From Lidice to Minab: lessons remain ignored

Vietnam War. It was 8 June 1972. Dozens of children were running for safety after the US bombing in Vietnam’s Trang Bang region.

Nine-year-old Kim Phuc was in the centre running stark naked. The whole world woke up to a rude shock the next day when her photo appeared on the front pages of the newspapers. Public took to the streets denouncing the then US president Richard Nixon who had to pass an order to stop the war.Since then a lot of water has flown in the rivers around the world and both nature and human behaviour have witnessed phenomenal degradation.

The US citizens are angry but not hitting the streets. Peace lovers are paralyzed. The US-Israeli bombing of Iran since 28 February killed 170 girls and teachers in Iran’s Minab City but it failed to move people anywhere in the world.The Western media may block it out, but the tragedies of Lidice (Czechoslovakia) and Minab will haunt humanity for centuries.

Our purposeful blindness can’t hoodwink history.The Lidice Massacre was ordered by Hitler after a Nazi officer was killed in 1942. Nazi forces sprang into action and lined up all the 173 men in the Czech village and shot them point blank. Women and children were sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp.

Majority of them were gassed but some of the children were housed with Nazi families to Aryanise them. Eighty two statues of those unfortunate children stand as a haunting reminder of the hollowness of our concerns.Russia’s attack on Ukraine is already in its fifth year. Thousands of school children, women and men have allegedly been sold in human trafficking.So far, close to 400,000 people have died in both the nations.