Jordanian Citizenship Revoked: The Human Toll Of Politics
Words By: Mohanned
“Jordan is playing politics with the basic rights of thousands of its citizens, Officials are denying entire families the ability to lead normal lives with the sense of security that most citizens of a country take for granted.”
[source]
Those people are human. Politicians sometimes tend to forget that and speak of them as mere numbers. They view people and their livelihoods as a way or a tool to send a message. For them, those people are just another card in their deck of political playing cards.
In reality, two thousand seven hundred and thirty two Jordanians had their nationality stripped between 2004-2008. Their lives are irrelevant because their feelings don’t serve the bigger agenda. Their future? Well, it’s theirs and theirs alone. So who cares? Why should we care? Why should the government care if we, the people, didn’t care?
Enter: empathy deficiency disorder.
What many of us tend to forget is that relativity and ratios dehumanize us. They make numbers look “less” real than they actually are. We become desensitized. We take injustice as a fact of life. For some of us, injustice inflicted on others is, well, tough luck! Life is unfair. True. But what makes it unfair?
Luck? I believe not.
Fate? Don’t think so.
We do.
What if twenty-some women lost their lives each year for “honor”? Does it really matter? The lives of twenty women in a nation of six million are negligible. They are not a priority. They don’t touch and affect enough lives. Our lives.
What makes a life negligible? What makes a human experience less than relevant? What can make a child’s dreams and hopes for the future more relevant to us? How can we care again? How can we overcome this empathy deficiency disorder?
Look beyond the numbers. Try to see the suffering. Try to understand how others feel.
Be them.
So yes, the Jordanian government might call it a “correction”. They might even paint it with the “protecting your national identity” brush.
You don’t solve problems by creating problems. You don’t achieve justice by inflicting injustice on others. You are not protecting by adding suffering. What some might call an inconvenience is a human being feeling injustice. A human being treated unfairly. A human being paying the price for something he/she didn’t do.
So to the Jordanian government: you are making these people’s lives irrelevant. Shame on you and shame on those of us who rationalize injustice and suffering.
- The sixty page report can be found here.
- Related Post: Jordan’s Slow Discrimination
