Shouldn’t the pope mediate to end the terrible Ukraine war?
POPE Francis went to Bahrain to promote dialogue with the Arab world and address human rights abuses in the oil-rich island nation with a Muslim majority.
On his final day in Bahrain, he called on the Arab countries to join the civilised world and put an end to human right violations. He also urged the 80 000-strong Roman Catholic congregants to pray for Ukraine and an end to the terrible war.
We cannot agree more with the head of the Catholic Church. The Middle East is notorious for its human rights violations. Capital punishment is still widespread in the Arab world.
“An eye for an eye” and “a tooth for a tooth” form part of their penal code. Public hangings, stoning, cutting off hands and fingers of petty thieves are all part of the Middle East justice system.
But it’s the women and migrant workers who suffer the most. Their plight has become so much the fabric of life in the Middle East that it rarely gets worldwide media coverage. But now and then, an incident catches global attention and exposes the harsh realities of life for women and migrant workers.
Malala Yousafzai nearly paid with her life for campaigning for the rights of girls’ education in Afghanistan. Despite her harrowing experience, she won worldwide fame – becoming the world’s youngest Nobel Prize laureate.
But Iranian woman Mahsa Amini was not so lucky when she went onto the streets with her hijab inappropriately placed over her head in the ultra-conservative Arab nation. She was arrested and died under suspicious circumstances in police detention, sparking widespread civil unrest.
As bad as the Middle East is with human rights violations, they pale in significance to the war Russia is waging against the Ukrainian people.
If no political leader has taken the initiative to stop the war, why hasn’t a religious leader like the pope tried?