Who Do We Notice?

The killings at Virginia Tech have captured the world's attention. People throughout the US mourn for people they've never met. South Korea is expressing a sense of national guilt. Other nations follow the news in sympathy and sometimes in judgement.

Thirty-two people were killed in VA on Monday and the 24-hour news channels have not stopped reporting on the incident. I have cried as I watched the news and as I hear parents talk about their child who is no longer here. I have a daughter entering college in the Fall and as we've had a school shooting and other incidents nearby, the possibility is near to home. It could have been a different college. It could have been a different building. It could have been a different day and the people who died would have been different people. There was no logic, it seems, for most of their deaths.

Not to take anything away from that tragic incident, but over 170 people died today in Baghdad. It didn't get much attention in the news:

The Interior Ministry said the dead and injured included:
• 122 dead, 150 wounded in Sadriya market in central Baghdad;
• 28 dead, 44 wounded in an attack near an Iraqi Army checkpoint at one of the entrances to Sadr City, the official said;
• 11 civilians were killed and 13 others wounded when a parked car bomb detonated in central Baghdad's Karrada district. The car was parked near a hospital and a market;
• Four police officers were killed and 6 civilians wounded when a suicide car bomber exploded at an Iraqi police checkpoint in southern Baghdad;
• Four people were killed and eight were wounded by a bomber targeting a police patrol near a checkpoint in Saidiya, in southwestern Baghdad. Two of those killed were police and the other two were civilians;
• Two civilians were killed and 9 others wounded when a roadside bomb detonated at a busy intersection in central Baghdad.

Do we only notice the deaths in Iraq when they are our people?

Since 2003, over 400,000 people have been killed in Darfur and over two million people are homeless. And, we do nothing. The violence is spreading to Chad and the Central African Republic. We watch and do nothing; sometimes we don't even watch. We ignore the situation.

At the end of 2005, over 24.5 million people were living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. Two million people died of AIDS that year leaving over 12 million children as orphans.

In research on trafficking of Togolese girls into domestic and market work, Human Rights Watch interviewed forty-one girls trafficked when they were between the ages of three and seventeen. Thirteen had been trafficked internally, while the rest were trafficked across borders to Benin, Gabon, Ghana, Nigeria, and Niger. All of the girls Human Rights Watch interviewed were from poor agricultural backgrounds with little or no formal schooling whose parents handed them over to known or unknown intermediaries, sometimes for a price, with the understanding they would be receiving formal education, professional training or paid work. Instead, the girls’ descriptions of being recruited, transported, received and exploited revealed a pattern of abuse resembling child slavery. Almost none received any remuneration for her work.


Human Rights Watch: http://hrw.org/