Sometimes I look around me and I know in my heart that this is a beautiful and wonderous world.
Sometimes I know that in the world there are so many fabulous kind compassionate people.
Sometimes I look around me and feel utterly overwhelmed by the extreme insanity of the needless suffering, cruelty and complete hideousness that is all around us every day. I know I choose not to see it most of the time. I guess most of us do... its the only way to keep finding meaning in every day life.... but looking around certainly puts my trivial concerns into perspective.
In case you feel like looking around and appreciating how lucky you are.... (to be alive, to be able to read this, to have the freedom to take a walk if you feel like it....) here are some windows I looked through this morning....
Just a few little snapshots of the world....
Gulbar was burnt by her husband. After being tortured for the 3 years of her marriage she ran away to her mother’s house. The next day her husband came and threw petrol on her and set her on fire. She has been in hospital for 40 days but no charges have been laid, no police file opened.
Anecdotal evidence suggests several hundred young women are burning themselves to death every year in western Afghanistan. A government mission sent to investigate the problem in Herat, the biggest city in the country's west, reported that at least 52 young, married, or soon-to-be married women had burned themselves to death in the city in recent months. The youngest was a 13-year-old bride-to-be. "In our culture, women have always burned themselves, because they have always been so badly treated," said Amina Safi Afzali of the Afghan Huma Rights Commission.
According to a report released in October 2005 by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, child marriage makes up more than 40 percent of all marriages in Afghanistan. In some cases, girls as young as seven years of age are forced to marry men who are in their 30s or 40s.
Zarghona 15 lies in a Peshawar shelter, burned by her father-in-law, who said she had not cleaned her husband's clothes properly.(http://www.dhushara.com)
In South Africa sexual violence against children has increased by 400% over the past decade.
A female in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped in her life than of learning to read.
(Dempster, 2002).
The University of South Africa reports that over 1 million women and children are raped there every year. (South Africa: Focus on the Virgin Myth, 2002).
Recent research conducted by Amnesty International indicate that the Nigerian police force and security harbour the wildest rapists in the country. They use the cloak of officialdom to humiliate their victims sometimes raping an entire community in the course of restoring peace in troubled areas. (http://allafrica.com)
About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. This is one person every three and a half seconds.
(http://www.poverty.com)
And somewhere in the world ... someone thought that this tattoo was a good idea..
.(http://tumbl.us/post/7678724)
The world really is crazy....
1 comment:
Ah and here I am telling you about the mistreatment of women at 9 in the morning...
Post a Comment