were with the Japanese fighting the British-led Indian Army. This demarcation continued as their allegiance to their Motherland was always questioned due to their religious belief and their ignorance(?refusal) in Myanmarese language. With lack of economic opportunities, poverty and the religious insurgence as many jihadists flock that area to sacrifice in the name of religion, this rich area has become something akin to war zone. Humanity has died, Savagery is the order of the day as carnage and human sacrifice spreads like wild fire.

Refugees who manage to escape persecution land in the hands of human traffickers. Like commodities, they change hand and finally land in Malaysia. Also amongst these refugees are many who had borrowed from moneylenders hoping for a good life in Malaysia just to realise that they had been taken for a ride.

Together, these economic migrants, play a cat-and-mouse game with the authorities and gets played out by errand employers of their hard-earned salaries. As Malaysia is not a signatory of UN convention on Refugees, the migrant workers cannot move freely as legal refugees, They all live under the radar, unseen, unheard but still play an important role to do the duties deemed too dirty, degrading and dangerous for an average Malaysian.

This documentary tells of Ziaur's struggles making ends meet, his quest to solicit donation for his cataract surgery, his activism work which involves writing to dignitaries the world over on the helpless state of Rohinyas in Myanmar and outside as well as indulging in his favourite pastime, taking selfie and being active in social media. The highlight of the film is when he attends PM Najib's Hari Raya open house in Putrajaya to take a selfie with him. To top the icing on his cake, he also took a selfie with the police officer on duty at that occasion. He thought it was ironic considering the number of times he and his friends were harassed by the them for bribes. In the spirit of festivities, everybody had their guard down and nobody was stressing anybody out!

Till date, Rohinyas remain unwanted. Their birth country is refusing them. Their neighbours do not want them. Countries and organisations like OIC who are vocal about their sufferings under the umbrella of the common religion look the other way when it comes to the crux of the matter.

The blurring of who is right and who is wrong cannot be overstated. Brutality from all involved parties is obvious. The disturbances have gone on for so long that none of combating sides (the Rohinyas, the Myanmarese military or the militant Buddhist monks) remember who drew first blood. Situation becomes worse when jihadists with the same ideologies as ISIS and Al-Queda rear their ugly heads in the mayhem.

Living on a prayer!

A Malaysian documentary on the issue of
statelessness among Filipino migrants in Sabah.

Living Stateless (Di Ambang) (2014)
Created by Matthew Fillmore

Like stray animals, they are shooed. They bring the value of their property down. There are poor. There are stateless. Nobody wants them. They are the stateless people of Sabah.

While the rest of the country would like to think they are heading to be a developed country by 2020, this fringe part of the state has been battling to get rid of this group of people originally from the Philippines who are neither Filipinos nor are they Malaysians.

Without proper documentations, the elders cannot secure jobs, the children cannot get a decent education, no one gets immunisation and medical attention. They show the resilience of the human spirit and are the emblem of the never-say-die attitude of the human race. They live scrapping on discards, monetise trash and perform clandestine menial tasks. Some build up enough courage to rent a shack to cramp up their families. Children become creative creating games with garbage. A roller of an ergonomic chair is a pushcart; a discarded wheel is play-toy, and somebody's trashed plush toy is their life-long buddy.

Every stateless person has a sob story to tell as they ponder aimlessly into their future in which they do not foresee any ray of hope. The authorities try to expel them now and then. Undocumented immigrants are occasionally repatriated but like mushroom after rain, they keep on coming back. For them, even though they are treated like lepers here, life is still better in Sabah. There is economic activity. They have a chance to feed their family. In the southern islands of Philippines, there is nothing, only Abu Sayyaf and pandemonium.

Just the way it is...

It looks a clip from 'Gremlins'. First they appear with their pathetic image. Their droopy eyes of melancholia, tattered clothes proof of their poverty, their unkemptness, their skin wanting of a tough scrub, the hole in their soles nut not is their souls evident of their many miles of rubber burning journey, their dehydration and their helplessness were sure to melt even the steadfast of a cold steely heart. If all fails, there is always, the kids! No one would be stone-hearted enough to hurt a child. With their curly locks, demure captivating blue eyes and tears rolling their cheeks, something has to give. Hosts receive them with open arms in the name of humanity. Despite their own cash-strapped coffers, they decided to share their bread. Live and let die, they said to their brethren, come and join our humble meal.

Join their meal they did. Squat in their home, they did. So did, the competition for space, opportunities and place in the sun. As the sunny days were cast by autumn skies, the light dimmed. The happy days of sunflower, rainbow and freshness the air soon turned fetid and damp. As the hosts long for glory days, the visitors, well suited to the curveballs of life, stood steady against the wind.
They adapt.

The visitors feel very much at home. Despite nostalgic thoughts of their origins, home, they decided, is where the foundation is. Deeply intertwined in the affairs of their Newfoundland, the demands started to sound combative. They soon were quite unabashed to make their assertions being heard. They had no qualms of being accused of biting the hand that fed. In their mind, they had a greater calling to answer, not the low lives with their unexemplary decadent perception of living. Clearly they were lost and the visitors feel morally justified to right the wrong. Perhaps, it was their calling.

