Everyone here in Toronto and throughout the world knows about what’s going on with the Rohingya people. This tragedy, their deaths, this on-the-verge-of-genocide situation has finally been starting to get some of the international attention that it deserves. My daughter Fariah, is a strong women’s rights advocate/activist and has a lot to say on the matter, and she rallied at Queens Park amidst thousands of protestors to ask the Canadian government to intervene as an global actor to bring about peace and safety for the Rohingya people.
Speaking of the Rohingya people, you know earlier this week I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and saw an article about an NGO made up of Sikh Aid volunteers and workers who are now posted near the Myanmar/Bangladesh border providing aid, relief and medical care to the displaced Rohingya people. The article was posted with the caption “Thank you to our Sikh brothers and sisters for helping us out during our time of need” accompanied by a photo of 2 young caring men in turbans feeding water to little Rohingya children who had blood smeared on their faces.
I then looked at the Comments section on this particular Facebook news item and noticed that a number of Bangladeshi people wrote in the Comments section comments like “Let others learn from this wonderful group” and “Finally the international community is helping us during this dire time.” And I think this type of thinking brings up a lot of feelings around having double standards. I am thinking, when is the last time we saw a headline about Muslims or Bangladeshi people in particular, reaching out to any persecuted groups other than themselves? I’ve seen Muslim organizations raise hundreds and thousands of dollars for Muslim relief efforts all around the world. I have seen these well-intentioned Muslim charity donors say “we must reach out and help our fellow Muslim brothers and sisters.” In Iraq. In Palestine. Not in Mexico, or South Africa, or Venezuela. So often the help is about helping “fellow” Bangladeshi’s or “fellow” Muslims. And now, when these beautiful group of Sikh people have decided to help the Rohingya Muslims, we are saying “Let the world watch and learn.” What exactly does this mean? That others should also reach out to us when we have never reached out to them? Why are we entitled to this help, if we have rarely provided this help to communities outside of ourselves? There are of course some, who have reached out, but the number is very small.
How many Bangladeshi Muslim people have reached out to support local Syrian refugees right here in Canada? Between the year 2015 to 2016, over 25000 Syrian refugees were brought to Canada for resettlement. I saw hundreds of groups and thousands of Canadians reaching out to offer them relief, such as free furniture to set up their humble new homes, new and used clothing to clothe their families, brand new books, pencils, erasers and backpacks so that their kids could start school. It was incredible. I saw Canadians reach out and provide everything from emotional care, to practical support. There were whole organizations of volunteers who were created solely to support these refugees. For example, when the Canadian government initially said that we could only support about 10,000 refugees because of expensive settlement costs, many Canadians decided to privately sponsor refugees. I’m not sure how many of us know this, but it costs thousands of dollars to privately sponsor a refugee in Canada without any governmental assistance. Specifically, it costs about $10, 700 to sponsor 1 refugee. It costs $18,000 to sponsor two. It costs $23,700 to sponsor a family of five – a mother, a father, and 3 kids – an average family. For Canada who could not afford to sponsor a refugee on their own but wanted to help the Syrian cause, they started to team up into groups of 5 and divide the costs amongst them, i.e. split $23,000 into 5. This way, Canada could take in even more refugees. I found this out the hard way.
A Group of Five (G5) is any group of five or more Canadian citizens or permanent residents who are 18 years of age or older, and who live in the community where the refugees are expected to live. Group members act as guarantors that the necessary settlement support will be provided for the full duration of the sponsorship. The group must show that it has the necessary financial resources, expertise and commitment required to fulfill the terms of the sponsorship undertaking.
Why were people doing this? It wasn’t about helping their brothers and sisters. Often the people being sponsored did not share the same culture, religion or life experience as their sponsor. But they were being supported because it was the humanitarian thing to do. Because it was one way to help alleviate human suffering.
Similarly, going back to the example of these wonderful Sikh people who are helping the Rohongya Muslims – they are following what under Sikh tradition and culture is known as The Langar – Langar is also known as a “free kitchen,” a concept that was started by the first Sikh Guru, Guru Nanak Dev Ji in about 1481. The concept of Langar is designed to uphold the principle of equality between all people of the world regardless of religion, caste, colour, creed, age, gender or social status; to eliminate extreme poverty in the world and to bring about the birth of "caring communities". In addition to the ideals of equality, the tradition of Langar expresses the ethics of sharing, community, inclusiveness and oneness of all humankind. "..the Light of God is in all hearts." This is why these Sikh relief volunteers see it as a part of their spiritual belief to helping the Rohingya Muslims during their time of oppression and suffering.
So while Sikhs are performing Langer in Bangladesh, while Canadians are sponsoring refugees, can you tell me how many Bangladeshi people have been involved with these type of trans-cultural charity efforts here in Toronto? How many of us have responded to the rallying cries of the Black Lives Matter movement, as they literally fight for their right to life? Black people in this country are being shot and killed by police officers. In the US, there are kids, literally innocent and harmless children below the age of 10, who have been shot and killed by police officers who made the mistake of seeing their toy gun as a real gun, or who thought they say a 19 year old who was actually an 11 year old. Have we responded to this crisis in race-based policing and racism? Black people here in Canada are 3 times more likely to be put in prison for the same crime as a White person. These are the statistics. They are 4 times more likely to be ignored by their teachers when they need additional support to
succeed in school. They are half as likely to pursue post-secondary education as a result. Research even shows that Black people are less likely to receive job offers, even when having the same skills and experiences as their White counterparts. What are we doing about this institutionally embedded prejudice? Do we see that some of our Bangladeshi children have the same struggles? Do we look for commonality’s between our struggles? If we cannot relate to the Black community’s struggles – do we at least listen, empathize, learn and respond as allies? Or do we assume their problem is their problem? Because if we think that, then not only will Bangladeshi people never be a part of the mainstream in a meaningful way, but the world itself will be doomed and we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves and our mentality to only look inwards instead of outward. Some Bangladeshis are reaching out but the number is negligible.
