leonniefm 10 December 2008 Special 87 views 3 Comments Print This Post  Email This Post

To commemorate the Human Rights Day on December 10 2008. For the remembrance of a person I have never met. A person who’s the story I read in Inside Indonesia, I’m writing her children a letter.

Kade, a 45 year old woman from North Sulawesi told the group that after she was told she was HIV positive, her two sisters, both of whom are doctors, forced her to leave the family home. Displaying remarkable ignorance, they apparently feared that a HIV positive person could infect other people in the household. ‘They disinfected the bathroom every time I used the toilet’, Kade told the group. Since then she has only been allowed to see her children every other month through the fence surrounding her family home.

Dear angels,
I have never met your mom. The only thing I know about you mom is those five lines I copied from Inside Indonesia. I cried a whole night after I read it. I felt her pain. The pain of a mother who could not hold her children. I wish I could be there to hold your mom.

Angels, I truly believe your mother loves you very much. She does not want to meet you through the fence. I believe she would want to fight the disease just to be able to hold you close in her arms again. Yes, angels, your mother is sick. The sickness is very terrible; it makes your mommy lost her immunity to any other diseases. It makes your mommy very vulnerable. But angels, what makes your mommy even sicker than she really is, are not the virus. It is us with our ignorance. The blindness and cold heart of the people who refuse to seek the right answer to every question. The people who choose to close the door in front of her nose than to help her get better.

No, angels, do not start to hate. Instead angels, stand-up, stand strong. Embrace your mother because your love would make her stronger. She had given you the world; now please let her have her dignity back.

No, angels do not close your eyes and ears. Do not even close your mouth. Instead angels, learn. Learn hard. Because education will open the door of the world to you wider than before. Learn with your heart too, angels, because knowledge without compassion is futile.

It is the virus & the disease you should fight, angels. Not your mother or anybody with the same condition. To quarantine her, to put some microchips in her will not help her fight the disease. They will only break her until there’s nothing for her to live with. She could die because of such degradation.

She is sick right now, angels. Maybe because she made a mistake long time ago, maybe not. She is sick and medication is what she needs. She does not need any injustice prejudice nor to be blame for anything.

Today is Human Rights Day, angels. Today we cry for your mother who do not receive her rights. Would you be her hero? Love her so dearly simply because she is your mother. Then read this Universal Declaration of Human Rights because no matter how sick and whatever the disease a person could have, she or he is still a human being, entitle to every rights written there.

Be strong angels.

Love,

Leonnie