Over the top

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.

By Iqbal Khattak

Sometimes jokes turn serious. Constable Riazuddin Khan was popular among Peshawar’s journalist community for being loyal and dutiful, although such cops are a rare species in the Frontier Police. “Riaz, you know this building is under threat and you must be very watchful to deny suicide bomber of any opportunity to hit us right at our home,” I jokingly said while leaving the club premises some three weeks back.

“Don’t worry, sir jee. The (suicide) bomber will not reach you as long as I guard this building. He has to go over my dead body,” Constable Riazuddin Khan assured me. He proved it on Tuesday December 22 when this brave cop gave his life to stop a barbarous man having wrapped 10 kilograms of explosives and metals around his body from killing as many journalists as could have been possible on that day.

Had this bomber been able to sneak into the Peshawar Press Club building, he would have killed dozens of journalists who had just arrived to attend news conferences that normally start from mid-day. The 10 kilograms of explosives were good enough to raze this two-storey building to the ground. It would have been a massacre had the bomber managed to reach the target.

There is no single eye not tearful and there is no single journalist having not been moved by the bravery this police officer displayed when he sacrificed own life to save the lives of journalists.

Riaz was not seen as simply a cop guarding our press club; he was embraced as a member of the journalist community. Every time his service was transferred to other places, the journalists used their sources in the official machinery to get his positioning reversed and have him brought back.

With Muharram security beef-up, he was transferred again to guard an Imambargah in Peshawar. How could journalists release him this time when such transfers were reversed every time in the past? He returned to the press club duty the same fatal day.

In Southasia, police are notorious for being corrupt, rude, undutiful and poorly-behaved. Until recently, there cannot be many who say they are proud of the police. At least I can say this about Pakistan. It may be the case in many other Southasian countries too. However, the public perception of police is changing in Peshawar. And the change is taking place because these underpaid law-enforces are taking the brunt of terrorist attacks in Pakistan these days. On a number of occasions, the cops have stopped bombers from reaching their targets. On Thursday, the Peshawar police once again foiled the nefarious design of a group of terrorists when they obstructed a bomber from reaching his target, forcing him to blow himself up prematurely.

Such spirit on part of the police also makes society resilient. If a society refuses to surrender to the terrorists who bomb public places, media, worship places and funeral processions it becomes easier to defeat terrorism.

Journalists are scratching their heads trying to reach a conclusion what this attack on the press club in Peshawar symbolized. One group of journalists sitting in one corner of the club lawn believes the terrorists now make no distinction between combatant and non-combatants. The other group of journalists says the terrorists are killing innocent men, women and children in desperation as the territory they were holding is being taken back gradually since operations in Swat, South Waziristan and other places are meeting with success quicker than expected.

But it would be the sacrifices of Riaz and many of his colleagues to render terrorism defeated. Riaz is no longer with use, but each moment he had spent will be remembered by the journalist community. We owe our lives to his sacrifice. Now it is payback time.

SEE ALSO: [RAW FOOTAGE] Peshawar Press Club attack: Journalism under threat for Himal Southasia’s response to the attack and the raw CCTV footage of the suicide bombing.

On Tuesday 22 December, a suicide bomber nonchalantly walked into the compound of the Peshawar Press Club and, when his passage is obstructed by constable Riaz Uddin, detonates himself. The blast killed three people and injured dozens others, among them staff of the press club, journalists and the police constable himself who paid with his life for his service. The news hit us just as we were going to press, but it was an event that is impossible and unforgivable to ignore. It highlights the danger that reporters place themselves in the pursuit of their work, especially in Peshawar. Below we excerpt our commentary on the event from our upcoming January issue.

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Journalism under threat

The rest of the media fraternity in Southasia does not fully realise how dangerous some parts of the region are for those who seek to uphold independent journalism. Sri Lanka, the Indian Northeast, Kashmir and Nepal beyond the Kathmandu Valley are areas where the threat to life and limb are very real. Himal was reminded of this when a member of our editorial board, Manisha Aryal, narrowly escaped the 9 June blast in the Pearl Continental in Peshawar, because she was in the other wing of the hotel. On 22 December, in the first-ever direct attack on journalists in Pakistan, a suicide bomber detonated a bomb that ripped into the Peshawar Press Club, where our Contributing Editor Iqbal Khattak is a regular. Khurram Pervez of The News, and staff of the Press Club were injured. Himal contributor Manzoor Ali Shah also happened to be in the building. We salute police constable Riaz Uddin who sacrificed his life trying to save the journalists inside, and wish all journalists in Peshawar a quick recovery from the trauma in a part of Southasia that is becoming more dangerous to journalists by the day.

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Himal contributing editor from Peshawar, Iqbal Khattak, has obtained CCTV footage of the event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dXhGkhdePc

It’s interesting how the recent Fox News footage (of Glenn Beck) created a furor about insulting India. Nobody should feel insulted by Fox, but if they should, I think it’s an insult to the whole developing world, of which rising powers like Brazil, China and India are the new strong voices. Over the top has already seen a very good post by Vijay Vikram on this topic.

