Music for Life International Present Beethoven For The Rohingya

Source tapinto, 6 Jan

SHORT HILLS, NJ - Music for Life International will present Beethoven For The Rohingya, a humanitarian concert of Beethoven's monumental Ninth Symphony at 8 PM Monday, January 28, 2019 in Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall in New York City. The concert will also include the moving and deeply poignant Elegy for Violin and Orchestra by American icon David Amram with Elmira Darvarova, distinguished former Concertmaster of the MET Orchestra, as soloist with the composer conducting.  

The concert will focus on the plight of the Rohingya refugees displaced by the genocide and ethnic cleanising in Myanmar. We envision an historic musical event in this great concert hall and satellite events elsewhere that will refocus the world's attention on the situation of the Rohingya refugees and their families. The concert will serve as an urgent call to the global community to move as swiftly as possible to provide resources and support for the hundreds of thousands of men, women and children who have been forced to flee from their homes in Myanmar. Their testimony is devastating as it is wrenching. 

The military attacked us on Wednesday [30 August], they were more than 150 men strong. Before that, the village chairman told us to gather at the sandy banks of the canal in the village. We all gathered there; they were carrying weapons so we couldn't do anything else. Then they started killing the men in front of us. They placed the dead bodies on a dyke and burnt them.Then the military took groups of women inside the houses and stabbed us with machetes. One stabbed me near my vagina. Another stabbed my throat. I was holding my 28-day-old baby on my lap. They hit my baby with something heavy. It hit his head and he died. I saw how his skull split open and his brain came out. I'm glad that I made it here but I don't know where I will go after I'm discharged. I have nothing here, just the clothes on my back. I don't know anyone and my baby is dead. " - 25-year-old woman admitted to MSF medical facility for stab wounds to her throat and waist.

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"There were 22 members in my family. Of them, 19 have been murdered, including small children. There are only three of us surviving - two brothers and one sister." - Brother of 18-year-old patient admitted to MSF's IDP in Kutupalong with stab wounds and burns.

Join us for this historic musical event at Carnegie Hall to refocus the world's attention on the situation of the Rohingya refugees and their families who have been forced to flee from their homes in Myanmar by a 21st Century genocide. We have said "Never Again" to ethnic and religious persecution too easily. Please come to Carnegie Hall on January 28th and make your voice heard through great music.