Guest post by YOUSUF SAEED
I am utterly shocked and pained to read about the violent rally that many Muslims took out at Azad Maidan in Mumbai on 11 August 2012 in protest against the recent communal carnage in Assam and Burma. More than the accidental death of two men and 50 injured in yesterday’s protest, what alarmed me was the public anger targeted on the media for “not reporting about the violence against Muslims in Assam and Myanmar”. Several vans of TV channels and their equipment were smashed or burnt besides a number of police vehicles destroyed. Of course, the authorities are still probing as to who really began the violence in an otherwise peaceful rally (and we are open to the results of such a probe). But my worst fear came true with this assertion of one of the protesters in a newspaper report: “Why is the media not covering Burma and Assam? We learnt about the incidents from videos posted on the Internet.” This seems to be a very disturbing statement on various accounts. Of course, the media can sometimes be biased, and the Muslims do feel victimised by it all the time. But are the random videos and images posted on the Internet any less biased or misleading?
Some of you may have recently noticed a number of gory and blood-soaked images being forwarded and shared on various social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter that claim to show the dead bodies of “20,000 Muslims butchered in Burma in the hands of Buddhists” along with the assertion that the world’s media is silent about the plight of Muslims in Burma and so on. Most of those images are really disturbing, capable of making anyone’s blood boil. Some show mounds of rotting dead bodies and a few Buddhist monks standing near them. Some even looked digitally tempered with to enhance their anti-Muslim violence. But there was no sign of where these images were sourced from. A couple of them even had Jama’t-e Islami, Pakistan, stamped on them. But if, as the people posting them claim, the world’s media is silent about the Muslim carnage in Burma, how did these images and the disturbing news come from Burma in the first place? Where did they find them before posting? I asked this question to many friends sharing these images and they didn’t have a clue. They simply believed in what they saw. In fact, from the Internet these pictures were picked up by many Urdu newspapers from Mumbai, Hyderabad and Delhi and printed with inflammatory titles and headlines. Many new caricatures and info-graphics started appearing on Facebook ridiculing the “peaceful” image of Buddhists or the “silence” of Burmese leader Aung Suu Kyi on the carnage of Rohingya Muslims and so on.
Many of us were sceptical of these images and knew something was wrong. Some images do show the facial features of the victims to be Mongoloid, but that doesn’t prove they are from Burma. In any case, most Rohingya Muslims are not clearly Mongoloid – some look like Bangladeshi. With some investigation it was revealed that almost none of the gory images titled “Muslim slaughter in Burma” were actually from Burma. They came from different sources, mostly showing people killed in natural disasters in China, Thailand and even self-immolation attempts by Tibetans. The best investigation of these fake pictures was made by Faraz Ahmed in a blog of the Express Tribune newspaper from Pakistan (“Social media is lying to you about Burma’s Muslim ‘cleansing’”), where he busted the myth about 3-4 of the most circulated of such images, tracing their origins in China, Thailand and Tibet. One image actually shows Buddhist monks cremating thousands of people killed in a Chinese earthquake. In fact, a few images of dead bodies or people escaping from violent situations are clearly from places like Syria or Africa. The only authentic images of the affected Rohingya Muslims are those showing them in the boats waiting to enter Bangladesh. Nevertheless, many of our Muslim friends in India, Pakistan and other places continued to post and share such fake and fabricated images, adding more and more vitriolic comments on them to spread hatred against Buddists. I and a few friends even tried to bust these postings by warning them about the fake pictures, but our efforts had little impact.
I must clarify that I am not denying the killing and persecution of Muslims in Burma. I did some research as to what exactly happened and how many Muslims were really affected. Contrary to the popular belief that the world’s media and human rights fraternity is silent about Burma’s Muslim carnage, I did find a lot of detailed reporting and analysis of the human rights violation (including from Al Jazeera, BBC and New York Times, though very little from India), which ironically very few protesting Muslims may have read. The most comprehensive report on this has been brought out in August 2012 by the American organisation, Human Rights Watch, titled, “The Government Could Have Stopped This – Sectarian Violence and Ensuing Abuses in Burma’s Arakan State” (.pdf here). This 57-page report states that it was communal violence between Rohingya Muslims and ethnic Arakan Buddhists which took the life of 78 people (according to government figures) – a number that includes both communities. Many villages of both communities were torched and over 100,000 people were displaced from their homes. But there is clearly no mention of 20,000 or more Muslims butchered as claimed by many on Facebook.
