Hunger Strikes

This is a simple and simply terrible story that, even when drowning in today’s nonstop news deluge, needs to be told until people really understand the scope of the depravity. American officials, from the wildly inexperienced chainsaw wielders to the very top of the State Department, were repeatedly warned that USAID cuts would lead to violence and starvation. They lied about those warnings, they lied about the cuts, and the warnings materialized. ProPublica: Inside the Trump Administration’s Man-Made Hunger Crisis. All this to save what amounts to a rounding error on a rounding error in our foreign aid budget, and so the worst humans can pat themselves on the back for starving the most vulnerable ones.

+ “Ever since the military in her homeland of Myanmar killed her father in 2017, forcing her to flee to neighboring Bangladesh with her mother and little sisters, the school had protected Hasina from the predators who prowl her refugee camp, home to 1.2 million members of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya minority. It had also protected her from being forced into marriage. And then one day in June, when Hasina was 16 years old, her teacher announced that the school’s funding had been taken away. The school was closing. In a blink, Hasina’s education was over, and so, too, was her childhood.” Trafficked, exploited, married off: Rohingya children’s lives crushed by foreign aid cuts.