9 is not 11
Arundhati
Roy writes in the outlook about the differences between the Mumbai attacks and the 9-11 attacks in the U.S. She also critically analyzes the media that is calling for a police state in India.
9 Is Not 11
(8 of 8)
He
has taken to naming, demonising and openly heckling people who have
dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces. My name
and the name of the well-known lawyerPrashant Bhushan have come up several times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab Goswami turned to the camera; "Arundhati Roy and Prashant Bhushan
," he said, "I hope you are watching this. We think you are
disgusting." For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged and
as frenzied as the one that prevails today amounts to incitement as
well as threat, and would probably in different circumstances have cost
a journalist his or her job.
So according to a man aspiring to
be India's next prime minister, and another who is the public face of a
mainstream TV channel, citizens have no right to raise questions about
the police. This in a country with a shadowy history of suspicious
terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake 'encounters'. This in a
country that boasts of the highest number of custodial deaths in the
world and yet refuses to ratify the International Covenant on Torture.
A country where the ones who make it to torture chambers are the lucky
ones because at least they've escaped being 'encountered' by our
encounter specialists. A country where the line between the Underworld
and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not exist.
How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of all of this view the Mumbai
attacks, and what are we to do about them? There are those who point
out that US strategy has been successful inasmuch as the United States
has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11. However,
some would say that what America is suffering now is far worse. If the
idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing
its true colours, what greater success could the terrorists have asked
for? The US army is bogged down in twounwinnable wars, which have made
the United States the most hated country in the world. Those wars have
contributed greatly to the unravelling of the American economy and, who
knows, perhaps eventually the American empire. (Could it be that
battered, bombed Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will
be the undoing of this one too?) Hundreds of thousands of people,
including thousands of American soldiers, have lost their lives in Iraq
and Afghanistan. The frequency of terrorist strikes on US allies/agents
(including India) and US interests in the rest of the world has
increased dramatically since 9/11. George Bush, the man who led the US
response to 9/11, is a despised figure not just internationally but
also by his own people. Who can possibly claim that the United States
is winning the war on terror?
Homeland security has cost the US
government billions of dollars. Few countries, certainly not India, can
afford that sort of price tag. But even if we could, the fact is that
this vast homeland of ours cannot be secured or policed in the way the
United States has been. It's not that kind of homeland. We have a
hostile nuclear weapons state that is slowly spinning out of control as
a neighbour, we have a military occupation in Kashmir, and a shamefully
persecuted, impoverished minority of more than a hundred and fifty
million Muslims who are being targeted as a community and pushed to the
wall, whose young see no justice on the horizon, and who, were they to
totally lose hope and radicalise, end up as a threat not just to India,
but to the whole world. If 10 men can hold off theNSG commandos and the
police for three days, and if it takes half-a-million soldiers to hold
down the Kashmir Valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security
can secure India?
Nor for that matter will any other quick
fix.Anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists; they're for
people that governments don't like. That's why they have a conviction
rate of less than two per cent. They're just a means of putting
inconvenient people away without bail for a long time and eventually
letting them go. Terrorists like those who attackedMumbai are hardly likely to be deterred by the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to death. It's what they want.
What we're experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet's squelching under our feet.
The
only way to contain (it would be naive to say end) terrorism is to look
at the monster in the mirror. We're standing at a fork in the road. One
sign says 'Justice', the other 'Civil War'. There's no third sign and
there's no going back. Choose.
Roy writes in the outlook about the differences between the Mumbai attacks and the 9-11 attacks in the U.S. She also critically analyzes the media that is calling for a police state in India.
9 Is Not 11
(8 of 8)
He
has taken to naming, demonising and openly heckling people who have
dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces. My name
and the name of the well-known lawyerPrashant Bhushan have come up several times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab Goswami turned to the camera; "Arundhati Roy and Prashant Bhushan
," he said, "I hope you are watching this. We think you are
disgusting." For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged and
as frenzied as the one that prevails today amounts to incitement as
well as threat, and would probably in different circumstances have cost
a journalist his or her job.
So according to a man aspiring to
be India's next prime minister, and another who is the public face of a
mainstream TV channel, citizens have no right to raise questions about
the police. This in a country with a shadowy history of suspicious
terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake 'encounters'. This in a
country that boasts of the highest number of custodial deaths in the
world and yet refuses to ratify the International Covenant on Torture.
A country where the ones who make it to torture chambers are the lucky
ones because at least they've escaped being 'encountered' by our
encounter specialists. A country where the line between the Underworld
and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not exist.
How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of all of this view the Mumbai
attacks, and what are we to do about them? There are those who point
out that US strategy has been successful inasmuch as the United States
has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11. However,
some would say that what America is suffering now is far worse. If the
idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing
its true colours, what greater success could the terrorists have asked
for? The US army is bogged down in twounwinnable wars, which have made
the United States the most hated country in the world. Those wars have
contributed greatly to the unravelling of the American economy and, who
knows, perhaps eventually the American empire. (Could it be that
battered, bombed Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will
be the undoing of this one too?) Hundreds of thousands of people,
including thousands of American soldiers, have lost their lives in Iraq
and Afghanistan. The frequency of terrorist strikes on US allies/agents
(including India) and US interests in the rest of the world has
increased dramatically since 9/11. George Bush, the man who led the US
response to 9/11, is a despised figure not just internationally but
also by his own people. Who can possibly claim that the United States
is winning the war on terror?
Homeland security has cost the US
government billions of dollars. Few countries, certainly not India, can
afford that sort of price tag. But even if we could, the fact is that
this vast homeland of ours cannot be secured or policed in the way the
United States has been. It's not that kind of homeland. We have a
hostile nuclear weapons state that is slowly spinning out of control as
a neighbour, we have a military occupation in Kashmir, and a shamefully
persecuted, impoverished minority of more than a hundred and fifty
million Muslims who are being targeted as a community and pushed to the
wall, whose young see no justice on the horizon, and who, were they to
totally lose hope and radicalise, end up as a threat not just to India,
but to the whole world. If 10 men can hold off theNSG commandos and the
police for three days, and if it takes half-a-million soldiers to hold
down the Kashmir Valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security
can secure India?
Nor for that matter will any other quick
fix.Anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists; they're for
people that governments don't like. That's why they have a conviction
rate of less than two per cent. They're just a means of putting
inconvenient people away without bail for a long time and eventually
letting them go. Terrorists like those who attackedMumbai are hardly likely to be deterred by the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to death. It's what they want.
What we're experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet's squelching under our feet.
The
only way to contain (it would be naive to say end) terrorism is to look
at the monster in the mirror. We're standing at a fork in the road. One
sign says 'Justice', the other 'Civil War'. There's no third sign and
there's no going back. Choose.
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