Humanitarian crisis adds to burdens of Afghan religious minorities

The Canadian government has failed the Afghan people

Humanitarian crisis adds to burdens of Afghan religious minoritiesFor Fawzia Shah (not her real name), a middle-aged Hazara (Shia Muslim) woman from Central Afghanistan, the words “democracy,” “freedom,” and “women’s rights” mean nothing. Those were the stirring slogans with which political leaders in Canada, the U.S., and allied countries rallied the troops for a 20-year war. That war ended last summer when the…

Canada is failing religious minorities in Afghanistan

Will Canada’s leaders put election campaigning on hold just long enough to deal with this humanitarian crisis?

Canada is failing religious minorities in AfghanistanAfghanistan’s religious minorities are facing nothing less than a genocide but the Canadian government has yet to make a firm commitment to protect some of the most vulnerable among them, say Canadian human rights activists. Hazaras and Christians – two of these minorities – have been cornered into a desperate situation ever since the fall…

Lebanon on the verge of becoming a failed state

The world must not abandon the former Mediterranean oasis

Lebanon on the verge of becoming a failed stateOne year ago today was a night of splintering glass and splattering blood. On August 4, 2020, as the last hours of pre-sunset daylight illuminated Beirut’s skyline, a cataclysmic explosion shook the city like the blast of an atomic bomb. It turned out to be the spontaneous combustion of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored…

The world gives a COVID cold shoulder to refugees

The plight of global millions fleeing persecution goes unnoticed while our attention is fixed on the pandemic

The world gives a COVID cold shoulder to refugeesThey are the wretched of the earth (to use Haitian writer Franz Fanon’s phrase), the world’s homeless wanderers. Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, stated recently in his official Twitter account that, during the past year when the pandemic put much of the world on hold, 82.4 million people were forced to flee their…

Time for Canada to lift economic sanctions on Syria, Lebanon

Canada urged to rethink Middle East sanctions that make daily life a struggle just to get daily bread

Time for Canada to lift economic sanctions on Syria, Lebanon“Economic sanctions that afflict the poor must be lifted. I stress the word ‘poor,’” Archimandrite (head of a monastery) Georges Masri said in an e-mail from his home base in Syria. He was responding to my request for his views on the unfolding humanitarian crisis in his country, and whether sanctions have exacerbated it. “The…

Silent Witness of a Holocaust Suitcase

A Canadian family helped solve the mystery of a teenage girl’s life and death at Auschwitz

Silent Witness of a Holocaust SuitcaseHana Brady could be another Anne Frank except she did not leave a diary. But the suitcase that 13-year-old left behind when she died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz concentration camp continues to teach millions of children around the world the importance of respect, empathy and compassion. It bears silent witness to the agony…

Finding ways to help victims of Beirut blast

Several trustworthy and reputable humanitarian organizations are working diligently, providing desperately-needed assistance

Finding ways to help victims of Beirut blastThe cataclysmic explosion that shook Beirut to its foundations in early August, leaving 157 people dead, 5,000 injured, and 300,000 homeless, was the coup de grâce for a country that has been bleeding for years under crushing burdens. The explosion seems like the denouement to the unfolding tragedy of Lebanon, a country where high unemployment,…