What is happening to our Rohingya brothers and sisters is heartbreaking, and our emotions can push us in the direction of radical action; but we have to adhere to discipline and patience. If we go about this the wrong way, we will just make matters worse.
I have received comments and messages from people ready to take action against companies like Unilever, to impose consequences upon them for their silent complicity with the genocide in Arakan. But I urge all of you to work in coordination with the #WeAreAllRohingyaNow Campaign.
I assure you, this campaign is following a realistic vision, and a strategy that includes the possibility of escalation, if or when that may become necessary; which we all hope it will not. Whatever can be achieved through outreach is better than trying to achieve it through pressure. But, of course, direct action includes a full menu of lawful tactics for pressuring companies, if it comes to that point.
So let us not jump ahead to such actions yet; we would rather win the support of #Unilever and others through positive engagement rather than confrontation. We have to take a methodical, measured, approach. We are lobbying them, not fighting them. Right now, what we want, our priority at this stage, is to get a reply from Unilever CEO Paul Polman to the campaign’s Open Letter. I urge everyone to tweet Polman and members of Unilever’s board of directors, urging them to respond.
And we will move ahead accordingly, depending on the outcome of this immediate effort