After Attacks on Muslims, Many Ask: Where Is the Outpouring?
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Bangladeshis paid tribute on Sunday to the victims killed in the attack at the Holey Artisan Bakery in the diplomatic district of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.CreditAssociated Press
By Tuesday, Michel Kilo, a Syrian dissident, was leaning wearily over his coffee at a Left Bank cafe, wondering: Where was the global outrage? Where was the outpouring that came after the same terrorist groups unleashed horror in Brussels and here in Paris? In a supposedly globalized world, do nonwhites, non-Christians and non-Westerners count as fully human?
“All this crazy violence has a goal,” Mr. Kilo, who is Christian, said: to create a backlash against Muslims, divide societies and “make Sunnis feel that no matter what happens, they don’t have any other option.”
This is not the first time that the West seems to have shrugged off massacres in predominantly Muslim countries. But the relative indifference after so many deaths caused by the very groups that have plagued the West is more than a matter of hurt feelings.
One of the primary goals of the Islamic State and other radical Islamist groups is to drive a wedge between Sunni Muslims and the wider world, to fuel alienation as a recruiting tool. And when that world appears to show less empathy for the victims of attacks in Muslim nations, who have borne the brunt of the Islamic State’s massacres and predatory rule, it seems to prove their point.
“Why isn’t #PrayForIraq trending?” Razan Hasan of Baghdad posted on Twitter. “Oh yeah no one cares about us.”
Hira Saeed of Ottawa asked on Twitter why Facebook had not activated itsSafety Check feature after recent attacks as it did for Brussels, Paris andOrlando, Fla., and why social media had not been similarly filled with the flags of Turkey, Bangladesh and Iraq. “The hypocrisy is the western world is strong,” she wrote.
The global mood increasingly feels like one of atavism, of retreat into narrower identities of nation, politics or sect, with Britain voting to leave the European Union and many Americans supporting the nativist presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.
The violence feeds a growing impulse among many in the West to fear Muslims and Arabs, which has already prompted a political crisis over immigration that, in turn, has buttressed extremists’ goals. Europe is convulsing over a movement to reject refugees from Syria and Iraq, who are themselves fleeing violence by jihadists and their own governments.
It is in Syria and Iraq that the Islamic State has established its so-called caliphate, ruling overwhelmingly Muslim populations with the threat of gruesome violence. The group has killed Muslims in those countries by the thousands, by far the largest share of its victims.
When Islamic State militants mowed down cafegoers in Paris in November, people across the world adorned public landmarks and their private Facebook pages with the French flag — not just in Europe and the United States, but also, with an empathy born of experience, in Syria and Iraq.
But over the past week, Facebook activated its Safety Check feature, which allows people in the vicinity of a disaster to mark themselves safe, only after the attack on the Istanbul airport.
The flags of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Bangladesh have not been widely projected on landmarks or adopted as profile pictures. (Photographs on social media showed that in Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of Europe’s two majority-Muslim countries, the Turkish flag was beamed onto a bridge in Mostar, the scene of sectarian killings in the 1990s.) Some wonder if part of the reason is that three of those flags bear Islamic symbols or slogans.
“More deaths in Iraq in the last week than Paris and Orlando combined but nobody is changing their profile pics, building colours, etc.,” Kareem Rahaman wrote on Twitter.
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Relatives on Monday mourned a victim killed in the attack at the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka.CreditAdnan Abidi/Reuters
There are some understandable reasons for the differing reactions. People typically identify more closely with places and cultures that are familiar to them. With Iraq, there is also a degree of fatigue, and a feeling that a bombing there is less surprising than one in Europe.
Deadly attacks have been a constant in Iraq after years of American occupation, followed by a sectarian war in which Sunni and Shiite militias slaughtered civilians of the opposite sect. Still, while terrorist attacks in Europe may feel more surprising to the West — though they have become all too common there, too — that does not explain the relative indifference to attacks in Istanbul, Saudi Arabia or Bangladesh.
“That’s what happens in Iraq,” Sajad Jiyad, a researcher in Iraq who rushed to the scene of the Baghdad bombing and found that one of his friends had died there, wrote on his own blog. “Deaths become just statistics, and the frequency of attacks means the shock doesn’t register as it would elsewhere, or that you have enough time to feel sad or grieve.”
