"So far no proof has been unearthed to label these youths as terrorists. The
media is indulging in blatant fabrication of news. What if their case too turns
out to be another Dr Mohammed Haneef case? (Haneef, who worked in Australia,
was mistakenly arrested by the Australian police after being wrongly accused of
links to a failed UK terror plot.) Let us not turn into terrorists those who
are innocent."
- Shankar Bidri, Additional director-general of police
How media demonises Muslims in war on terror
http://www.twocircles.net/2008mar07/how_media_demonises_muslims_war_terror.html
By Gauri Lankesh
Recently, three young men were arrested in Hubli and Honnali towns in the
southern Indian state of Karnataka on charges of vehicle theft. Since all of
them happened to belong to the Muslim community, within a day of their arrests,
police sources leaked to the media that they suspected the trio might be
involved in planning terrorist attacks all over the country.
This was enough to trigger a series of speculative stories in the State's
media. Every publication and television channel, without exception, went into a
competitive frenzy, all of them clamouring for a first shot at the most
'horrifying' story about the 'terrorist trio'.
Almost every reporter with imaginative talent wrote reams of articles quoting
unnamed 'reliable police sources' or 'police sources who did not want to be
named' and narrated how the three young men were planning to blow to
smithereens most of Karnataka's key buildings, such as the Vidhana Soudha,
place bombs on (predictably) the premises of IT giants Infosys and IBM,
detonate bombs in public places, destroy Hindu places of worship and so on.
What was remarkable about these reports was their contention that the three
young men had links right up to Osama bin Laden and down to the local 'sleeper
cells' of various outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the banned Students
Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). The men were also suspected of conducting
arms training in nearby forests, of flying the Pakistani flag, of possessing
RDX, of having already distributed arms and weapons to various 'sleeper cells'
across the state, of recruiting hundreds of youth to terrorist organisations,
of possessing AK-47s, of having procured Israeli manufactured arms, etc, etc,
etc.
But how much of the content of these reports, well laced with the terms
'suspected' and 'alleged', had unsubstantiated and un-sourced 'facts'
attributed to 'reliable sources'?
As citizens and discerning readers, can we merely accept in good faith that
these reports were genuine?
How much of the information carried (leaked) in these reports was a product
of the imaginative powers of local reporters? How much was fed by our
increasingly inefficient police force? How much was 'spiced' up by senior
journalists who are forever looking to increase their TRP ratings or
circulation figures?
Having already said that all these reports on the 'terrorist trio', without
exception, were sourced to 'police officials who did not want to be named', let
us look at one such report to assess how genuine the overall media reports were.
The Mangalore edition of the Kannada daily Udayavani, which adopts a marked
pro-Hindutva stance, carried a front-page report that read: "last December
Riazuddin Ghouse, Mohammed Asif, Mohammad Abubakkar and Hafeez held a secret
meeting where they condemned America's treatment of people imprisoned at Cuba's
Montessori (!) jail. A copy of the resolutions taken at the meeting has been
seized by investigating officers."
Udayavani is a leading Kannada daily with several senior journalists on its
rolls. What is surprising is that not one of them could tell the difference
between the word Montessori, used to describe a system of education, and
Guantánamo Bay, the name of the prison run by the American government in Cuba.
Apparently, in the race for 'exclusive' reports, none of them could be bothered
with such minor factual details.
Even if one were willing to overlook this rather glaring slip-up by the
reporter who filed the story and the senior journalists who okayed it, giving
it prime space on the front page, other important questions remain. For
example, since when has condemning American atrocities at Guantánamo Bay become
a crime? Does this assumption by the police mean that anyone who condemns the
unjust imprisonment of people at Guantánamo Bay is a terror suspect?
Are such questions of no importance to the local media?
Apparently not, for instead of raising these valid and significant issues,
they carried on blissfully with their 'exclusive reportage' based entirely on
police sources.
One report, which appeared in The Hindu, can be summed up thus: The fact that
one of the arrested youth claimed before the magistrate that his human rights
had been violated by the police made the magistrate suspect that he was no
ordinary youth. (Does this mean that knowledge of the Constitution, fundamental
rights and human rights are not for ordinary Indian men and women?) On the
basis of this assumption, the magistrate instructed the police to subject him
to a thorough interrogation. And that was when the terrorist links were
revealed.
Another report, this one in The Times of India, stated: A warden at the jail
became suspicious of Riazuddin Ghouse and Mohammad Abubakkar's behaviour in the
prison where they were jailed on charges of vehicle theft. The duo spoke to
each other in low voices, did namaaz five times a day, spoke to one another in
English and did not seem to show respect for the national flag when it was
hoisted in the morning.
The jail warden conveyed his suspicions to senior police officials and they
subjected the duo to interrogation. That was when the youth spilled the beans
about their terrorist plans. Had the warden not been such a keen observer of
their behaviour the men could well have been let off by the police.
These reports raise a few fundamental questions. Since when has it become a
crime to speak of human rights violations? Or speak in a low voice? Or
communicate in English? Since when has offering namaaz five times a day become
a suspect activity?
As if this were not enough, most or all of the media reported that "religious
books and material" were found in the trio's possession. The media also
'arrested' a number of students in its reports even when the police had not in
fact done so! Reporters also labelled as "having terrorist links" people who
were total strangers to the arrested trio. The list is endless. The end result
of all this 'hyperactivity' in the media was that the three arrested men were
depicted as the most dreaded terrorists this part of the world has seen in
recent times.
This reportage took place even as a senior police officer, additional
director-general of police Shankar Bidri, told a television channel:
"So far no proof has been unearthed to label these youths as terrorists. The
media is indulging in blatant fabrication of news. What if their case too turns
out to be another Dr Mohammed Haneef case? (Haneef, who worked in Australia,
was mistakenly arrested by the Australian police after being wrongly accused of
links to a failed UK terror plot.) Let us not turn into terrorists those who
are innocent."
Sadly, his words of caution fell on deaf ears as the media made merry about
Muslim terrorists.
Surely the police need to interrogate the arrested youth and the courts have
to pass their judgements before such serious conclusions are drawn? This is why
such institutions exist, why the machinery exists in our democracy. It is their
job to catch and punish the guilty. But the media seemed to have no time for
such 'niceties' of democracy or its institutions. It chose to sidestep the
process of law altogether and took it upon itself to 'investigate' the
so-called crime and then pronounced 'judgement'.
____________________________________________________________________________
(Gauri Lankesh edits an eponymous weekly in Bangalore. This article first
appeared on churumuri.com)
With Regards
Abi
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