Of course, none of the protesters read these detailed and balanced reports. For them the fake pictures of blood and gore were provocative enough to come to the streets. This is not the first time that social networking has been used to a large extent to bring people on the streets. We have seen more revolutionary uses of Facebook in the case of overthrowing of regimes in Egypt and other Arab countries. But to start a communal riot using visual rumours is not the most desirable uses of the Internet. If you study social networking sites deeply, especially if you have a wide range of ‘friends’ including the possible rumour-mongers, you may find postings that are deliberately trying to provoke in one way or the other. Just yesterday I found on Facebook a photo showing cut-up and mutilated body parts of two dead women lying in a forest, with a caption saying “Wake-up Hindus. These are bodies of Hindu girls who were raped and killed by Mullahs”. Of course, this image has been “liked” and shared by thousands of people throwing choicest of abuses on Muslims. But no one tried to reason out that there is no proof that the picture actually shows dead Hindu girls – there is not even any indication of where and when this picture was taken. But for a new generation of net-savvy youngsters (some of whom may have come to Mumbai’s streets yesterday), simply seeing on Facebook is believing. I shudder to think that such rabble-rousing use of the Internet might increase especially when some people realise that such an action can have practical repercussions. We have seen that in almost all communal riots, people deliberately initiated nasty rumours just to “have some fun”. But in the past, rumours spread in localised areas by word of mouth, whereas today it is possible to spread hate-filled messages over large areas of the world within seconds. The spread of Burma’s fake images has even allowed the Tehreek-e Taliban of Pakistan to issue a threat to Burmese people, and it needs to be taken seriously.
We don’t know if there is a ready solution to this menace. Censorship of the Internet as suggested by some (especially in the Indian government) is clearly not the answer since that may suppress even some of the harmless content. But what is definitely required is advocacy amongst net-users on how to read online content more critically. Unlike in the more conventional media such as newspapers, TV or radio, its possible today for anyone to ‘track-back’ any content posted on the Internet to see where it originated from. For instance Google’s reverse image search allows you track who may have originally posted a certain image and who manipulated it later. Just a few days ago an Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung published a photo showing a Syrian couple with a baby escaping from a bombed building. Later, it turned out that they had cut-out the couple and the baby from an earlier photo and morphed it on the image of a ruined building, just for the effect! Hence, media manipulation by big and small players is here to stay. The only way one can avert possible riots and violent mobbing is to stop believing (and forwarding) everything that is posted online and investigate how true a picture is, and most importantly, where it came from.
(Yousuf Saeed is a Delhi-based independent filmmaker and author, working on themes of peace and shared cultural traditions in south Asia.)
See also:
- Ayesha Siddiqa: National contestation, not religion, is responsible for the plight of Rohingyas
- Express Tribune: Bangladesh bans foreign charities helping Rohingyas
- The Hindu: Myanmar refugees find safe haven in Hyderabad
- TwoCircles.net: Mumbai violence:Protest organisers issue statement
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 
Dear Yousuf, I liked your post and agree with it. People are often quick to jump to conclusions because of suspicion and preconceived ideas about themselves, their identities and each other. While there is no denying of the fact that Muslims have been a target of persecution by the society and the media, but I have observed that often the media, especially newspapers, sometimes some self styled activists and groups and now
internet also play on these fear and security and create a siege mentality. Similarly, anti-Muslim feelings are fanned by unnecessarily exaggerating certain actions whose contexts were not at all communal. However, I was wondering are the Assam violence anti-Muslim or an ethnic conflict? i stand corrected but I feel it is the latter and efforts are made to give it a communal colouring.
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Glad to see some intellectual discussion finally hovering the internet. It is sick how political goons color every conflict as ‘communal’ and spread hate. We as educated individuals should be more responsible in sharing stuff online or reacting to one posted.
Also, everyone reading this post should share it ahead. Thanks,
Intekhab
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I think Ranjeeta is absolutely right to ask whether the conflicts in both Burma between the Arakanese and Rohingya as well as in Assam between Bodos and Bengali Muslims are really ‘religious conflicts’ or in fact ethnic ones. In both contexts you have primarily indigenous tribal people coming into violent conflict with migrant settler communities. In Burma the conflict is at least a century old with the early Burmese nationalists, in the period of British colonial rule, demanding a ban on marriage of Buddhist women to non-Buddhist men because of their perception that a large number of women in the Arakans were being married to migrant Bengali men and then left behind as single mothers. In 1938 such an act was indeed passed, marking the first major ‘victory’ of the nationalists during colonial rule. The history of violent clashes between the Arakanese and Rohingyas is also at least a century old and nothing new. The irony of it all of course is that the Rohingyas (who are comprised of those who can today be called ‘Bangladeshis’ along with a large population of those born to Bengali Muslim fathers and Arakanese women) are not welcome at all in Bangladesh where local folk have often burnt down their refugee camps and hounded them out of the country.
