The 3rd force: why the streets are our last hope

Free Malaysia Today

25-05-2025

From Charles Santiago
We are watching a genocide unfold in real time. In Gaza, children are pulled from the rubble without limbs, entire families are incinerated in their sleep, and the living are left to wander through ash and bone. The videos are everywhere, unfiltered, unbearable. The moral clarity is blinding.
And still, world leaders respond with silence, double-speak, or the same hollow choreography of condemnation and inaction.
International law, crafted in the aftermath of the Holocaust, now lies in ruins, rendered toothless by the very powers who once swore 'never again'.
The institutions meant to prevent atrocity – the United Nations (UN), the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the Geneva Conventions – have proven themselves paralysed when faced with a state backed by military might and geopolitical favour.
The UN issues non-binding resolutions. The ICC stutters under political pressure. Meanwhile, Western governments continue to bankroll the very forces reducing Gaza to dust.
And this is because the structures that were meant to restrain the powerful have instead become tools of delay and denial.
And let's be honest: the horror in Gaza is not an isolated moral failure. In Myanmar, the military continues its reign of terror against ethnic minorities and democratic activists alike. And in the pretext of a 'ceasefire', the junta continues to massacre civilians, bomb villages, and receive less global attention than a celebrity trial.
This is clearly a system that protects the violent and punishes the vulnerable. It rewards strategic allies and sanctions the expendable.
Here's a case in point: while Donald Trump attacked Cyril Ramposa at the White House accusing his government of White genocide, he conveniently ignores the one where 53,000 people have been brutally killed and another 14,000 babies who will die in less than 24 hours.
But while Trump didn't invent this architecture, he stripped away its last pretenses. His presidency gave cover to the worst instincts of state power by normalising xenophobia, dismantling rights and protection mechanisms, and cozying up to autocrats. A return to 'Trumpism' does not just signal indifference, but would also accelerate collapse.
So where does that leave us? It leaves us with the only force left: the people. A third force. Not governed by treaties or borders, but by conscience. We have seen it before in anti-apartheid movements, in global climate strikes, in women's marches that spanned continents.
The question now is whether we can summon that same fury and focus for Gaza, for Myanmar, for the dismantling of a global order that has failed catastrophically.
If governments won't act, we will. In our thousands and millions, we flood the streets. We disrupt business as usual. We force governments to sit up and listen to our demands.
Because the truth is this: no amount of horror will move those in power. But power will move when the cost of doing nothing becomes higher than the cost of complicity.
Charles Santiago is the co-chair of the Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.