I AM A CHARLIE BUT NOT A BAGA
The world witnessed two major incidents of terrorist violence during the first fortnight of this month. The global response to the two tragedies was entirely different.
First, the incident that is very well known. On Wednesday, the 7th of the month, two Islamic terrorists stormed the office of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, known for its cartoons lampooning established institutions and religions, including Islam and killed 12 staff members of the weekly. Later five more civilians lost their lives. It led to one of the biggest deployment of security forces in France to hunt the killers and other terrorists holding hostages in a market.
The country mourned and received condolence messages from all over the world. There was a huge outpouring of sympathy for victims and anger against the deed and the doers. The incident also gave rise to some racial hatred, with Twitter going viral with the message “kick them out”.
“I am Charlie” became a sign of defiance and shared aims. The eventful week ended with an estimated 3.7 million people marching on the streets in a show of unity and solidarity. The world leaders from more than 40 countries, including the British Prime Minister, German Chancellor, EU President, Israeli Prime Minister, Palestinian President and Jordan King participated in the unity march, enthusing the French President to declare “Today, Paris is the capital of the world.” The event became so big and important that the US administration felt sorry for not sending a higher ranking representative to the unity march.
Now, come to the second incident that occurred in Nigeria. Boko Haram, a well known Jihadi insurgent group operating in that country, stormed a small town called Baga and indiscriminately killed civilians. According to Amnesty International, 2000 persons were killed in the attack that began on January 3, making it the “deadliest attack in the militant’s six-year insurgency.” The town was virtually "wiped off the map."
The tragedy of Baga was thus much bigger that what happened in Paris. Now, how did the world react?
Compared to Paris, the calamity of Baga was virtually ignored by the governments in almost all countries. One did not hear of many condolence messages being received by the government or people in Nigeria. In fact, the funniest part of the episode is that while the Nigerian President sent condolence message for the victims of Paris, he is alleged to have remained silent on the depredations of Boko Haram in Baga. The Nigerian government has failed to deal with the insurgent group effectively and has often been accused of hiding its failure by reducing the intensity of Boko Haram’s violent activities and the resultant loss of life and property suffered by its people. This lack of transparency was also noticed in the handling of the incident of kidnapping of school girls. Does it, however, mean that the quality of state involvement in dealing with a crisis situation will determine how the rest of the world will react to it? It is for the governments in the advanced countries to answer this question.
Differences in the incidence and frequency of such incidents is probably an important factor in showing how the world will respond. What happened in Paris was an occasional incident as compared to the violence by Boko Haram, which occurs often enough to be considered normal and routine.
Besides the governments, the international media also did not pay adequate heed to what happened at Baga. If Paris saw a deluge of media coverage, Baga suffered a draught, which led someone to raise a very pertinent question: “Is one massacre more newsworthy than another?” If one is guided by the scale of disaster suffered by two places, Baga should have received more media coverage than Paris, but that did not happen. Why?
One explanation given is that Paris is easily accessible, has enough communication facilities and is less risky as compared to Baga. This argument is not very convincing, as journalists have reported from more inaccessible and risky areas than Baga. In fact, some of the best media reportage has come from war zones and conflict ridden spots. We also talk of the present world as a globalised and a shrunk place. In such a world, one cannot regard any area as isolated and neglect one’s professional duty to cover events there.
How then does one explain the neglect by the international community and the media to the ugly tragedy of Baga as compared to the way they treated the event at Paris? In my view, there are two main explanations. One is that response to the violence in Paris was inspired by the lofty principle of freedom of expression, which is an important pillar on which the democratic world rests. Any negligence towards upholding this principle shakes its very foundations. That is why all the debate that took place in different countries following the Paris massacre focused mainly on the need to espouse and defend the right to freedom of expression. No such exalted code triggered off the violence at Baga.
While the first explanation sounds admirable, the second one is somewhat base. An unbiased examination leads to an unavoidable conclusion that an element of racism did play a part in shaping the response to the two events. As someone commented rightly: “Nigerians are black Africans. French are predominantly white Europeans. Somewhere in those two statements is an explanation as to why there was much more concern over the death of 17 people in Paris and zero concern over the deaths of 2000 people in Baga.” This bias was supplemented by the rich and poor or the strong and weak divide that existed between the two countries.