Some say their way may not be the right way, the only way, but they know deep inside that it is His way and there must be a reason their existence, His devious divine plan?

The picture and the thousand words

Aylan Kurdi at Bodrum Beach

It was just a picture to don the morning papers to say what reporters do best. Some of their photographs become international icons of a bygone era. Every living soul would be instantly aware of the American atrocity in Vietnam at one look of the picture of napalm struck confused girl running aimlessly with burnt clothes. This picture the dead toddler by the Turkish beach may one day be the reminder of the danger of stirring of a hornet in the highly volatile region of Middle East. For the perpetrators, the US, it is a European problem, not theirs. No rubber dinghies would traverse the Atlantic to reach their shores.

You think a picture is just a picture, but you would be amazed at the dynamics and rhetoric that goes through before and after it goes to print. A dead body polluting the beach of a bourgeois beach resort.

The child has no life. Death has engulfed him, but the picture is subtle enough not to appear gory. The violence and uncertainties that he had seen in his mind, on he can tell. He does not look death, as though just sleeping on his belly in slumberland. All dressed up with new shoes, hoping to start life anew in a faraway land away from hatred and killing but what he found was blissful sleep in after-life. They say God's justice must and will prevail on Earth as He wanted. Is this the result He wants? Dead at an age when life is just supposed to begin?

For the record, the head of the family tried to migrate to Canada, but it was rejected. So, he, with his wife and two young sons decided to flee the war-torn zone of Syria, with the help of a rubber dinghy manned by flight-by-night private boatsman, to make it to the nearest gateway to Europe, Turkey. Just 10 minutes into the journey, the seas turned rough. The boatsman jumped ship as it capsized. The father helplessly tried to rescue his family but in vain as he saw his whole family drown right in front of his eyes!

Critiques called it sensationalism of newspapers to up their sales. Scenarios like these are daily occurrences in many parts of the world. Over-exposure may desensitise readers, and the impact and devastation of war could be lost. Pressures for political will to act could be slow in coming.

Others complained of the insensitivity to the grieving parent and wondered if the picture would have made such an impact if the child was not so Caucasian looking but African or Oriental in appearance.

Anyway, the Imperialist are just feeling karma at play. They stoke the quiescent hornets' nest with fire, drain the honey and expect the angry hornets to just go away. The busy hornets, through trials and tribulations, had built a self-sustained equilibrium which worked for them. And it is in a quandary. Where do they go? Away from the fire!

On the Imperialist side, they are debating whether they are refugees, immigrants - political or economic ones. Some refuse to accept refugees of a particular faith, claiming that, from previous experiences, they exhibit holier-than-thou attitude once they are strong. They refuse to blend with society and bite the hand that fed them!

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

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To guard something good or to share?

Forlorn faces of hunger, yearning for recognition and a place to call home.

A few days ago, yours truly was involved in a chat about the recent apprehension of illegal immigrants off the waters of Langkawi Island. The banter started in a typical Malaysian manner when one sniggered that the only reason the undocumented aliens were caught was because of abandonment by the middlemen. Their capture belies the dozens, scores or God knows hundreds of successful landings at the 'promised land'.

And this phenomenon is not isolated here. All over the world, the have nots have scaled the impossible to have a figment of hope of living. 

One party voiced that saving them is only the human thing to do.The forlorn sunken cheeks were testimony of the hopelessness of their condition. The exodus from their motherland because of political reasons and the denial of the safe landing in shores of neighbouring countries will only make them float around to the sway of the ocean and die a slow death of thirst and hunger. The wealth of the God-given assets of the world is bountiful and should be shared by all God's children, he said. So what is wrong if we have to share some of what little we have. He felt that it was that the only humanitarian thing to do.
Another jumped in to argue that God should not be in the equation at all since He had the upper-hand to stop it in the first place! In the same vein He could work His mysterious ways to clean the mess which is conveniently placed on the folly of man. Charity starts at home and charity does not pay wages!

Then, however, standing on the nationalistic stance, we as a nation, have come a long way. From a backwater outpost, we have progressed from a malarial infested third world country to bade adieu to many teething problems and have now are on the way of reaching dizzying heights. Now with overwhelming pressure on our economy which is already at a critical stage, it seem that our comfort may be dented.

Why is it that we have to take other people's headache? Even a small proportion of our own people are lost out in the pursuit of comfort in this materialistic world and we are not even in a position to help them. We had a full-proof system where all children get full education till 17 and all newborns were given full immunisation to keep a lid on killer communicable diseases. Look around you, see how many kids are loitering around the streets with no education, school to go to, with no proper medical vigilance and an uncertain future which is bursting to sprout unsavoury elements.

Already there are millions of illegal immigrants and UNHCR refugee card holders in the country who   have built roots here and are at a quandary what their future holds, here or anywhere else. You do not expect them to stay idle awaiting the powers that be to lay out a future for them. They with the raging hormones and youth on their side, who knows what would spark?

In a typical Malaysian fashion, the conversation which escalated to amok proportions came to an abrupt end as fast as it started when the last drop of cuppa was dried up. Everyone went on their own ways doing their own things in their own separate lives.