Mass-Murder on CCTV
CCTV clips now give us an unprecedented ringside view of blasts, blood and carnage, making voyeurs of us all. The suicide bombers of the Southasian Northwest tend to blow themselves up in public spaces or secured spots that have close-circuit television cameras as a matter of course. Such video sentinels do little to prevent the carnage, but do provide us with graphic real-time playback of the last tragic moments of the unfortunate victims.
At the Marriot Hotel blast in Islamabad, 20 September 2008, a truck comes to a halt at the gate. There is a small explosion and resultant fire in the driver’s compartment. The guards scatter, then mill about in confusion. One comes up with a fire extinguisher and gingerly starts spraying the cabin. Then the blast happens.
At the gates of the Peshawar Press Club on 22 December, Tuesday, three men are talking in the slanting sunshine. A man walks up to the gate, and constable Riaz Uddin goes up to check him out. The on-screen clock turns 22:45:17 (undoubtedly set wrong) the detonation takes place and flying dust immediately covers the screen. A side camera shows the wildly swinging gates after the blast, no one is left standing.
A week later, on 28 December, a CCTV camera looking down over the M.A. Jinnah Road in Karachi shows the Ashura procession, thousands walking calmly down the boulevard. The front row is about 100 across, full of banners. The mass reaches back as far as the camera’s eye can see. The procession approaches a traffic crossing. Suddenly, about fifty or so deep in the crowd, on the far side, a blast erupts. It rips through the crowd, the dazed procession survivors scatter, and a momentary mushroom cloud develops overhead.
Given such easily available CCTV footage, we are now provided with access to images of blasts that kill and maim, without actually viewing the blood and gore. The very nature of the footage tends to maintain a distance between the victims and the onlookers – there is no zoom nor pan from the automated camera. All of that is left to the television reporters that will arrive before long. Alongside, private television channels manage to get the publicly held CCTV footage to the public in no time, while the victims are still being rushed to hospital.
Just as warfare by remote-controlled drones has been introduced to the world through Northwest Southasia, so has this new way of viewing carnage become specific (thus far) to the Subcontinent. One question arises in my mind, it must give the planners of these gruesome killings of the innocent through suicide bombers a macabre sense of achievement. These mass murderers are able to see the success of their project almost as it is carried out. At the same time, the public gets to see the graphic horror of a suicide bomber at work.
Is it appropriate to broadcast CCTV footage of bomb blasts? I think not, because it provides murderers a sense of gruesome fulfilment and probably whets their appetite for more.
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