[Reader-list] Manufacturing complicity: Paramakudi killings

[anoop kumar]

Please share this widely
Manufacturing complicity: Paramakudi
killings<http://roundtableindia.co.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3670:manufacturing-complicity&catid=119:feature&Itemid=132>

*http://tinyurl.com/687trr3*

....................

What is the media trying to do? It is not trying to whitewash the Paramakudi
massacre. It is trying to tell you that* it was necessary*. *What the police
faced were a violent 'mob', and 'miscreants'. They were unreasonable
'protestors' who wouldn't 'negotiate'. They were anarchic 'agitators' whose
cause was so vague that it wasn't worth mentioning. *

The media is trying to tell you: how can anyone point fingers at a regime
and its policing arm for trying to defend themselves against such faceless,
nameless, irrational agitators?

...........................

It was clear they wished to play down the enormity of the bloodbath from the
beginning.

First, they said two were killed. Then the figure became three, and five.
And then six. Now they say: seven. Have you seen any pictures of any of the
seven? Or were their names mentioned anywhere in the English news stories?
Brahminized 'national' media which breaks news about suspects even before
bombs have gone off, has been uniformly imprecise and reticent on who
exactly were killed in Paramakudi on the September 11th. Two days ago, now.

What is the media trying to do? It is not trying to whitewash the Paramakudi
massacre. It is trying to tell you that* it was necessary*. *What the police
faced were a violent 'mob', and 'miscreants'. They were unreasonable
'protestors' who wouldn't 'negotiate'. They were anarchic 'agitators' whose
cause was so vague that it wasn't worth mentioning. *

The media is trying to tell you: how can anyone point fingers at a regime
and its policing arm for trying to defend themselves against such faceless,
nameless, irrational agitators?

A full day after the killings, read the Hindustan
Times<http://www.hindustantimes.com/rssfeed/TamilNadu/TN-police-firing-CM-orders-probe-but-defends-action/Article1-744682.aspx>,
or NDTV<http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/6-dead-in-police-firing-jayalalithaa-fights-criticism-132861>,
or The Times of
India<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Tamil-Nadu-police-firing-Toll-rises-to-six/articleshow/9957890.cms>,
or DNA<http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_chidambaram-hopes-police-will-handle-people-s-stir-carefully_1586270>,
or Zee News<http://zeenews.india.com/news/tamil-nadu/tn-jaya-orders-judicial-probe-into-firing-case_731144.html>.
Do the 'agitators' remain any less nameless, faceless and inexcusable? Do
you see or read about any of those who had been killed, or injured or
detained? Do you hear the other side at all? Do you see the victims?

The media has still not found any facts or evidence to extenuate the
'crimes' of the agitators. It seems to be as certain about their culpability
as on the day the killings happened. When the killings were happening. Even
before the killings happened, as evident from the coverage of the news
relating to the event in the days leading up to it. The coverage talked
ominously of 'tension' in the 'caste-sensitive' region, consistently.

*Expect 'tension' when the Dalits seek to gather and remember a martyr*. And
whenever or wherever they seek to assert themselves and claim their rights?
Dalit assertion is abnormal and disruptive, but caste oppression is
normalized as 'caste-sensitivity'. Over the years, mainstream discourse
around Immanuel Sekaran's
memorial<http://roundtableindia.co.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3659:remembering-immanuel-sekaran&catid=119:feature&Itemid=132>
has
tried to insinuate that it is 'tension-ridden'. This has helped feed
anxieties over 'security', and thereby paved the way for a militaristic
response, every year, to this annual assertion of democratic rights, or more
accurately, *this annual assertion of the right to claim democratic rights*
.

How much 'tension' was created at Raj Ghat or how many shots were fired at
Ram Lila maidan recently when bigots of various hues, shapes and sizes
gathered there? The police were not even allowed to carry lathis, we're
told. *Expect peace whenever and wherever the savarnas and their upper
shudra acolytes gather*. Even if it is to express open and unbridled
contempt for India's parliament and constitution. From the redoubtable
Parivar to outfits like 'Krantikari Manuwadi Samaj Dal': the media and the
self-anointed alternative media found none of them disruptive or sources of
'tension'.

Much ground was prepared before these killings. Lakhs have gathered every
year in Paramakudi, on that particular day, to observe Thyagi Immanuel
Sekaran's death anniversary. Over a million were expected this year. Over a
million people from the most marginalized section of the country. People who
found in Immanuel Sekaran's example enough inspiration and courage to stand
upto the everyday denial of rights through the rest of the year. Paramakudi
could only have been a source of peace for them, the 'tension' was all of
the oppressors' making.

The tension was their way of restraining, isolating and severely impairing
the movement towards assertion. It was the administration, it's obvious,
which created tension through its efforts to make the event as tough as
possible for the participants: through its efforts to find excuses for
draconian restrictions on the proposed gathering by blaming a Dalit boy for
alleged attempts to vitiate the atmosphere and detaining leaders who wished
to participate in the event by imputing 'political' motives to them. Note
how a writ petition had to be filed before the Madras High
Court<http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamilnadu/article2416812.ece>
seeking
basic facilities at the event, just a few days before the memorial day. The
petitioner said: 'This happens every year due to lack of pre-planning and
draconian refusal to accord permission to open food stalls and other public
service centres by the respondents (Ramanathapuram Collector and
Superintendent of Police)'.

*'This happens every year*'. Yes, the ground had been prepared for long.

This is quite clear from the Chief Minister's almost off-hand initial
response defending her killer policemen.

This is also quite clear from the way the media primed itself to 'cover' the
event. Check the photographs: do you notice any picture in which you could
say the photographer tried to take an objective view of the terrible events
unfolding before him? Is there any picture among the lot which seems to lean
towards those who actually faced the bullets, empathizes with them? On the
other hand, it's quite clear from most of the pictures whose side he was on.
Literally, sometimes. Check also the interesting captions, implicitly
endorsing the police actions against the 'mob', the 'miscreants' etc.

They've been quite clear in their methods and intentions. We have to be
clear on what's justice.  Justice isn't going to be served by picking on the
footsoldiers, the hands that pulled the trigger. It demands the heads behind
them.



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"Rosa sat so Martin could walk; Martin walked so Obama could run, Obama ran
so your children can fly"