Thursday, May 6, 2010

My thoughts on the famous swat girl flogging video and the contreversy behind it.

Watch the video below. Most readers may have already seen this video:


Firstly when I heard of this video and how "disturbing" it was, I was under the impression that it was extremely violent. After watching it, I can say this is heavily exaggerated.
I have seen more violent footage that is far more disturbing such as beadings, shootings. This simply does not compare. However wrong and unjustified it was, it can hardly be called disturbing.

This is what made me suspicious of the video in the first place after many who saw it claimed it to be disturbing.
Another thing is the flogging does not look realistic at all. The sound of the whip should be much louder and stronger; heck even movies do a better job when carrying out whipping scenes such as the Indiana Jones movies.
The "whipping" to me appears at the most tapping the stick on the girl's back.

What increased my suspicion is the huge media attention this video received worldwide, knowing that incidents like these or even worse happen almost everyday in that part of Pakistan, why did people give this incident so much attention?

From what I can see, this was done in a deliberate attempt to discredit Pakistan. Many Pakistanis and international media lashed out at the government for making deals with the Taliban.
For Pakistanis it's a routine blaming of their government weather a dictatorship or elected by them. No matter what the government does. See this post.

For others it's part of the international blame Pakistan game, even though NATO has considered peace deals with the Taliban alongside the Afghan government.

Of course, if I am wrong and the flogging was real, I do hope those behind are captured or killed in a raid on Taliban hideouts, but this incident is still being given unjust special attention than other worse incidents.

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