The easiest thing in this world is sitting in the comfort of your home and starting a trend with a catchy hashtag on the social media. If it becomes a trend, you have scored a sixer in cricket lingo, and of course you did your share of raising social awareness about a burning issue. Under normal circumstances, this is all fine and dandy. God forbid, if there is a horrific incident, like the one that just unfolded in the heartland of Punjab, involving an 8-year-old minor, these trends do not mean much in terms of concrete action or corrective measures.
Basically, we are an emotional nation. Everyone, from a commoner on the street to the people in power echelons, prefer a forum to express their unrestrained opinions about anything and everything. Thanks to the advent of social media, people have found a place to release their pent-up anger and frustration. The recent incident was no exception.
In any civilised country, a picture of a minor is not made public, especially of a corpse. We excel in that area too, as after all we seek nothing but the actual and unadulterated truth. No sarcasm there, as we have so much falsehood floating around, the people have no other option, but to post the gruesome pictures online. This is done to create the shock value and stir up the much-needed attention. Otherwise, no one wants to believe what they hear, regardless of how pathetic or repulsive the act is.
The photograph of the corpse lying on a pile of trash was quite heart wrenching and of course it created an immediate outrage and a series of negative emotions. There is one thing in abundant supply on our end, and that is; our raw emotions. The social media went into overdrive with a catchy hashtag demanding justice for the innocent victim. It garnered countless likes and retweets and the trend mounted almost instantaneously.
What followed was a quick flood of raw emotions full of anger and despair. It is quite natural as most parents cannot even begin to level or reason with such a possibility in their own lives. So, the reaction was natural and yours truly being a parent himself became a victim of such an emotionally moving sight.
In a civilised society, the government and its officials do not release tickers of ‘taking notice of an issue’
Some tweets started to peddle a graphic of the young girl sitting on a swing and the killer’s body hanging underneath with the rope of the swing around his neck. Next, there was a photograph of an Iranian convict, which was shared. He was given a death sentence, for a similar crime in Iran, after a speedy trial and his body hung from the fork of the crane. This was shared to demonstrate how our brotherly neighbour dealt with such an incident and what we ought to do in this scenario.
The traditional tube that feeds off the social media nowadays, picked on this story and sacrificed their daily dose of political theatrics. The sombre violin, some poem somewhere, were added to give the package the right tone and effects. The politicos did their point scoring as usual, blaming each other for the poor governance, lack of law and order and morality and so on and so forth.
Lest we forget, any and everyone, in any tad bit of position of power, “took prompt notice” of this and demanded a speedy inquiry. The stern demand of perpetrators to be brought to justice was played and replayed. The incumbents gave the impression, that investigations were underway and any details would jeopardise the ongoing process. The anchors on the tube read lengthy monologues, and condemned such brutality with a renewed vigour in their utterances.
Kindly accept my profound and unconditional apologies, for the lines that are about to follow, in advance. All of this, will die down in a day or two, whether it is the traditional or social media. There will be new hashtags, perhaps in a day or two, on a new chaos or a disaster that we will experience. People will word their emotions, on the discussion boards, Facebook walls and Twitter time lines. Our attention span has a very limited capacity and each new day brings a new hashtag of some other injustice or atrocity. The previous one remains unresolved and the new one is added to the ever-growing list.
The idea here is not to add despair, but the idea here is to be realistic. The reality unfortunately is quite ruthless and brutally honest. This is not some emotional rhetoric. This is an honest assessment of our capacity based on our inglorious past. In a civilised society, the government and its officials do not release tickers of “taking notice of an issue.” The law enforcement agencies act promptly and the culprits are brought to justice. Justice is dispensed and dispensed in an equitable manner. People have faith in their institutions and had that faith been alive here, no hashtags, and no hue nor any cry was needed.
The writer is a Pakistani-US mortgage banker. He can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @dasghar
Published in Daily Times, January 14th 2018.