Silent No More

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Photography, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Looking back DvoraFreedman

Photo: Dvora Freedman

 

In the restless nights

They walked

Silent in the desert

Stalked

While the prowlers

Rose to halt

And turn hope

To anguished fault.

But we’ll silent be

No more

For those who had been harmed

Before.

And we will raise our voice

To show

That cruelty we will not

Let grow.

 

 

For dVerse Poets: Sounds of Silence

 

16 thoughts on “Silent No More”

    • Thank you. Yes, this is probably relevant to many aspects of oppression, even if in this instance my focus was the abominable treatment of migrant children by the current US administration. Many of them had fled trauma in their home country only to be torn away from their parents, jailed, and put in detention camps where they don’t always have people who speak their language, where they aren’t allowed to speak with their families for weeks on end, and where they are taunted by detention staff and told that their parents don’t love them anymore and that they will never be reunited with them. Hundreds of children had their parents deported without them, and now are deemed by this administration as ‘ineligible’ for reunification (!?). They have no voice. They are not allowed to speak with people outside the detention camps and visitors are rare and not allowed to question them, either. Many of them are medicated with strong psychotropic medications without their consent or their parents consent. They are effectively in jail. Some of them are still toddlers. It is really heartbreaking. So … yes … we can none of us remain silent in the witnessing of atrocities, for otherwise we become part of the machination that abuses the helpless. Sorry for going on and on … This certainly hits a nerve for me. I cannot stand the pain of children. Let alone when it is the result of deliberate harm.

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      • That’s so terrible. I hadn’t realised the full extent of the treatment these children were getting. It is beyond appalling.

        The Australian Government here has to take some of the blame for this way of treating refugees. We have had mandatory off shore detention of refugees for many years now. Refugees are housed in terrible conditions in huts on nearby islands. Both major political parties support this idea so it’s very hard to make changes. Many Australians are so caught up in the us v. them idea they think it is a good idea.
        Action groups were able to change the circumstances of unaccompanied children living in these places and bring them to Australia but the numbers of such children was quite small.
        Information about these camps is hard to find. Reporters aren’t allowed near them. Mostly they now house single men I think. Women and children are treated better – this has come about through public and the untiring work of people who have bought the treatment of children to the attention of the masses.
        I can see why you feel that you have to speak out. The lack of compassion in the governments and international corporations is beyond belief sometimes.

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      • Yes, it is beyond belief. Especially when we still have among us living persons who survived internment camps, concentration camps, forced separations of Native children from their families as a deliberate attempt at cultural genocide, lynching of people for the color of their skin, and current terrorists who treat children not much worse than some governments now do. We all shuddered in horror when Boko Haram kidnapped school girls, supposedly for their parents ‘crime’ of sending them to school. The US is kidnapping children and brutalizing them for the supposed ‘crime’ of their parents seeking asylum. It is not limited to the US, I know, though at the moment the US administration is out of control and unchecked by Congress.
        Still, we can make noise. If people hadn’t raised the roof with protest, more families would continue to be separated. If people hadn’t raised the roof with more protest, a judge wouldn’t have forced the Trump administration to reunite the children (poorly as they have done that). People are still raising the roof with protest over the harm continually done to these kids, especially now that it’s becoming clear the administration was told by professionals that the separation will do profound harm to the children, possibly for life–and yet they implemented their policy, knowing full well this would be akin to torture. So we keep speaking up, and people will keep making noise, and raising monies to post bond (they keep upping the price to make it harder and harder, just because) so mothers can try and reunite with their children, and for DNA tests, when parents are told they can’t get their kids back because no one knows if they are the real parents (and what papers they’d had ICE officials had taken away and in many cases deliberately destroyed or ‘lost’), and so on. It is heartbreaking, but I can only imagine how much more it is for the children and their parents. We KNOW how cruel governments can be. But governments are made of people. So it is the PEOPLE who are cruel. And we must hold them accountable. Every one in the way they can. Thank you for the comment, and for understanding. Together humanity can do better.

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      • Well said. Governments must be held accountable for their inhumane treatment of minorities, People power is so important. It can change things. More and more people are waking up to what’s really going on. Let’s hope we reach critical mass soon and bring down these repressive governments before too much damage is done. Our world needs to change – fast.

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    • Indeed, too many have been silent for too long … and yet, speaking up still matters, and can make a change. The more of us speak up, the more likely the change toward more compassion and better humanity will be. Thank you for this comment! Na’ama

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