I found the chapters we read in “The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq” particularly emotional and impactful, without relying on sensationalism to grab a reader’s attention or garner empathy for the Yazidis. I wasn’t familiar at all with Daesh, or their genocide of the Iraqi Yazidis before reading these chapters and the corresponding article. Yet, even with zero context, the authors wrote in such a fluid manner, interweaving interview dialogue and personal anecdotal context, to make what was happening explicitly clear to the reader. The horrors experienced by thousands of kidnapped Iraqi women, men and children under the Islamic State were told throughout the book without hiding behind euphemisms, but also in a way that was balanced precariously between focus on the people undergoing the tragedy and on the focus of what was happening.
I also thought it was interesting how the article in AL-MONITOR explicitly mentions that Germans warmly welcomed Yazidi refugees due to their Holocaust stained past, the Yazidi’s special circumstance of having “truly suffered,” and the “added bonus” of the asylum seekers comprising mostly women and children. I think this is a theme constant among the people of all nations who accept refugees, and obviously of those who don’t. I’m not sure how to explore this problem or articulate it clearly, but I do often think about why it is that the people of countries as economically privileged as the US or Germany feel they have the right to measure the suffering or plights of others as “good enough” or not. The result of which is that the more economically powerful and privileged countries get the last say on whose life is worth saving.
Like the article mentions, an asylum haven country’s warm embrace only lasts so long. In the US there’s a rampant public anti-immigration attitude among conservatives, and a less vocal one among liberals, but the result is the same: survivors of cartel violence, political persecution, or poverty in Central and South America are no longer welcome here. This is evidenced by the immigration policies of both Trump and Biden’s administrations, as well the violent policies and rhetoric of politicians like Gov. Abbott and Gov. Desantis. What’s worse, the immigration system is so backed up it forces many would-be legal migrants to try the illegal route, in many cases completely ruining their chances of a legal immigration later on.
In the case of Germany, like the AL-MONITOR article writes, “the welcoming atmosphere of 2015 is no longer there” for the Yazidis. So, when thinking about the moral imperative of a journalist to produce works like “The Beekeeper,” or to not, remembering how quickly public memory fades, along with its corresponding generosity and empathy, should be reason enough to support continued coverage of tragedies worldwide. Of course, I also think that such coverage should be approached with the level of care and caution seen in “The Beekeeper,” as any sort of journalistic coverage of tragedy should be done with the intention to help, not to exacerbate their pain.
