We spent $33m to search for MH370. Now what about the Rohingyas?
We spent upwards of $33 million dollars searching for missing Malaysian flight MH370.
The Australian government committed navy ships to the search at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. Aussie Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, vowed to ''spend what we need to spend to get this job done." He called it "an act of international citizenship on Australia's part.''
The US Department of Defense set aside 4 million dollars to help the search. And the UK government also sent a survey ship, the HMS Echo, all the way to Asia equipped with sensitive underwater detection equipment for this important search.
It's amazing the resources that can be found to rescue the right people.
Meanwhile thousands of Rohingya asylum seekers float in the same ocean.
We KNOW where their boats are.
We know what it will take to rescue them.
It won't take 33 million dollars. Though no-one can put a price on a human life. But they are brown and poor.
They are not citizens of our own nations.
They are Muslims.
(Christophe Archambault/AFP) Rohingya asylum seekers from Myanmar adrift in the Andaman Sea off the island of Koh Lipe.
My own wife and many of her family members were refugees from the murderous Khmer Rouge regime. It was the mercy and compassion of Christians that allowed them to escape and settle in New Zealand and Australia.
There was no orderly queue. There was only a desperate escape through the jungles.
And then mercy.
There was mercy.
It was Jesus who said, "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy."
It was Jesus who said, "I was a stranger and you welcomed me."
This is a major humanitarian disaster unfolding before our eyes. The governments of Australia, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia have a moral responsibility to take emergency action. The kind of action they took for a missing plane.
Let us, as thinking, compassionate, followers of Christ do WHATEVER we can to push them in the right direction.
Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy.