RIOTS VS TERRORIST ATTACKS

For the past two days and nights, the international mainstream media have been going for almost 24 hour coverage of the allegedly "unprecedented" attacks in Mumbai, emphasizing repeatedly how the targets of the terrorists seem to be western (mainly British, US and Israeli citizens). The fact that at least 81 out of the 125 dead are Indians seems to have escaped their attention. Also, a viewer of CNN or BBC may be forgiven for imagining that the attacks were confined to the smart spots in Colaba and Nariman Point. The Indian coverage of the outrages elsewhere has been much better, but you need to go and see it on the NDTV website.

Bear in mind that I may be wrong about the international media, because I haven't been watching TV for the last 48 hours continuously, so I may have missed some contrary evidence. I am commenting only on the basis of what I have seen myself.

Were these attacks really all that unprecedented? The very fact that they are being described as such is telling.

Let's compare the dead with the number of dead in other incidents. There were at least 200 dead in the riots of 1992, following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. An estimated 1500-2000 died in the riots in Gujarat in 2002, following the attack on a train carrying Hindu pilgrims, when an entire coach was set alight allegedly by Muslim rioters. (This account is disputed.)

So what really is the distinction between riots, where many more people are killed over days or even weeks, and the terrorist spectaculars, which are of shorter duration, and kill fewer people, but much more dramatically than in the riots? One of the main differences seems to be related to the class or ethnic origin of the victims. When the victims are rich or western, you can count on intensive media coverage, especially internationally. A riot on the other hand is of usually of local interest, even though the effect is more deadly. However, I do remember pretty intensive coverage of the Mumbai riots of 1992 on BBC Radio (I didn't have TV then). Or perhaps it's only my memory of the horror coming over the airwaves.

Western viewers need to be aware of this possible bias in their media.

Comments

[M. Fisherman]

Riots, state terror, or non-state terror -- all of these are calibrated differently by our ubiquitous corporate mass-media.

The wall-to-wall coverage of the recent Mumbai terrorist operation, which killed about 200 people, is a case in point. When close to 1,000,000 Tutsis were massacred by state-sponsored rioting Hutus in Rwanda in 1994, the world heard little about it at the time. The Gujarat anti-Muslim pogroms in 2002, which killed an estimated 2000 innocents, likewise received no sustained international media coverage. On the other hand, the attack on New York's World Trade Center in 2001 got everlasting media attention (the Mumbai wannabes even calling themselves India's 9/11!) while America's killing of over a million Iraqi civilians (by some estimates) in its unprovoked war on Iraq is rarely commented upon.

Israel's mass starvation and attempted extermination of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza gets no real attention, while a single, ancient rocket fired by the victims in self defense becomes a terrorist outrage! Sri Lanka's assault on Eelam Tamils yearning for political freedom on that island (which includes blockade of food, fuel and medicines copied from the brutal Israeli model) gets little if any publicity, while Tamil freedom fighters -- the Tamil Tigers -- are ostracized the world over as terrorists.