On the 16th of February, an IS suicide bomber entered the gates of the Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine in the town of Sehwan Sharif, Pakistan. He stood amongst devotees and detonated his bomb, killing at least 73 innocent people. On Friday, the floors of the shrine were covered in blood as families mourned their losses. Amidst the dead were a number of children.
Last year, 70 people were killed in a suicide bombing at a hospital in Quetta– all of the deceased were lawyers.
The entire nation is on high security alert and they are scrambling to prevent anymore attacks. The authorities have been forced to institute extreme action against threats, and citizens are terrified. They are living in fear of worldwide terrorists.
We live in a world of social media and instant messaging, so when a country suffers such loss, humans stand in support. We offer help and comfort. Hash tags trend, tributes are prepared, and these countries receive worldwide coverage. At least, that is what usually happens…
What were the hash tags for these Pakistan attacks? Did the world #PrayForPakistan? Where is the global outrage at the tragic loss of human lives? The world has churned out a few articles on this attack, but where are the front page headlines? Where are the so-called humanitarians who were so eager to offer help to other countries? Where is the solidarity? The same media, that publicly denounces Trump’s racist comments, ignores these deaths in favor of celebrity news and first world politics. All lives don’t really matter, do they?
This is an entirely new level of hypocrisy and discrimination. It seems that the media has adopted a standard policy, in which terrorist attacks only deserve to be noticed when they occur in certain nations. Clearly, the deaths of Pakistani innocents are not as important as Donald Trump’s ‘Last night in Sweden’ statement.
While the world is living in blissful ignorance, innocent people are dying. Pakistan has become one of the most underreported conflict zones in the world, and the world’s lack of empathy does not help to shed a light on these tragedies.
The lack of global reaction to Pakistan’s plight is shocking, but it is not the first time that this occurred. This has happened almost every time a Middle Eastern, or African, country suffered through a tragedy. Is it typical of the media to ignore anything that happens in the Middle East and Africa? Aleppo’s cry for help was ignored for so long, Egypt’s political crisis was sidelined, and when 200 Nigerian girls were kidnapped by a terrorist group, it took a while for the world to notice. In fact, Kanye West visiting Trump Towers was more talked about than any of these tragedies.
Perhaps we are too preoccupied with Donald Trump to notice that the world around us is in trouble. The media dictates what we know, and the media doesn’t really care about most things…
