Why is it that only the genuinely functioning democracies are held accountable for their failures by the global community, while totalitarian and fundamentalist regimes are given huge leeway to continue with policies that exact a massive toll in terms of human lives and suffering? There are countries like China and Russia that exercise such strict control over the media and even the means of communication that people, their own and elsewhere, do not even know what is really going on within these societies. It is almost as if an attempt is being consciously made to undermine democratic countries by holding them to much stricter standards. On the other hand, though, when it comes to levelling allegations and making demands on international forums such as the United Nations, these renegade nations are given equal voice and weightage.
Pakistan is always vocal about events in Kashmir, for instance, but consider its own record on human rights. What it did in the then East Pakistan is amongst the most well recorded sagas of genocide in modern times, but not only has this been wiped from popular memory in that country, but a counter-narrative has been established of denial and justification. It has for decades now patronised terrorists to carry on proxy wars against India and Afghanistan. It has put down rebellions in FATA – where extra-judicial killings have taken place of ‘disappeared’ persons in the thousands – Baluchistan and Sindh with a brutality possible only when an absolute free hand is allowed to the men in khaki.
Then there is the larger battle going on between Sunnis and Shias on a large number of fronts in the Islamic World, with a coalition led by Saudi Arabia, on the one hand, and Iran and its proxies, on the other. What is happening in Syria is there for all to see, with dozens of groups fighting each other in a free for all. Deaths number in the thousands, every year, mostly of civilians, women and children. Iraq’s war with ISIS continues and has taken a heavy toll. The world’s big powers are funding and arming all kinds of groups in the attempt to acquire influence and deny others a foothold. The ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas is based, essentially, on religion.
Why these double standards? How should a democracy like India respond? India should be promoted as a role model for all these struggling societies, but is projected – ironically by its own intelligentsia – as a chronic human rights violator. This is an injustice that must be opposed in every possible way with energy and determination, if there is to be genuine peace in the world.
