7/7: Not Forgetting To Remember

NOT FORGETING TO REMEMBER...

This week, the United Kingdom marked the 1st anniversary of the London bombing on 7th July 2005.

As Big Ben tolled over Westminster signalling mid-day had come, the city of London fell silent. It was so planned, that a two-minute silent would be observed city and country-wide in the memory of the 52 women and men that perished in the train and bus when the bombs detonated. Caught in the blast was 50 year old Gladys Wundowa from Ghana, who was on Bus number 30. The late Gladys was the point from which many Ghanaians felt the horror which descended on London a year ago, as nationals of many other nations also perished. Every Londoner remembers where they were as the news spread.

All those who died were a people loved and cherished. And next to being loved, the most important thing is not to be forgotten. And its time to remember those victims of the London blasts. Along with the shocking event, they must not be forgotten by those who loved them. The good book speaks of the value of remembrance and its absence when it says at Ecclesiastes 9:5 about those dead long ago: "the remembrance of them has been forgotten"

Indeed, what is the value of any person, dead or alive, who has been completely forgotten?

Some events, like people are crucial to remember, as they help us see where we have come from, where we are, and where we are going. Yes, some things are easier to remember than others, but it is expedient that as we remember this tragedy, we do not forget other things that ought not to be forgotten.

Let us remember 52 victims whose precious lives were brutally snuffed out. But let us also remember those still alive whose very lives are being threatened by hopeless ignorance, abject poverty and preventable diseases. It was reported recently that in Ghana, thirteen nursing mothers run away from the Atibie Government Hospital after they delivered their babies and had no money to pay their medical bills.

How can we forget a woman who is forced to choose the indignity of absconding from a hospital because she is too poor to pay for delivering an innocent child?

Millions have died in needless wars just in the last few years, and how can we forget this? According to the International Rescue Committee, Congo alone has seen some four million people killed since war broke out in 1998; and they have been forgotten. Also forgotten are health emergencies in Chechnya, where people face the dangers of disease as well as land mines; Haiti, where thousands have been injured by political violence; northeastern India, where more than 90 were massacred last October; southern Sudan, where thousands remain homeless; northern Uganda, where 1.6 million live in refugee camps; and Ivory Coast, where war has devastated the health care system.

Charles Davis, an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism says aptly that News Corporations find it easier and cheaper to "focus on the mundane and the trivial, the celebrity-driven news over the real needs of real people." And he adds that reports by relief agencies around the world illustrates "everything that's wrong with journalism," which in effect help people to forget things that ought to be remembered.

And the thing that is easily forgotten and hardly remembered too is that the world's system is a big puppet show. And the puppeteer's aim is to keep fooling some people sometimes, and if possible, all the people all the time. This we must not forget to remember.