In the Muslim world, the partly sectarian nature of some conflicts shades people’s reactions, producing a kind of internal sympathy gap. People from one sect or political group often discount or excuse casualties from another.
In Iraq, the Islamic State took root within an insurgency against the country’s Shiite-led government, and Shiite militias fighting it have been accused of brutality as well. In Syria, it is just one menace; many more Syrians have been killed by the government’s attacks on areas held by Sunni insurgents, including rebel groups opposed to the Islamic State.
Mr. Jiyad added that the Islamic State was “hoping to incite a reaction and a spiral into endless violence,” and that Iraqis played into that when they mourned more for their own sect than for others.
In the West, though, there is a tendency in certain quarters, legitimized by some politicians, to conflate extremist Islamist militants with the Muslim societies that are often their primary victims, or to dismiss Muslim countries as inherently violent.
“Either Iraqi blood is too cheap or murder is normalized,” Sayed Saleh Qazwini, an Islamic educator in Michigan, wrote on Twitter.
In Paris, a rainbow flag hangs on the Hotel de Ville, memorializing the 49 people gunned down at a gay nightclub in Orlando last month. But in a corner shop on Monday, the woman who served me had no such sympathy for the Middle East.
When she asked where I lived, and I told her Beirut, Lebanon, she exclaimed about the violence in the region. Struggling to explain that there is a lot more than just violence happening there, I said: “Yes, there are a lot of problems. What can one do?”
“Exterminer les islamistes,” she said grimly. Exterminate: a strong word. Islamists: a broad category of people.
Mr. Kilo, who spent years in the prisons of the Syrian government and opposes both it and the Islamic State, said his life in Paris had changed since November. Speaking Arabic is now suspect. He sees fear in French people’s eyes when they see Syrians.
“I’m afraid, too,” he said. “Someone could blow himself up anytime.”
He has written an article that will be published in the newspaper Al Araby Al Jadeed, titled “The Curse of Syria.”
The failure of empathy is broader than the Islamic State, he said; it extends to the international community’s unwillingness or inability to stop the slaughter of the Syrian civil war, which began with protests for political change.
“If we lose all humanity,” Mr. Kilo said, “if you allow the slaughter of a nation for five and a half years, after all the leaders of the international community declared the right of these people to revolt against their government, then expect Islamic State — and many other Islamic States in other forms and shapes.”
MIRROR EXCLUSIVE: MEET THE MUMBAI POLICE OFFICER CBI SAYS IT CAN’T CATCH
By Nazia Sayed & Divyesh Singh, Mumbai Mirror | Jul 3, 2016, 02.28 AM IST
Inspector Ramesh More at his housing society in Bhandup; (inset) getting into a car to leave home at 10.30 am as he does almost every day
Mirror followed Inspector Ramesh More, wanted in connection with the disappearance of a witness in the 2008 Malegaon blasts case, for two days. But the CBI has told court it just can't find him.
A Mumbai police officer, who is an accused in the disappearance of a witness in the 2008 Malegaon blasts case and has the CBI looking for him for over a month now, has been moving around freely in the city and even partied this week in the housing society where his family resides in Bhandup.
Inspector Ramesh More, who along with ACP Rajan Ghule (now retired) is wanted in connection with the disappearance of Indore resident Dilip Patidar in in November 2008, visits his family every day, but takes care to spend the night in another apartment in the same housing society. He also leaves home every day around 10.30 am, returns late in the night and drives a car that is not registered in his or any of his family members' name.
But can such rudimentary precautions keep an accused out of the reach of the country's premier investigating agency? The CBI on June 3 told the Indore bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, which is hearing a case filed by Patidar's family, that they have been unable to trace More or Ghule despite their best efforts.
But here was More (see pictures) in plain sight on June 30 and July 1as a Mumbai Mirror team followed him around the city. In these pictures, he can be seen sitting in his housing society - Bhandup's Usha Complex -- and chatting calmly on his phone. The second picture shows him leaving home as he has been doing every day at around 9.30 am. The car in this picture is a Hyundai i20, MH 03 AZ 695. More changes his car every few days.
