- Pakistan: Shia Target Killings Continue (via globalvoices)
Source cites 18 killed on 23 February and 9 killed on 3 April, additionally. Another source (via social media) cites four total incidents of targeted Shia killings.
@sheerazhaider: #ShiaKilling This is 4th time in 4 months,1st one kosistan,2nd chelas,3rd manwar gilgit,and last babusar naraan today.CJP Are You Awake?
Two other sources (via social media) call out the labeling of the targeted killing (as Shia or Sunni).
@AnjumKiani: if u want to call it a #ShiaGenocide then call It, If u want to term it as a #SunniGenocide Do it. For me its a #MuslimGenocide. #Gilgit
One of which accuses Khawarji (also as spelled Khawariji) Muslims of the killings. The best my research can determine, the Kharijites differ from Sunni and Shia Muslims in their former belief in the leadership of ‘final Rashidun Caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib, the son-in-law and cousin of the Islamic prophet Muhammad’. The wiki says something about condemning other Muslims to death for differing beliefs, but the wiki cannot be verified.
@javhb: RT @AnjumKiani: The 16 martyred in #Gilgit by Khawarji terrorist were neither 16 Sunni’s or 16 Shia’s, They were Pakistani Muslims. Full Stop!
Two things occur to me:
- The pervasive ‘Western’ (and ‘ignorant’) belief that Muslims kill each other over religious differences, and that this sort of genocide and war have been occurring for centuries. This perspective justifies inaction as a historical derivation.
- Genocide is genocide. Past, present, and future, it’s still genocide. Many of us (who have become global activists via social networking) reject the predominant ‘Western’ justification of such genocide and call for action.
I’d like to use this terrible event to propose (and possibly reinforce) a multi-agency perspective to global awareness and action. I mean agency in the historical institutionalist sense, as possessing the capacity to affect action.
(1) Syria, Rwanda, the DRC, Chechnya, etc, demonstrate that international organizations like the United Nations fail to manage and prevent such conflict; I argue this is likely because of (domestic) political reasons, rather than international structural design, but this is a separate discussion. (2) Amnesty International, Medicines Sans Frontiers, various NGOs have had more success at managing on the ground conflict; but they are often victims of conflict themselves and receive little protection from ‘global governance’ institutions. (3) Finally, social media (Facebook, Twitter, Avaaz, blogs) provide on the ground, verifiable information and necessary clarification about on-going conflict; they engage global communities and provide mechanisms for action and support but are also unsupported by global institutions.
What I am trying to convey is that we (as global scholars and activists) have been just as divided about international governance and the prevention (and subsequent intervention) of genocide. If we keep approaching governance, peace-keeping, global activism in these differing camps (1-3 above), we do little to quiet the rumors that international awareness and activism have been ineffectual for decades and will continue to be. …I’m drawing an analogy.
When I was interviewing at the WTO, an interviewee suggested that the WTO perspective of global governance has the UN at the top of the triangle, the WTO to one side, and the World Bank and the IMF to the other side (peace-keeping, trade, and banking/development - the three pillars of global governance).
I propose another triangle of global governance. With global institutions like the UN at the top, NGOs to one side, and global citizens (via social networking) to the other (institutions, NGOs, and citizens - the three pillars of global governance all in advocacy for peace-keeping and development). This conceptualization isn’t ‘new’ or ‘novel’, but it’s another example of how academia and activism unite to inform institutional and private-sector responses to international conflict and crises.
Something there’s been much too little of in this century.
