Our shared history on this planet is witness to the fact that some victims are more worthy than others. The favoured victims then must be superior in some sense; therefore, their suffering accounts for more sympathy, and their damage requires more reparation and recognition. They must be remembered, and their documented torment must be etched into the fabric of global pedagogy, contrary to those who remain mere casualties of war, the inevitable sacrifices to a greater cause.
What I want to ask is, to borrow the phrase from Orwell, why are some more equal than others? Why does the killing of one group raise higher alarms and threaten humanity more than other groups? And lastly, how long will the international community keep making this distinction rooted in bias and bigotry?
The most recent example of this dynamic in action has been the genocide in Gaza, which, for all intents and purposes in mainstream media, started after the attack by Hamas on 7 October 2023. Albeit the Nakba happened in 1948, when 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes, and many were massacred by Zionist militias, thus consolidating Israel’s apartheid system.
UN Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s report on Occupied Palestine found sixty countries actively aiding Israel in carrying out this horrid tragedy. The Israeli government and its global abettors follow the same mindset that was voiced by Aharon Haliva, ex-Israeli Intelligence Chief, who brazenly said, “For every person on 7 October, 50 Palestinians must die. It doesn’t matter now if they are children.” The bigotry is shamelessly exposed, and so is the chilling and staggering difference in the treatment of the victims.
This phenomenon of moral apathy towards ‘the others’ is an exercise practised since Western colonialism and modern imperialism took shape. The exploiters and the looters would not want to be remembered as such; thus, they adorn themselves as saviours of the savages. In their context, other cultures are threatening, inhumane, and immoral. The irony appears when, while they preach lessons of morality and decency, they plunder and steal valuable resources, commit atrocities against natives to whom those resources belong, and then pat themselves on the back for a job well done.
Let us unmask these thieves, shall we? Belgian King Leopold II, in 1885, took private possession of foreign land in Central Africa, killing millions in the Democratic Republic of Congo during his rule, calling it the ‘Congo Free State’. At the Berlin Conference, he disguised himself as a philanthropist who would bring Africans out of the dark ages, upon which European leaders granted him freedom to carry out his ideas.
However, predictably so, he forced people into labour, including children, to squeeze all kinds of natural resources from their land. There was mass rape, mutilation, and genocide of the African inhabitants. His colonisation resulted in the exploitation of an entire people that leaving a system of deeply entrenched destabilisation of the state. Estimates claim that around 10 million Africans were murdered in the slave colonies created by Leopold II.
The Prime Minister of Cape Colony in 1890, Cecil John Rhodes, carried out similar barbarity in his own fiefdom. His policies in the South African region, now called Zimbabwe and Zambia, caused unimaginable harm to indigenous Black Africans. He also forced labour, stole African earth minerals, and instituted mass violence. He appropriated not only resources but the land of the people for white settlers, whilst promoting racial segregation with policies like the Franchise and Ballot Act (1892) and the Glen Grey Act (1894). His killings of the indigenous people are estimated at around 20,000. His rule established policies of apartheid that became the foundation for the future of South Africa.
Tolerance ought to stay reserved for peaceful coexistence, not for being bulldozed into perpetual subservience. Despite the mainstream narrative control, be intolerant of disrespect towards your culture
Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Britain during the 1943 Bengal Famine, caused millions to die due to his imperial policies and racial disdain for Indians. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen mentions in his book Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation that rice was available during the famine, and it was the colonial regime’s greed under the guise of the denial policy that deprived civilians of this basic sustenance, while making significant capital in trade. Similarly, a study in February 2019 in the Geophysical Research Letters provided scientific reasoning for Churchill’s policy failures, causing this cataclysm. Around 3 million Indians died in this famine of 1943.
The invasion of Iraq in 2003, by President George Bush of the United States, was the first link in a chain of dismantling attacks on the Middle East. Iraq alone saw gratuitous violence and about half a million deaths of Iraqi civilians. War crimes in other targeted countries of the Middle East followed suit. The bombardments in this region caused immediate death and destruction while fuelling sectarian surges and creating extremist groups that would exacerbate volatility in the global order for years to come. American-made radicalisation now falls on the shoulders of all Muslims of the world. Thus, we see Muslims today constantly trying to debunk the Islamophobia that has been unleashed through propaganda and policy coups of the West.
In the current age, talk about victims of Hitler and 9/11 remains common knowledge, at the tip of everyone’s tongue, but the non-Western victims, more precisely, people of colour, are easily sidelined or forgotten. The ubiquitous popular culture, cinema, citations in media, all lead to the mentions of Nazi atrocities and Jewish hardship, or the tragedy of the Twin Towers that shall never be forgotten. Why the seclusion? What about the Africans, the Indians, the Iraqis, the Sudanese, the Yemenis, the Syrians, and so on? All victims, regardless of their race, religion, or ethnicity, deserve the same recognition and restitution as everyone else.
The way Germany continues to pay damages to Holocaust survivors even today, the victims of other genocides and mass ruin should also be compensated. The way the United States never lets a day pass without mention of the 9/11 horror, the vile events of American imperialism should also be named and recognised for what they produced. And for emphasis, understand that Germany is paying Israel’s Holocaust survivors while the government of Israel ravages innocent Palestinians and refuses to let humanitarian aid reach them.
The US keeps invoking battling terrorism to prevent another 9/11 while leaving other sovereign nations in complete chaos. It does not matter that it is American terrorism that causes irreparable harm, far larger in scope and scale. That is the double standard we are up against. We must decide to urgently deracinate these narratives rooted in Western superiority from our minds.
To answer the question I posed in the title, unworthy victims are made by whitewashing history through one-sided written accounts and media production that enforces perceptions in favour of one particular group. How impotent can our education system and media consumption be that we only focus on certain types of victims and make the popular rhetoric entirely prejudiced in favour of them?
This imbalance and indignity should send us all into conniptions, urging us to take control of the flawed narrative, to want better for our future generations and for ourselves. Tolerance ought to stay reserved for peaceful coexistence, not for being bulldozed into perpetual subservience. Despite the mainstream narrative control, be intolerant of disrespect towards your culture. Stand up for yourselves by proudly reclaiming your history and reciting those that are left unnamed, because that is the only means to achieve freedom today. In the words of Faiz Ahmed Faiz:
Bol, ke lab azaad hai tere
Bol, zabaan ab tak teri hai,
Tera sutwan jism hai tera
Bol, ke jaan ab tak teri hai.