The Rohingya community in Southeast Asia continues to live in a state of fear, isolation and suffering. We can do something about that. Please join me in calling on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to help end the brutal campaign of hatred against the minority Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar by declaring it what it truly is: genocide.
Please send our letter urging Secretary Pompeo to call the atrocities perpetrated against the Rohingya in Myanmar genocide.
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Last week, Muslims marked the first day of the Islamic New Year, which coincides with the start of the Jewish New Year, when we commemorate the birth of the universe and our shared humanity. The month leading up to Rosh Hashanah, Elul, is a time of reflection, a time of preparation to reflect on how we as individuals and as a community want to be better.
We must commit to making a plan to ensure that we will live up to our ideals, that we will stand up against injustice, that we will amplify the voices of the unheard, that we will work to repair the brokenness and that we will never again allow our conscience to slumber while people are slaughtered.
And yet we have failed to stop yet another genocide from continuing. Three years ago today – in August 2017 – 750,000 Rohingya were forced from their homes in Myanmar, fleeing to Bangladesh away from what international bodies have called a carefully calculated, genocidal plan. The brutality has displaced nearly one million Rohingya, creating a refugee population in Bangladesh who live in overcrowded, squalid camps. Sixty percent are children.
Please join us in telling Secretary Pompeo we must act to prevent further violence.
During the Holocaust, people were massacred without prejudice. But hope also prevailed. At one concentration camp, Theresienstadt, Irma Lauscher risked her life to create some semblance of normalcy, smuggling in and planting a tree so the imprisoned children could watch something grow amidst death. She imagined a life beyond the walls that confined them.
It is incumbent on all of us to demand freedom and justice for yet another group of children who each have the right to a future free of a world that judges them by faith and ethnicity. As we prepare for a new year, please join Jewish World Watch to demand that Secretary Pompeo publicly declares justice for the Rohingya.
Please send the message to Secretary Pompeo now!
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Very truly yours,
Serena Oberstein | Executive Director