Selective Mourning

Reading the Sunday paper this afternoon, found an interesting article today written by Hugh Mackay, which meshes beautifully with the cartoon earlier in the paper. In the cartoon we see a cricketer standing in front of the stumps, seen smashing balls all over the place, wearing a bib declaring “Tsunami Relief”, and behind the stumps the wicketkeeper “AIDS in Africa, Sudan Crisis [first slip] and Fallujah [second slip]”. The slippers are conversing – will this draw them into longer tests, or shorten their attention spans.

Mackay’s compares the response of the public to the tsunami in Asia, with the public response to the deaths of civilians in Iraq, and to that list I, like the cartoonist, would add the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and also the genocide in Darfur.

Mackay suggests that perhaps by enlarge the tsunami is seen by people to be an event that “just happened”, and perhaps something that we can relate to as we are beach-goers, many of the people who died were westerners. We have been silent on the damage from the waves in Africa, yes the damage may be minimal, but its been given no airtime. There is as Hugh Mackay asserts, a puzzling difference between the two, given that we are looking roughly 100 000 men, women and children who have died in Iraq (Yes, these are estimates). And the conservative estimates of those who will die from AIDS in Africa are staggering. To quote Hugh Mackay’s last paragraph:

Surely there is a link missing from the chain of moral argument that says I’ll be sympathetic and responsive to human suffering if no one is to blame, but I’ll keep my emotional distance if my own country has contributed to death and destruction on a large scale.

I was delighted to hear Tony Blair talk of his concern and focus on Africa. I also recall Bono who while you may or may not like his music, I feel he must be commended for the passion for Africa, relief of debt, and fighting AIDS. But it seems what struggled to have headlines in November can not buy a wisp of ink, air time at the moment.

Sunday was our National Day of Mourning. A day to focus on those who suffered because of the tidal wave, it is appropriate that we as a wealthy nation should be generous and give to our neighbors during their time of need. It’s not appropriate to make a league table and compare how much each nation gives.

How’s our attention span? Will the generosity that flowed to Asia, flow to the next global crisis that the media draws our attention too?