Given the pattern he follows, he should be a sitting duck for the CBI. But somehow its officers haven't been able to get anywhere near More for over a month now.
Patidar was picked up by a Maharashtra ATS team from Indore's Shantivihar Colony on November 10, 2008, two months after two bombs went off in Malegaon, killing seven people. He was brought to the Kalachowkie police station, where More and Ghule, both with the ATS then, began interrogating him. Patidar owned a property where one of the key Malegaon blasts accused, Ramji Kalsangra, had spent some time. ATS believed Patidar's testimony would strengthen the case against Kalsangra, who is absconding.
November 17, 2008 was the last time Patidar's family heard from him. Over the phone, he told his wife that there was a threat to his life and that he was being tortured in police custody. More and Ghule have maintained that they released Patidar from Kalachowkie police's custody on November 21 so that he could return with some crucial documents, but he never did.
Fearing the worst, the Patidars on November 24 filed a habeas corpus (literal translation: 'produce the body') petition at the Indore High Court. Habeas corpus is a recourse in law whereby a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment before a court.
The HC set up a team to locate him, which submitted a report saying that Patidar had gone into hiding. The family then approached the court again and in October 2010, the HC directed the CBI to investigate Patidar's disappearance.
In its first report in June 2014, the CBI accused More and Ghule of kidnapping and murdering Patidar.
The court issued an arrest warrant against the two cops in May 2016. However, a CBI team from Indore failed to find either More or Ghule in Mumbai. The report filed by the agency before the HC on June 3 said its men had checked everywhere, including the two officers' residences. The court then reissued the arrest warrant.
What is happening with More is in a way reflection of what has been happening with the main Malegaon blasts case. The National Investigating agency, after the statement of key witnesses recorded before a magistrate went missing, went back to the same witnesses and recorded fresh statements exonerating the prime accused Pragya Thakur and Lt. Col. Purohit. Instead of taking ATS's case forward, which was supported by incriminating evidence against these accused, NIA re-examined the witnesses.
Sources said More has stationed watch-keepers outside the housing society to alert him if cops arrive looking for him. He also has deployed his informers' network within the police department to keep him out of the CBI's reach.
However, a Mumbai police officer, who did not wish to be identified, said that it is impossible that everybody except CBI knows about More's whereabouts. "If the agency wants to, it can arrest him tomorrow," he said.
The Maharashtra government has rejected all requests by the CBI to prosecute the two officers, but the court's recent stance suggests the agency may no longer need the state government's approval. The court observed that the act done by the accused was something that did not form a part of their duty.
While Ghule retired from police service on May 31, More is attached to the Nagpur police commissioner's office.
A case with too many twists and turns
The 2008 Malegaon blasts case has seen quite a few twists and turns. The ATS filed a charge sheet against all the accused in 2009 including Pragya Thakur and Lt. Col. Purohit.
The case, however, was transferred to the NIA in 2011. Over four years after taking over the case, the NIA filed a supplementary charge sheet in May this year exonerating the accused of MCOCA, discharging a few others, virtually exonerating Pragya Thakur and diluting the case against Purohit.
This was based mainly on further investigation of the same witnesses whose statements were recorded by the ATS. This was preceded by statements of those witnesses going missing from the Special MCOCA court.
The court, however, while rejecting Pragya's bail application on June 28 censured the NIA for not probing her and for recording the statements of witnesses again. The court observed there were reasonable grounds to believe that the charges against her were prima facie true.
The All India Muslim
Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) will be convening a meeting, soon after the
festival of Eid next week, to formulate a response to the Law Ministry’s move
to ask the Law Commission to look into the issue of a Uniform Civil Code (UCC).
AIMPLB member
Kamal Faruqui told The Hindu that while the Board will be deposing before the
Law Commission on the matter, he was convinced that the upcoming Uttar Pradesh
Assembly polls had sparked off the current move on one of the core ideological
issues of the BJP.
