The terrorist attack on the Tunisian city of Sousse has received understandably widespread coverage. Thirty nine people were killed, including thirty Britons. By contrast, the massacre of 164 civilians in the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani received hardly any attention. Here's an excellent article by Patrick Cockburn exploring the reasons:
Cockburn writes:
"The lack of international attention is explained by the fact that
people worldwide have become inured to horrible things happening in the
wars in Iraq and Syria. They are desensitised by seeing so many pictures
of children killed or maimed by Isis suicide bombers or government
barrel bombs. They no longer respond to such news and regard it rather
as a permanent if regrettable part of the region’s political landscape. This [is] “atrocity fatigue”..."
One aspect to the atrocities that receives even less coverage is the destruction of cultural heritage in both Syria and Iraq. Imagine the [British] outrage if terrorists demolished Stonehenge or St Paul's Cathedral. Yet ISIS routinely destroys sites of cultural heritage in Syria and Iraq, as the United Nations detailed in its 2014 report: click here for details of sites destroyed in Syria, including Palmyra. The United Nations Security Council did adopt a Resolution (2199) in February 2015, which condemns the destruction of cultural heritage and adopts legally-binding measures
to counter illicit trafficking of antiquities and cultural objects from
Iraq and Syria.
One wonders what impact such a Resolution can have given the fanaticism of ISIS: as the UN Security Council's report says, their brutal extremism and terrorism poses a clear threat to international peace and security. Heritage receives less attention, but is yet another casualty of ISIS's clerical fascism.
No comments:
Post a Comment