I am most interested in the response of New Delhi and Bombay’s well-informed and critical middle class. The kind whose progeny slobber at the mention of American higher education and Subway. Remember, this is a class that lethally combines a post-colonial hunger for Western approval with an almost unmatched intolerance for irony and sarcasm in the English language…
There has never been any doubt that the social base of the Republican Party comprises of moose-hunting neo-Palinites whose primary political impulse is centered around childbirth and gun control rather than relations with rising Asia.

Personally, I think that Fox News should be ignored and if possible ridiculed. Not only Fox, but there many other (some say almost all, and I happen to agree partially) American media beat around the bush in order in order to keep the audience from concentrating on “the issues.” Some sections of the American liberals have expressed worry about the situation and guessed that without proactive actions, soon there would be no mainstream liberal media outlet left in the States.

Back to the topic. This piece of video raises many questions.

• Notice the tone, laugh, and facial expression of the anchor as he uses certain words, like “India.” He calls Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Zimbabwe (and Copenhagen, if I heard correctly, though it’s not a country) “stupid countries.” He even says that the river Ganges sounds like a disease.
• For such a great country and people like America, I wish they had something/someone better to represent them in front of the International audience. With a decreasing American might, un-winnable wars and economic crisis, Beck and Fox certainly don’t help change the rest of the world’s perception of Americans as stupid.
• Talking of stupidity, the most ridiculous part of the video is when Beck goes to the board to compare Indian and American income levels. He compares the income of just-out-of-college Indian doctor with a well earning American doctor. He’d better got back to school and understand that such comparisons based on USD or exchange rates are very inaccurate. Comparing in terms of Purchasing Power Parity, one can perhaps have a better quality of life in India with $5000 than with $150000.
• Becks suggests that the high cost of health care in America is because of its high-tech hospitals, good doctors and all. Sure they have excellent manpower and facilities, but is an analysis of US health-care system complete without mentioning how much the private insurance companies keep for themselves? He doesn’t fail to mention though that a reason for high costs in US is because of the payments for laborers. Instead of comparing with a developing economy like India, one can get a better perspective by comparing the costs with some countries with comparable level of technical and economic progress. These charts compare the costs of private health-care plans of the US with other industrial countries like France and Germany.
• Becks should probably be thankful to the goods and services he gets from the developing world including India and China that have helped his country cope with an economic crisis that was aggravated by the “best of managers” who went to Harvard and Yale.

Right wing American media’s similar derogatory depiction of South Asia, its heritages and culture isn’t new. India, China and other countries happen to be at the receiving end because of their rising stature. All of Southasia and the developing world share the brunt of such tactics.

How do you think the Southasians need to deal (or challenge) with it? Please let your views be known in the comments.

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Edited: The first few words of the second last paragraph were: “American (and Western in general) media’s… ” I edited after reading Joseph’s comment (2nd comment in this post).
Here is my response to his comment.

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An astonishing video has been brought to my attention thanks to the persipacious Southasian diaspora at Sepia Mutiny. Glenn Beck, who is some sort of Mormon preacher on FOX news and a darling of the American working class appears on screen to wag a finger at India for our lack of flushed toilets and clean Gangas.

The culture of offence-taking that pervades modern Western society has ensured that the guardians of India’s cultural heritage residing in the United States have already emerged to roundly condemn and take pious offence at Glenn Beck’s “ignorant” comments. Professor Amardeep Singh of Sepia Mutiny with the aid of CIA World Factbook argues – “about 1.2 billion people are likely to deem [the comments] to be offensive and tasteless.” Yes, Professor Singh, I wager the Telanganites have already begun burning hastily-crafted effigies of Mr Beck as I type.

The NRI’s have taken offence. But, how long will it take for this to snowball into a political controversy back in the motherland? I am most interested in the response of New Delhi and Bombay’s well-informed and critical middle class. The kind whose progeny slobber at the mention of American higher education and Subway. Remember, this is a class that lethally combines a post-colonial hunger for Western approval with an almost unmatched intolerance for irony and sarcasm in the English language. These are the people of course, who dragged diplomatic bon vivant-raconteur Shashi Tharoor from the highest perches of 5 star luxury to Kerala House for daring to play around with the holy cows of India’s political class.

There has never been any doubt that the social base of the Republican Party comprises of moose-hunting neo-Palinites whose primary political impulse is centered around childbirth and gun control rather than relations with rising Asia. On a serious note, Glenn Beck’s criticism of Indian sanitary practices does not in any way reflect the content of the relationship between Republican security hawks and India’s strategic establishment. As the affable Ashley Tellis once pointed out, both have an interest in limiting the influence of the Middle Kingdom on the Asian continent.

Update: The US-India Political Action Committee (USINPAC) issues a press release “condemning” Glenn Beck and demanding an apology from him and FOX News.

- Vijay Vikram