The problem with both mainstream and social media is their depiction of the confict as being between Buddhists and Muslims whereas it is really a clash between natives and migrant settlers. Such a clash would have happened irrespective of the religious beliefs of the two groups involved. In Assam before the recent clash with the Bengali speaking Muslims the Bodos had a severe conflict with the migrant Adivasi populations who comprise bulk of the tea garden workers in the area. The media’s lazy labelling of populations in terms of their religious denominations, irrespective of the relevance of such identities in a particular context, should be condemned. It is unprofessional, unethical and as we know now from the recent Mumbai experience needlessly provocative.
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I realy apreciat ur eforts on d research.Just hope,Allah aman wapas le aye!
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Dear Yousuf
Very thought provoking piece. I do think there has been a resounding media silence in India on the issue of the Rohingyas, although less so on Assam. I too was shocked to see the images on Facebook, but did not forward any of them as I was in doubt about its veracity. This doubt was kindled by the clearly inciteful messages that accompanied the pictures. However, while I see your piece as an excellent demonstration of the lies that are easily spread through social media, I’m not sure if it is convincing where it comes to demonstrating that the Mumbai Riots version August 2012 were fuelled by social media. But thanks for the article.
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Interestingly it was recently sighted on Facebook picture of a random woman sitting and preparing cereals to wash them before cook and someone had morphed Ms. Pratibha Patil’s face on her, with a caption saying she actually was a maid in the Gandhi family and rose to ranks to finally become the President. It was shocking and clearly fake as this creative designer of ours has also attached Ms. Patil’s original picture that he has morphed. Silly how people promote such propaganda and dumb junta just ‘likes’ or shares it ahead.
Also the migration of Orkut junta to Facebook (which ultimately had to happen) further distorts the view online.
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Very Good Article Yousuf I wish you also had added a few other fake pictures which are making rounds on Fb. There is one picture where some Buddhist monks are shown around dead bodies that picture is of Earth quake and is passed of as dead Rohingas killed by Buddhists.
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Thank you Yousuf, an apt and much needed article to put things in perspective. I completely agree that all the incidents of violence, Assam, Mumbai, Burma …and all others should be condemned and ‘Justice’ whatever that means should be ensured to the victims. The effects of such online behaviour of spreading forwards, is being felt in Pune also where students and professional from North east are being attacked by street mobs. and an environment of fear and unease being spread.
In this I also sense a very strong voyeuristic pleasure that people derive from forwarding such ghastly untruths apart from the insidious motive of spreading fear, anger and emotional upsurge.
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“But to start a communal riot using visual rumours is not the most desirable uses of the Internet”.” That, surely, is the understatement of the week.
It is true, as Nityanand says, that one can’t be certain if the Mumbai Riots of August 2012 were fuelled wholly by social media, but the pernicious role played by internet fora, social networks, microblogs etc in fanning the flames of hatred whenever possible is well documented. (Anticipatory Bail Alert: Social media doesn’t kill people. People kill people).
Do you really need to “study social networking sites deeply” to find postings that are designed to provoke? I could suggest a few search keywords (which, out of deference to our readers and IPC 499, I won’t) that will bring forth a googol of postings that could make your blood boil, or run cold, or your hair stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine. While the evil scum that infests the net should, of course, have their comeuppance, it’s the attitude of the ‘intermediaries’ — google, facebook, twitter, youtube et al — that really amazes me. They stand around gazing innocently into the middle distance, twiddling their thumbs and whistling short snatches of Article 19, while disclaiming all responsibility for the vile but profitable crap that fertilizes their pages.
How long, I wonder, before a malevolent jerk with an internet connection unleashes carnage somewhere in India. By the way, Yousuf, if a new generation, some of whom may have been on Mumbai’s streets last week, thinks that “simply seeing on Facebook is believing”, they aren’t what we call ‘net-savvy’. They are what we call ‘brain-dead’.
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Dear Nityanand, Sajan and all others
Thanks for your comments. Just wanted to add that I didn’t go too much into detail about how this particular incident in Mumbai may have been a direct result of Internet-rumours, although I did mention the quote of a protester who saw the internet videos. I should have emphasised that there is a Muslim public sphere comprising of discourses like Urdu newspapers, Friday sermons from mosques, Muslim mailing lists, and casual conversations in Muslim public spaces, some of which I have been observing for some weeks, and they are discussing these pictures. From there what one overhears about Burma Muslim carnage are exact descriptions of the purported photographs: “The Buddhists put 20,000 Muslims in a row on the ground and simply slaughtered them in one go – you can see in the photos”. The second statement is always about the “inability of the mainstream media to properly investigate and reveal the real facts about Burma and Assam”. You can see these exact comments on Facebook as well as yesterday’s sound bytes in the news. I think these days the appearance of any content “on the Internet” provides a new sense of credibility to it among a large number of people. But of course, for this incident there may have been a lot of past baggage – disgruntlement of Muslims with media and the war-on-terror etc. which brought them to the street to indulge in violence. One should also note that the organizers of the rally (Raza Academy) have been surprised and upset by the turnout and violence. They had arranged chairs for people to sit on and listen to the speeches. According to them the violence was unleashed by some uninvited miscreants.
