Author: Rajeev Srinivasan
Publication: Rediff.com
Date: January 6, 2006
URL: http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/jan/06rajeev.htm
The selective amnesia of the English media
in India is simply breathtaking.
There appears to be a cardinal rule: Never
publish anything that would be in the least bit negative about Muslims in
general and Pakistanis in particular; or about Christians; or about Marxists
in general and the Chinese in particular.
For instance, the Chinese genocide in occupied
Tibet is glossed over, and an Indian English magazine's famous editor goes
on a China-sponsored tour there and writes a glowing account of how life is
beautiful.
After all, it's just details that a million
Tibetans have been wiped out and a lot of their women forcibly sterilised
in an explicit path towards genocide.
Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China, and rose-coloured
glasses redux?
When the International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda found two Catholic nuns guilty of crimes against humanity in June 2001,
the Indian English media simply buried the story.
Here is an excerpt from the Economist magazine's
report, 'Judging genocide', June 14, 2001.
On June 8th… two Roman Catholic nuns
were found guilty in a different court, thousands of miles away, of complicity
in the Rwandan genocide. Their trial had lasted a mere two months. Sister
Maria and Sister Gertrude had handed over to their killers up to 7,000 Tutsis
who were sheltering in their convent; later, they provided petrol so that
militiamen could set fire to a barn in which about 500 Tutsis had taken refuge.
They were sentenced to prison terms of 12 and 15 years by a jury sitting not
in Africa, but in Belgium.
The atrocities committed by Islamic terrorists,
including ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Kashmir, and attacks all over India
killing Hindus -- note the latest attacks just before Diwali and now on the
Indian Institute of Science -- are trivialised by the chatterati with the
usual cant about how the terrorists are misguided youths frustrated by lack
of opportunities.
It appears axiomatic that to the media, the
only good Hindu is a dead Hindu.
Rajeev Srinivasan: The value of a Hindu life
This is why the attack on a Hindu temple in
Dera Bugti in Balochistan in March last year got absolutely no coverage in
the Indian media and did not disturb Indian society in general.
Shabana Azmi and Kuldeep Nayyar and Human
Rights Watch and the rest of the human rights cottage industry were very quiet.
The US Council on International Religious Freedom was thunderously silent,
too, which shows yet again that their definition of 'religious freedom' is
rather unique: It means the freedom of American cults to propagate their bizarre
ideas.
It is not as though the information was not
available. A cursory Google search brought up an Associated Press report carried
by the Taipei Times ('Scores killed in rocket attack on Hindu temple', March
22, 2005), which says, among other things:
Seventeen minority Hindus were killed when
their temple was hit by rockets during fighting between renegade tribesmen
and security forces in a restive tribal town in southwestern Pakistan last
week, a government official said yesterday.
The Daily Times of Pakistan carried a report,
excerpted below:
The Jamhoori Watan Party on Thursday released
a list of 61 people killed in a clash between Frontier Corps personnel and
the Bugti tribesmen in Dera Bugti on March 17. Senator Amanullah Kinrani,
party spokesman and president of the Balochistan High Court Bar Association,
gave the list to reporters at a news conference. According to the list, 19
Hindu children between ages 1 and 16, three women, and 11 men were killed
in the clash. Nineteen other Hindu men and five women were injured.
The victims are mostly Hindu children, who
had presumably sought shelter in the temple at a time of war. Curious that
the shelling just happened to hit the temple, isn't it? Since the victims
were mere Hindus, the Indian English media felt free to ignore the whole episode.
Usually, when the victims are Muslims, the
media does take notice. Yet they are ignoring the open rebellion in Balochistan
since December last year, which is being put down violently with helicopter
gunships, jet fighters, artillery and 30,000 troops, according to reports.
Why is the ever-vigilant Indian media, ready
to fight for the rights of 'minorities', studiously avoiding this situation?
Those who shout loudly about alleged atrocities
on Kashmiri Muslims are strangely silent about the atrocities on minority
Balochi Muslims (in passing, they are similarly coy about atrocities on minority
Uighur Muslims in Chinese-occupied East Turkestan, also known as Sinkiang).
There is only one possible reason -- because
it would show Pakistan and Pervez Musharraf in a bad light. And we can't have
that, can we?
I do believe this is the rationalisation of
the 'secular progressives'.
The Balochistan story is of significant importance
to India. In addition to human rights issues, the strategic Chinese-built
port of Gwadar is in Balochistan, and so are important mineral deposits on
the desolate Makran coast.
The Balochi rebellion may have a domino effect
and other oppressed minority groups such as Sindhis and Balawaris (those who
live in Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir) may also rise up, leading
to the unravelling of the failed State of Pakistan.
There was at least one other Balochi insurrection
(1973 to 1977), which was brutally put down by the Punjabi-dominated Pakistan
Army. This is reminiscent of Saddam Hussein's mustard gas attacks on minority
Kurds in Halabja in 1988.
George Bush, please note that your 'valued
ally in the war on terror' is similarly brutalising a civilian minority, using
the weapons you so generously doled out.
The news coming out of Balochistan is indeed
tragic. I urge you to read a report titled 'Pakistani Army atrocities against
Baloch community' carried by the Baltimore Indymedia. Warning: the photos
are graphic and extremely disturbing, especially those of young children who
appear to be mutilated. Some victims appear to have had their eyes gouged
out.
The world cannot sit back and allow this to
happen. Shame on you, the Indian English media, for ignoring this human tragedy.
Surely, even you must have the vestiges of
what must be called journalistic ethics -- for lack of a better term?