Dividing voters
“The BJP is
trying to make it seem as though there is a strong case of gender justice
behind this move, but that is not so. The move is clearly aimed at the Uttar
Pradesh elections, to polarise voters on communal lines,” he said.
“Despite the
Muslim Personal Law, those wanting to avail the protections of the civil laws
governing marriage can do so under the Special Marriages Act and also have the
protection of other laws pertaining to protection of women like section 498A
that protects women against demands for dowry, torture etc,” he said.
“Now to cite a
Supreme Court comment on UCC, made eight months ago, to debate the issue is
suspect. The government behaved more than circumspectly when it came to the
practice of Santhara (voluntary death through fasting followed by the Jain
community) when the Rajasthan High Court termed it suicide. There is a double
standard in dealing with matters of faith by this government,” he said.
The Supreme
Court is still hearing the case on Santhara, after it stayed the Rajasthan high
court order deeming the practice as suicide.
Union Law
Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda and Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi
refused to comment on Mr. Faruqui’s charges.
“We have written
to the Law Commission to examine all aspects of the matter, and that is all I
am prepared to say this point,” Mr Gowda told The Hindu from Bengaluru.
Sadhvi Pragya with MP CM Shivraj Singh and Rajnath Singh.
By Abdul Bari Masoud
New Delhi: In the wake of severe remarks against the National Investigation Agency (NIA) by a Mumbai Special Court in the Malegaon blast case, the opposition Congress party on Wednesday reiterated the demand of removing NIA chief from his position immediately and re-appointment of Rohini Salian as special public prosecutor in the case. Accusing the Modi government of trying to save RSS-BJP members involved in terror cases, the party said the court remarks vindicated it observation the NIA has become ‘Namo Investigation Agency’ and lost its credibility.
Addressing media persons here, Congress Spokesperson, Shobha Oza said the Modi government is playing with the security of the nation as it has been trying to save the prime accused in the bomb blast cases having affiliation with the BJP or RSS from the day one after coming to power at the centre.
She asked that Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh should explain to the country that in their Government who is the ‘manipulative hand’ in this case and carrying out the miscarriage of justice.
It is to mention that a Special Court in Mumbai came down heavily on the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for not investigating the role of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur in the 2008 Malegaon blasts case and for re-recording of the statements of witnesses recorded earlier by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS). The court observed there were reasonable grounds to believe that the charges against her were prima facie true and rejected her bail plea.
Ironically in its charge sheet, the NIA had said there was no case made out against Sadhvi Pragya. Seven people were killed in the blast at Malegaon on September 29, 2008. Sadhvi Pragya was charged in 2009 by the ATS which said it was her motorcycle that was used to plant the bomb. On Tuesday, Special Judge S D Tekale said Sadhvi Pragya “cannot avoid her connection with the motorcycle” registered in her name and used in the blast.
The Court’s observations are a damning statement on the way the Malegaon blast case is being handled by the NIA. Earlier investigations done by the Maharashtra ATS under Martyred officer Hemant Karkare was rubbished by the NIA terming it ‘Dubious’ and ‘Questionable’. This clearly was an attempt to malign an officer of impeccable integrity.
In 2015, Rohini Salian, who was the Public Prosecutor in the Malegaon case, had spoken on affidavit that she was under pressure from the NIA to be lenient on the case. She had also filed an affidavit naming the NIA officer who had approached her. Salian was later de-notified from the panel of lawyers.
The Congress spokeswoman said now the Court has questioned the role of the NIA; the BJP and the Government at the center need to answer the following questions;
Was NIA under any pressure to play second fiddle to the BJP and its ministers?
Are sensitive cases related to national security being deliberately manipulated to undermine law and justice?
Who was behind the NIA officers who had contacted Rohini Salian, maligned Karkare and played a dangerous game? Shouldn’t there be a probe in the case in the spirit of probity and justice.
We demand that the de-notification of specific lawyers from the NIA panel be probed thoroughly and prosecutors dropped deliberately be reinstated.
In response to a question, she said why the Modi government did not make public the B K Prasad report on Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case? This government has been misleading and diverting the attention of the people from real issues by making baseless allegations, she added.
