An unexpected development has led to some equally unexpected consequences. After the eruption of violent protests across the Muslim world following the publication of a dozen cartoons in a Danish paper (and subsequently some other papers), the much vaunted ‘freedom of press’ seems to have come under attack in the very cradle where it was nurtured: the West. Many champions of ‘freedom of press’ (largely in the West) who would habitually denounce anything remotely seen as diluting the freedom of press (largely in the Third World) are now saying that that it is not synonymous with unbridled liberty to print politically and socially incorrect material. The impugned cartoons were reproduced in newspapers in many Western countries to express their ‘solidarity’ with the beleaguered Danish paper. But they were also reproduced in a few Muslim countries (Jordan and Malaysia) to tell their readers how repulsive the cartoons were.
The manner of expressing the ‘solidarity’ hastened apologies all round and a rethink on the ‘limits’ of the freedom enjoyed by the media. The press could not use its freedom to insult a religion or incite the feelings of a community by printing offensive cartoons, said many who were rediscovering the meaning of independence available to the media in the West. No freedom is absolute, said many others. And so the arguments have gone on. It is rather tragic that a near global spurt in violence has forced a rethink on the ‘freedom’ of the press. The reasons that have forced this ‘rethink’ existed earlier also. But, nobody in the West paid attention to these because they had not sparked off large-scale violence. The Danish paper erred grievously in satirising the Prophet, but that was not the first instance when a medium in the West had shown naked disrespect to the sentiments of people who follow an ‘oriental’ faith. Verbal protests-- not being violent—from the ‘whiners’ would be generally dismissed as something representing a typically third world raving and ranting.
That media curbs in many Third World countries are deplorable cannot be denied. But some of the voluntary measures by the media in the Third World are also ridiculed in the West. It has been a long practice in India, at least in the majority of the media, not to mention the name of the victims and specially avoid mentioning religion, in a communal clash. It may sound a bit exaggerated, but it is just possible that this practice has contributed something to keeping the communal cauldron in the country by and large from boiling over. This may be more true in Jammu and Kashmir where the terrorists’ success in driving off the minority community in the valley from their homes could have seriously endangered communal peace in the rest of the country if large sections of the media had seen it as a ‘clash of civilisation’.
If the Indian media takes care not to overplay or highlight the identity of the victims or the perpetrators in a communal clash, the media in the West relishes doing just the opposite. Listen to the much-vaunted Western radio or TV stations or read the ‘quality’ newspapers—and discover how they delight in broadcasting that so many Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs or Christians were killed in a clash. Of course, the Pakistani press also highlights the communal identity of victims if they are Muslims, but that it is a different issue altogether.
Countries like the US and the UK kill ‘terrorists’ but India kills ‘civilians’ or, at worst, ‘rebels’ or ‘separatists’, creating an impression that ‘unarmed’ people fighting for a political cause are brutally treated in India. The full scope of ‘freedom’ that the Western media enjoys and denies to other countries at times takes bizarre forms. No report from India on its current dialogue with Pakistan is considered complete unless it has referred to the fact that the ‘two nuclear-armed’ neighbours had fought several ‘wars’ over Kashmir. How will it sound if Indian media included in all its reports on any dialogue between the US or the West with Russia a reference to their 50-year Cold War during which they were often on the brink of a nuclear war that threatened peace on the entire planet.
The fact is that the West has used the freedom of press, though highly valued, as one of the political tools to denigrate the developing countries, especially those that are considered less friendly to the Western interests. Another tool of the same type comes in the shape of reports of the plethora of human rights organisations.
Again, there is no denying that upholding human rights is of utmost importance. But it cannot be done selectively. In its latest report, the London-based Amnesty International, for instance, has lamented that the US has been unlawfully detaining prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for over four years. These detainees have not been kept there as ‘enemy combatants’; they are subjected to torture and have not been tried.
The US response to the charges made by the Amnesty and similar groups is instructive. President George Bush dismisses these charges as ‘absurd’ as they are based on interviews with detainees ‘who hate America’ and who are ‘trained to lie’. There is little political pressure on the US to change its policy towards these prisoners, presumably because a large number of people, given to believe that ‘terrorists’ pose ‘an imminent’ danger to their lives, agree with Bush that ‘terrorists’ must be killed.
But ‘terrorists’, no matter what name they are given, are a more real danger to the lives of ordinary Indians and, in fact, have been for nearly 15 years. While excesses by security forces engaged in the pursuit of terrorists need not be defended, such acts are passed off as ‘collateral damage’ in the West and everybody then accepts that.
The point being made is that freedom of press and human rights are undoubtedly necessary in a civilised world their cause cannot be advanced by applying dual standards. The ills of freedom of press cannot suddenly surface when the Western world faces the fury of militant Islam and remain dormant or hidden when the victims are non-violent or violence is localised. Similarly, human right abuses cannot be ignored or even justified in the influential and powerful parts while their violation in some other parts becomes an instrument to arm-twist regimes to demand certain political concessions or more.
Courtesy : Syndicate Features
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