The Barbarians Are Coming !

For Malay language version please click here.

“Discover how to visit the past and bring yesterday's stories into our lives today” ~ Gillian Hovell.

Photo credit: Google Images

The late classical antiquity, the Dark Ages, dawn of medieval age, the migration period and many other names given by both historians and non-historians were a period containing series of events that eventually lead to the collapse and fall of a political entity known as the Western Roman Empire which were the provinces of the Roman Empire administered by the western court base on Mediolanum (modern day Milan) and later Ravenna, while the city of Rome maintains at the spiritual capital of the whole empire.

Series of invasions by the barbarian tribes from the north and the east was not the sole reason for the collapse of the empire but they were also helped by the instability and the dependence of the foederatis (non-Roman soldiers) to guard the borders while the famed legions of the Caesars and the earlier Principate were no longer the backbone on the military structure. The legions themselves, rather than swearing loyalty to Rome, transferred their loyalty to those generals who paid them more, a repeat of events few centuries earlier that brought down the Roman republic. 

Obviously there are many theories regarding the reason why large group of people (we're not talking about few families, but whole tribes) migrating, including climate change, seeking better lands, running from other invaders and various reasons, but whether the reasons were political or economic, both were towards the same goal, which is to continue living. The Angles and the Saxons, among other migrated and invaded Roman Britain, driving away both the Romans and native Celtic people away and eventually became the English left the native lands in Germania from more vicious people from the east. The Franks move towards what is now central Western Europe while the Lombards moved south towards Italy and eventually replaced the Romans and the Italic people after the fall of Rome. The barbarians facing death and annihilation did only what they know at that time, which is to move to other place and cause the death and an almost annihilation of the native people already living there and unfortunately for those people there are no other places to go except the Atlantic ocean.

"What I love about the stories of the Great Migration is that this is not ancient history; this is living history. Most people of color can find someone in their own family who had experienced a migration of some kind, knowing the sense of dislocation, longing and fortitude." ~ Isabel Wilkerson 

Photo credit: Google Images

Closer to our shores in this modern time we are reading and viewing the news regarding a new events of migration, which is the Rohingya people who fled Myanmar and also from Bangladesh. I will not get into the details of the reasons and there could be various reasons depending on one point of view but just like the ancient time people are running to find a better life either when facing persecutions or for economic reasons. While this kind of events are not something new as Malaysia has already seen the coming of boat people from Vietnam and the Cambodia in the past, these new events unfortunately brought out some ugly side of the people and we can see many comments of the internet about how the government should not accept these people with questions about 'who's going to feed them?', 'we don't need any more crimes from these people', 'this will be new project IC' and so on, even those that boldly shouted that these people should just be left to die in the seas.

There are also sane arguments that humanity should supersede any political, even emotional or economical reason in urging those in power to help these people as they are the right thing to do, even if the time is not right. Of course some people not just talk the talk but walk the talk to by actually doing something to help these people while some vocal people at the beginning are now being seen as shutting their mouth because it is now seem that helping the Rohingyas is not the correct thing to do by their own political supporters. In the period of political instability in our country, the government seems to be indecisive in their actions, with some quarters wants to help while some quarters are still looking for solutions while those who are trying to seek refuge are dying day by day. 

Even without the Rohingyas, we already have a lot of immigrants to this country and the funny thing is that some of those who are against these refugees are descendants of those immigrants themselves, either to escape persecution of their native land or simply just for economic reasons. It's really funny when hearing this kind of people talk about how they themselves are ready to migrate if they feel that this country is no longer stable and can no longer provide security for them or their wealth. 

It is interesting to finally hear that the Turkish government has pledge to help these people and provide the humanitarian aid and it took a nation formed of descendants of one of the great migration people itself to show what country like Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia their lack of moral courage to do what's right and putting political and economical reasons above humanity.

"We must force the government to stop the bird migration. We must shoot all birds, field all our men and troops... and force migratory birds to stay where they are." ~ Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

Disclaimer : All images are for illustration purposes only and this blog author does not claim any copyright to the published images and he only copied the images already publicly available on the internet (unless stated). The blog author also wishes to state that his opinion posted on this blog are his alone and not paid by any political parties.