Everyone across the globe aspires for a world free from war. Of course, the scourge of war inflicts most suffering on common people, those who rarely ever have anything to do with the wars.
However, when it comes to realpolitik, our wishful thinking and utopian dreams take the backseat, and we are compelled to accept the fact that there have been wars, there are wars ongoing, and there will be wars as long as “pseudo-democracy” is at work and the actual decisions are being made by a handful of megalomaniacs.
But there is one thing that we could expect from the general public all across the world -- not to differentiate between wars in different parts of the world and the people that suffer from those wars. Unfortunately, even this expectation is too much if we keep in mind the biased reaction to wars and the suffering wars bring from a large group of the Western public who live under the toxic influence of one-eyed media.
Currently, we are witnessing a classification of good wars as “humanitarian interventions” and bad wars as “illegal invasion.”
European countries are accepting refugees from Ukraine with open arms. In fact, that’s how countries should act in times of a humanitarian crisis.
However, when one recalls the attitude these same countries showed to the refugees fleeing the war zones of Syria and other Middle Eastern countries, there comes a big question mark. Although there has been much discussion about the hypocritical attitude of the Western media towards the war in Ukraine, in my conviction, this should not really shock anyone anymore considering the reality of the world and how things work.
I happened to have watched a former Ukrainian deputy prosecutor saying how emotional he became when he saw white blue-eyed Europeans fleeing their homes and becoming refugees. Another journalist wrote in the Telegraph how shocking it is for him to see “people that look like him” suffering.
Of course, then, to see “people that don’t look like him” suffering is not so shocking; it won't be a misinterpretation of what he had to say. CBS reporter Charlie D’Agata commented about Ukraine being more “civilized” than Iraq or Afghanistan. His remark surely has a certain amusement value to the audience who have some minimum awareness about history.
No matter how unpleasant and immoral it may sound, it is well established in practice that the value of the life of any individual from the Global North is much higher than that of someone from the Global South.
When a soldier from the Global North is killed in any country of the Global South, say Afghanistan, the immediate retaliation kills hundreds of innocents who didn’t have any remote link with any sort of war or killing.
As long as we devalue human lives based on the regions they belong to, their race, skin colour, or religion, then the attempt to classify wars and refugees is the most expected and normal outcome.
When it is about playing down on certain wars and atrocities, we need to look back at history. The sufferings of the people of the European race have always been presented with more delicacy and sorrow than anyone else’s.
We are told that the horrific crimes of the Holocaust are the most brutal example of human cruelty in history. Undoubtedly war crimes that were committed by the Nazis were hideous. But, those who are curious about history can find plenty of other horrendous acts of crime and extermination campaigns run against the native population of the European colonies which are no less dreadful than the Holocaust.
The reason that those genocides don’t win in competition with the Holocaust is that the victims of those atrocities did not belong to any stronger race or higher-grade race, borrowing Winston Churchill's expression for addressing the Native Americans and the Aboriginals of Australia. The Holocaust was carried out in the continent of Europe itself against the Europeans. Many people may not even know about the massacre of about 10 million Congolese people by Leopold II of Belgium -- for it was in Africa against the Africans, a not so “strong” race.
The mindset that differentiates between sufferers of the Holocaust and the colonial genocides is the same one that regards white Ukrainian refugees as more acceptable than the Syrian ones. Those whose voices remain silent in the course of “humanitarian intervention” in the Middle East but extremely vocal during an “act of invasion” in Ukraine are not anti-war pacifists, nor are they concerned about human rights of any sort.
These are the most pro-war people, the only matter of concern to them is upon whom the war is waged, as long as the sufferers “don’t look like them,” everything else is acceptable.
Ratnadeep Toorja is a Software Programmer by profession, musician and amateur writer by passion.
