The slaughter goes on, all over the world

Syria and North Korea are in the news at the moment, but killings and terrorism are rampant in many other countries - we just don't hear about them, because they're less newsworthy.

The latest to come to light is South Sudan.

On April 4, government militias loyal to the president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, entered the town of Pajok and began killing and raping men, women and children, one observer said.

Opposition forces led by the former first vice president, Dr. Riek Machar Teny-Dhurgon, estimate that more than 200 innocent civilians were killed in Pajok.

“At the onset of the massacre, the tribal army burned down several buildings in the town and indiscriminately shot at the innocent civilians including kids and women who were trying to run for their lives,” a security officer in South Sudan told Fox News.

“Primary school pupils were forced to lay on the ground in a straight line and were run over by tanks, and crushing them flat. Some of the primary school girls aged between 11 to 13 years were raped in front of their teacher and the teacher was later murdered by the government soldiers, possibly to conceal evidence of their heinous crimes,” an independent observer said.

When a grandmother in her late 70s said she could not tolerate the pain of losing her children and grandchildren, who had been slain in front of her, she begged the soldiers to take her life, too.

“Without remorse, the primitive government soldiers decided to cut her limbs, and she was left to die a painful death,” the observer said.

No one was spared from the soldiers’ wrath, he said, even the tiniest of children.

“Toddlers were thrown into the river live,” he said. “The lucky ones had their heads swung against poles and walls before being thrown into the river, at least leaving them dead by the time they have been thrown into the river.”

Though largely unknown to most of the world, these atrocities are happening with the full knowledge of international bodies, including the United Nations, the African Union and the Troika, which includes United States, the United Kingdom and Norway, meaning the non-Dinkas are left with no help and no options, the independent observer said.

There's more at the link.

However, because there are no major geopolitical factors in play in South Sudan, the international community will continue to ignore such atrocities.  They're doing the same in the Congo, in Yemen, in the Philippines, in Thailand, in Burma . . . in dozens of different nations.

I'm not saying the USA needs to intervene in all those places.  We can't.  We can't afford it economically, and our military (particularly after having been deliberately run down under the Obama administration for the past eight years) is already spread too thin.  Nor can NATO or other international organizations do so - they're also overstretched, under-budgeted, understaffed and under-equipped.  I'm merely saying that violent death and terrorism are rampant, all around the globe. They've been that way since shortly after the end of the Second World War, largely as a result of the global geopolitical destabilization brought on by that conflict and its aftermath.  They aren't going to go away anytime soon.

Anytime someone says to you, "But we must do something!" about those evils, ask them what we can do that will eliminate the problem.  They won't be able to answer you, because there isn't anything that will do that.  All we can do is temporarily halt the problem in one place, or a few places.  As soon as we've gone, it'll come back - and meanwhile, it'll continue in all the places where we can't intervene.

Evil is always with us.  We can do our best as individuals to combat it, first in our own lives and families, then in our own communities, then by sharing our resources (personal and national, as far as is feasible without beggaring ourselves) with organizations that can and do make a difference (e.g. Doctors Without Borders, the Salvation Army, etc.).  We can also do our best to stop the proliferation of weapons to such areas, although that's very difficult to accomplish.  Apart from those things, we have to accept that we can't solve all the problems of the world.

Trouble is, too many people won't accept that.  They're blind to reality.  They demand utopia . . . forgetting that it was a fictional place to begin with.  It still is to this day.


*Sigh*


Peter