Time the world showed a heart to Iranian earthquake victims

But look beyond our own noses, the images of suffering and massive destruction we see from Iran as the result of the most recent earthquake there should make us pause for a while and stop thinking about our own broken national engine and its uncoordinated wheels.

It is not possible to compare suffering, Tolstoy would agree. So we must take the misery of each of our earthly companions at face value, devoid of the value judgement that living entrusts upon us as our colour backdrop. Each degree of suffering deserves sympathy and compassion, as there are among us more innocents than villains. It is only that that majority is usually silent.

The latest two earthquakes in northwest Iran – listed as 6.4 and 6.3 in magnitude on the Richter scale, with numerous foreshocks and aftershocks – killed more than 300, injured over 1,800 and left tens of thousands homeless. These were shallow quakes at a depth of 9.9 kilometres, which means the shaking that followed the quakes was much worse than the magnitude number might suggest. The quakes entirely flattened some villages, and more bodies have been discovered under the rubble, most of them women and children. People left alive are struggling for food, water, shelter and medical care. The Iranian Red Crescent Society is providing temporary shelter for more than 50,000 people and its top priority is to prevent pandemic illnesses.

The so-called “wise men” opine that God must have wanted to punish the Iranians for the sins of their fathers or mothers. Some accounts offered by them leave us dumbstruck. But as Albert Einstein said, there are two things infinite – the universe and human stupidity, but he wasn’t sure about the universe.

For us mere mortals, the following are facts about the quakes in Iran.

The Persian nation is one of the most seismically active countries in the world. More than 90 per cent of Iran is located within an active seismic zone called the Alpine-Himalayan belt. 

Over the last 70 years, Iran has experienced more than 130 quakes of a magnitude of 7.5 or higher, and the casualties have been over 100,000.  

The high seismic activity becomes deadly because of the structural vulnerability of the buildings and the low level of preparedness. In 1962, a quake of 7.1 magnitude destroyed 91 villages and the death toll reached 12,225. In 1990, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake killed more than 40,000 people and left more than 400,000 homeless. Nearly all buildings in that area of western Iran were destroyed and some parts of the capital city of Tehran were damaged. In 2003, a 6.6 quake made the entire historic city of Bam in southeastern Iran disappear. In what is believed to be the largest earthquake in this area in more than 2,000 years, 31,000 people perished, 30,000 were injured and over 75,000 people were rendered homeless.  

It is not simply the shaking caused by the quakes, as well as those of the foreshocks and aftershocks, that kill and destroy; landslides, ground ruptures, the loss of livestock and farmland, the destruction of electricity and water supply lines, all compound the loss and misery countless times over.

Regardless of what religious beliefs or political doctrines we hold to, the human suffering of the Iranians in the midst of these natural catastrophes is inarguably real, and therefore our judgements, be they political or pious, are not even relevant.  Nobody deserves to die in such a way, and we must not think we know better.

“People in Iran have already been suffering a great deal,” wrote an Iranian friend whose views are always judicious and balanced. “They have a political regime that uses religion and ‘created’ history to propel its own interests and agenda. It’s a regime that erodes people’s savings with an official inflation rate of 23-25 per cent. Today, those who suffer are not the leaders, but the people. The international embargo on Iran has made five to six million children who weave carpets lose their jobs and the little income they had.  And who is punishing them? It is countries that have invaded so many other countries, and one that has done so in every part of the world, whereas Iranians, in their 7,000 years of existence have never attacked any other countries,” he said. And we know his historical accounts are indubitable.

Over the weekend, speculation in Israel about an imminent Israeli attack on Iran reached fever pitch. A Tel Aviv-based newspaper reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister Ehud Barak are game for the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities before the US elections in November. Today, Israelis are buying gas masks in preparation for an Iranian counter-attack. Concerns about an Israeli strike sent the shekel to its lowest value in more than a year, and the Bloomberg Israel-US equity index of the most-traded Israeli companies in New York tumbled to the lowest point in three months. Some people will make much money out of it. What goes down will come up. 

But that’s life. There are people who have a knack for turning calamity into opportunity. And sometimes they create calamity so they have opportunity to create a fortune for themselves.

For the latest Iranian earthquake victims, there is very little help reaching them and the wounds are much deeper and wider than what our eyes can see. But as fellow human beings, it’s time we did something to show that we care. In the increasingly tinder-dry world of compassion, the fact remains that everybody deserves empathy and we, surprisingly, can give it freely and liberally. It is a part of the human trait that closely resembles something we would describe as divine.

As for judgement, moral or otherwise: let he who is without sin cast the first stone.