Peter Novecosky, OSB

When disaster strikes

Touch almost any country on a world map and you are likely to come close to a place where people are suffering due to some natural disaster.

It doesn’t take long to recall that just five years ago hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. This year their suffering was compounded by the Gulf oil spill that will have lingering effects for years.

A new volcano has erupted in Indonesia after lying dormant for 400 years. Miners in Chile face months of isolation in a cavern deep under the earth until they can be rescued. The earthquake in Haiti six months ago sparked a global outpouring of sympathy and aid. There is famine in several African countries such as Niger or Mali. The crisis in Sudan is almost forgotten today. Floods are happening on practically every continent, so much so that the severe rainfall in Saskatchewan this year seems like a nuisance instead of a tragedy compared to other countries where hundreds of homes have been destroyed and farmland ruined.

One of the biggest disasters dominating the news today is the flood in Pakistan. The pictures speak for themselves of the human tragedy unfolding. Marie-Claude Lalonde, national director of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) in Canada, said: "There are 20 million people affected, but the support of western countries is so small compared to their needs!"

Canadians are beginning to respond to appeals for Pakistan, according to Development and Peace. The federal government has agreed to match dollars donated to approved charities. Other countries are also slow to send aid.

Lalonde notes that there are several factors involved in the slower response to Pakistan compared, for example, to Haiti. "Last January, Canadians quickly mobilized to support the earthquake victims in Haiti," she said. "Today, we are struggling to raise emergency funds for the Pakistani people: why?”

The year 2010 was a year of natural disasters, she noted, where the public has been asked many times to contribute their dollars. The multiple requests for aid means a diminishing return as new disaster victims call for help.

Another factor is a religious one. Muslims make up about 97 per cent of Pakistan's population. Christians are a minority. People in the West believe that the Pakistanis sympathize with the Taliban. It’s “an equation without foundations,” Lalonde said.

However, Pakistani authorities are accused of discriminating against Christians and other minorities in government-run aid programs. Rev. Mario Rodrigues, director of pontifical missionary societies in Pakistan, commented, "While Caritas and the pontifical mission societies are working on providing humanitarian relief to displaced persons without discrimination of origin, race or religion, in other areas, the Christian refugees, even in the midst of this tragedy, are being treated as second-class citizens.”

"They often receive little assistance or are excluded altogether," the priest told Fides, the news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. He said refugees belonging to religious minorities are the most neglected, excluded and discriminated against.

In contrast, he said, church groups are visiting the affected areas, “collecting hundreds of displaced Christians who had been left to themselves, bringing them to camps run by Caritas and other NGOs of Christian inspiration in order to guarantee them the minimum assistance they need."

The recent threat by the Taliban is not encouraging, either. The Pakistani Taliban has warned against accepting international aid. Its leaders view accepting foreign assistance as welcoming foreign interference in their country. This seems like a callous disregard for the lives of the flood victims.

Disasters have a way of uniting people in a common cause. They are not a time to sow division. In addition, they challenge us to count our own blessings, and to share those we already enjoy.