Annabel’s story
As you all know it’s the big 5-0 this year and I really wanted to do a fundraising page although I know many of you have already been very generous with your gifts.
Because it’s a big birthday this year I thought long and hard about who to donate to.
As some, most of you know I have been lucky enough to be doing quite a bit of travelling in the lead up to my birthday. This has included two trips to countries affected by mass genocides over the years, visiting the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda, and the Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. The image is of refugees fleeing Rwanda (and don't get me started on the awfulness of the attitude towards people seeking asylum and refugees) most of whom ended up in the neighbouring countries (as have more than 70% of the world's current 27.1million refugees and not in the UK as the Daily Mail would have you believe!) of DRC, Uganda and Burundi.
After these visits I felt devastated that I didn’t try to do more at the time of the Rwandan genocide which happened during my lifetime. Therefore, I don’t think I can just stand by and watch whilst another ethnic genocide takes place and there are currently several taking place around the world, in Ukraine, in Gaza, in Myanmar, and in China. In these countries people are being arrested, tortured, used for slave labour, sterilised, raped, deliberately starved and murdered just because they don’t look the same or believe the same as their oppressors.
Whilst I’m not sure I can withstand the consequences that come with being arrested, I am thinking about whether to join the next Palestine Action demonstration when I return to the UK. I certainly don’t want to be Hedwig Höss sprinkling my roses with the ashes of murdered prisoners of war with my head firmly buried in the sand. In the meantime I thought getting donations for a charity that tries to oppose genocide, human rights violations and using people as political pawns might be the way forward.
I feel like right now we’re on the verge of something truly awful where the little people (that’s all of us by the way!) are squished and only the rich and powerful, politicians, oligarchs and the like survive. If we allow this to happen in other places how long will it be before it happens here. It feels like we’re already on the brink of living in an autocracy as shown by the fact that all these people were arrested the other weekend for peacefully protesting at the Palestine Action demonstration. That protest was specifically organised using Quaker models you can find out more here if you’re interested:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/palestine-action-ban-arrests-b2807704.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=vL0WRTxGb0A
And if you want to find out more about what you can do to help or organisations working to end genocide the links below will help…
https://www.quaker.org.uk/blog/what-you-can-do-to-help-stop-the-genocide-in-gaza
https://www.lemkininstitute.com/
https://www.genocidewatch.com/
…but for now that’s enough birthday cheer, if you want to donate great and if you don’t that’s also fine! Have a wonderful rest of your summer. Lots of love, peace and happiness to you and yours xx
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