In reply to a question related to BJP president’s remark about the death of Shayma Prasad Mukherjee, Mrs. Oza said, “whether any of their organization Members had raised the question then, when earlier reports of investigation had come in, then why were they silent all these years. Now the year 2016 is going on. Where was Atal Ji’s Government? Why did they not raise this question then and get the investigation done. It is their Government in both Centre and J&K; they should answer rather than raising questions, even on Deen Dayal Upadhyay”.
Meanwhile, ex-prosecutor Rohini Salian also reacted to the scathing remarks of the court on the NIA saying “the manner NIA carried out the probe casts doubt on the very motive of their investigation and on why the case was handed to them”. She said that by dropping of serious charges under MCOCA in the case, NIA was interfering in the process of the court…. This is a fit case for NIA to hand back the probe to the ATS.
NIA meddled in Malegaon case, motive dodgy: Ex-prosecutor
Swati Deshpande
Mumbai:
A day after a special trial court came down heavily on the NIA while rejecting a bail plea of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur in the 2008 Malegaon blasts alegaon blasts case, former special public prosecutor in the case Rohini Salian said the “manner NIA car ried out the probe casts doubt on the very motive of their investigation and on why the case was handed to them“.She added that by recommending dropping of serious charges under MCOCA in the case, “NIA was interfering in the process of the court...This is a fit case for NIA to hand back the probe to the ATS,“ Salian said.
Six people died in the September 29, 2008 blast.
Sadhvi Pragya was charged in 2009 by the ATS, which said her motorcycle was used to plant a bomb.NIA took over in 2011 and in its charge sheet this March recommended that organised crime charges should go and gave the sadhvi a clean chit. Thakur had relied on the NIA charge sheet for her bail plea. Salian last year alleged she was approached by an NIA officer in June 2014 -after the NDA government took charge at the Centre -with a request to “go soft“ on the accused, including the sadhvi and Col Prasad Purohit.
The NIA had refuted the allegation. Attorney General Mukul Rohtagi had said her allegation “was baseless'' after pointing out that in the SC, four accused got bail under her watch. Salian said “that was on merit“.
On Wednesday , asked if Pragya's bail rejection vindicated her stand, Salian told TOI: “I have faith in the court. I cannot blow my trumpet but rule of law has prevailed and will continue to prevail.'' The NIA had arrested four people but delayed the charge sheet, enabling their bail, she said. “Surprisingly , the NIA has said they don't have sufficient evidence against the four and have sought their discharge, with four others including the sadhvi,“ she added.
The special NIA court judge on Tuesday questioned the agency for re-recording statements of some of the earlier witnesses. Salian expressed similar concerns. “ Apart from these new statements where the witnesses were shown to have resiled and favoured the sadhvi and some other accused, the NIA has no new material to show for its four-year probe between 2011 and 2016,“ she said.
“Giving the sadhvi a clean chit and recommending dropping of the case was not in the province of the NIA 's probe. It is the province of the court because the court had already taken cognizance in 2009 of the ATS charge sheet against all the accused, including the sadhvi,'' Salian said. “By recommending at this stage, even before charges are framed, to drop MCOCA charges, according to me, amounts to interference in court proceedings.''
What clearly got her goat as an ex-public prosecutor is that the NIA made allegations against officers of the ATS. “They accused late ATS chief Hemant Karkare and his team of being under pressure, which is not only maligning an officer who is not present to refute the charges, but it is not within their jurisdiction.'' Referring to the NIA charge that an ATS officer had planted RDX, she said: “On what basis have the NIA come to the conclusion? Can they merely cite improved statement of the accused and witness to come to this conclusion?'' “There was plenty of evidence in the ATS charge sheet against all 12 accused. The Bombay HC had restored the MCOCA charges after the special court initially dropped them, and the Supreme Court did not interfere.It only asked that the challenge to MCOCA be re-examined in the trial court at the time of framing of charges,“ said Salian.
She pointed out NIA has the power to both take over cases from other agencies and hand them back. “This is one case where they should hand back the case to the earlier agency (ATS) since it appears that they have not managed to get any evidence,'' she said.
“What is before the court now is the ATS charge sheet and ultimately the court would conduct the trial on that charge sheet,'' she added.