Another example I’d like to ask you about - how many of us have supported the rights of our indigenous and Aboriginal brothers and sister right here in Canada? The United Nations came out with a report last year after studying the conditions of Aboriginal people in Canada, the first people of this nation, who welcomed the European settlers only to be raped, murdered and colonized for their resources. The United Nations said that “Canada is facing a crisis when it comes to the situation of the indigenous peoples of the country. Canada’s treatment of these communities is abhorrent and unacceptable.” Quote-unquote. Did you know that there are close to 1100 missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada whose cases the police won’t even bother to investigate simply because they are Aboriginal? Activists have argued that the proportion of Indigenous women that are murdered are disproportionate to the overall proportion in the general population. Although Indigenous women and girls make up only 3% of the female population in Canada, they represent 10% of all female homicides in Canada. Indigenous women in Canada face many risk factors that put them at a greater risk of death compared to non-Indigenous women such as poverty, prostitution and homelessness. In Victoria, British Columbia, the Indigenous population is estimated to be 2% but Indigenous women represent over 15% of prostitutes.
This is systemic racism and classism at its worst. This would not be an acceptable standard for White people – if a White person was missing or murdered, there would be a meaningful investigation to provide accountability and closure for the missing person. Why have we not accorded this basic right to our indigenous brothers and sisters? Are their lives less valuable simply because they are Aboriginal? Did you know that the youth suicide rate in indigenous communities in Canada is 10 times higher than that of non-indigenous Canadians? Has anyone here ever been to an Indian reserve? I went and I was appalled. There are homes on Aboriginal reserves that don’t have heat in the Canadian winter. That don’t have access to clean drinking water. That don’t have access to a local grocery store, hospital, school or bank. Many reserves and their living conditions have been characterized as “comparable to 3rd world living conditions, right here in Canada. My daughter has attended protests on all of these matters and she told me: “Mom, I never see another Bengali person at these protests. I see people from other cultures and religions, but never ours. If we don’t help these people, why should we ever expect anyone to help us?”
Speaking of my daughter - this reminds me of another story. My daughter is a high school teacher. Two years ago, there was an incident at a local school where 2 White boys ripped off the hijab/head scarf of a Pakistani woman as she was dropping her children off to school. They screamed “go back home you fucking terrorist”, kicked her, pulled off her hijab, laughed, and ran away. My daughter said that it was unacceptable for strangers to be behaving this way and that people in the community were starting to feel unsafe. She and some of her activist friends suggested that a community action be organized in front of the school where the incident took place in order to send a message to bigots and racists that this type of behaviour or Islamophobia will not be tolerated in our community. She was expecting two-to-three hundred people to show up at the demonstration. Over 1200 people showed up. The crowd chanted “SAY IT LOUD AND SAY IT CLEAR----RACISTS ARE NOT WELCOME HERE. SAY IT LOUD AND SAY IT CLEAR ---IMMIGRANTS ARE WELCOME HERE.” She met Arabs and Black folks and Native people, White folks and Hispanic folks. But she was sad because she did not find another Bengali there. Near the end of the demonstration, my daughter went to thank one Sikh woman for coming. That woman responded by saying “don’t thank me, I did not do this for just you or the community – I also did it for myself. I did this because that violent incident could have been someone in my family. My son wears a turban. If a woman with a hijab could be attacked in this way by complete strangers, whose to say that my son in a turban isn’t also next? We need to stick together and send a strong message early on. This is about all of us. When you allow rights to be taken away from one group of people, you create the risk of letting them be taken away from other groups too. None of us are free until all of us are free.”
It was a beautiful and empowering event. Why no other Bengalis were present there? Is this not an issue that impacts us? My daughter does not wear a hijab and is not particularly religious – but she said that wrong is wrong and she decided that something needed to be done.
And so I want to close today with a very famous poem that was written during World War 2:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
These lines were written by Martin Niemöller who was a prominent Protestant pastor during World War 2. At that time he had emerged as an outspoken public enemy of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in a concentration camp, though he was not himself Jewish because he believed very strongly that wrong was wrong, and an injustice anywhere was an injustice everywhere, and that he could not stand for Nazism, though he was not ever personally a target.
So bringing this back to our original theme for the panel – how do Bengali people break into the mainstream? There is definitely no simple answer. But at least one part of the answer must be that we must learn to think outside of ourselves, and create alliances with people of all different races, cultures, religions and belief systems. Mix with exactly the kind of people who look,
think and act nothing like you. You will either find that you have more of a shared struggle and commonality with them than you had initially imagined, or you will learn that even if you don’t share the same struggle, by being there for them today, they may just be there for you tomorrow when you need it. And with everything going on in the world right now, we will need more than just ourselves to protect our place within the world, so let’s get out there and create those much needed relationships across the spectrums of everyday life. And our everyday life is in Toronto, Canada. We are living in North America, exclusively by our own choice.