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I still can’t understand why the media is not covering this? They just covered the violence near Azad Maidan and those burning flames of police and media vehicles!!!
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Dear Yousuf, thanks for starting this really well timed debate and thanks for the article. I am on your side as far as questions of harmony and communal well being go. But I am still trying to grapple with a series of questions- the critique reminded me of the magic bullet theory of communication I read many years ago at MCRC and as soon as we studied it, we also saw its pitfalls-that we can deduce behavior of any group based purely on what media images do to people. And images have been mediated even before the age of photoshop arrived. To begin with, the very act of producing an authentic image is a mediated act. To say that certain groups are posting images that can catalyze riots is to say that there is a direct cause-effect relationship between the image and the viewer when actually there could be innumerable other factors.
To begin with, why is it that the problematic narrative of fundamentalism, victimhood and Islam become a global narrative? Why is it that images of other disasters are feeding into this? What are the other images that have marked this narrative before we came to inhabit this point? I don’t think some facebook pictures could spark a riot in a world where resources were adequately distributed, civil systems of social securities and liberties worked to ensure adequate representation and inclusion. In that case, these images would have stood out for their pure fictiveness- which they actually are and partially are not.
But again, I feel a strange guilt because even though I have my reasons, I am equally unsettled with the idea that those images are constantly being made and uploaded and someone is watching them.
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Dear Ambarien, thanks for your comments. I have made a quick clarification above (in reply to Sajan etc.) that I do see a connection between the purported images and the Mumbai rally, especially if you have been observing the Urdu newspapers from Mumbai and Hyderabad that printed the facebook pictures without verifying them. They definitely helped in the rabble-rousing of some kind. But of course, I also mentioned earlier that for this incident there may have been a lot of past baggage – a simmering disgruntlement of Muslims with media and the war-on-terror etc. which brought them to the street to indulge in violence. The pictures may have only put fuel to that disgruntlement.
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Many of the images floating around on FB of the so-called slaughter of Burmese Muslims by Buddhists are actually not of Burmese but of Tibetans doing what they call a sky-burial for dead Tibetan Buddhists. There is no wood available in the Tibetan highlands so they dismember corpses and, like Parsis, feed to the vultures.
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I don’t know if its wise to ban “provocative” images on the internet, but one can at least “report” them to Facebook admin or whichever site they are posted on. Facebook does take action if many people report these images. Also, it is the duty of many of us who see things critically to stop the passage of such nasty content on the net by simply making interventions on postings, discussions and forums and change the tide.
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When such incident happens because ignorant people, an entire community will be blamed.
Anyways even if they any one has to protest, they should do it in a peaceful way.
If they damage public properties here or violently kill few more causing a havoc here, did that make any justice to anyone? what can be achieved by killing, injuring some other people who are not even responsible for all these in our country. These people embarrass the normal people of that community in front of the world.
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Thank God some one has guts to bring out truth. It is high time people don’t play in the hands of politicians since they are only interested in power game and least bothered about the welfare and improvement of any individual.
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Sometimes it is wise not to be a ” Begaani shaadimein Abdulla diwanaa ! “
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if that is the ugly impact of social media on our socio-political structure then sumthng substantial must be done to “enlighten” people!
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I Just feel bad what happen is against the humanity and lawlessness i just pray god that we to bring the peace in the world
BTW this media and politicians are biggest corrupted
they just know to play the double standardize
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Just pray to bring peace all over the world
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I just don’t believe the police version that the fire arms were stolen from them. Also what was the need to open fire on the mob which were ransacking public properties which were only a handful 10 – 15% of the total crowd gathered in azad maidan.
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Dear Sadique,
What do you suggest police to do (instead of opening fire) when the mob starts ransacking public properties? \’Crawling on their knees with folded hands and begging for mercy\’ from these brain-dead hominids?
And what % of miscreants in a crowd would be acceptable to you for the police to open firing at them?
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Thanks Yousuf, & congrates for clearing the air which is very polluted with all type of communal news these days.The islamic flag waving boy during that Mumbai Morcha is shown as that they are waving Pakistani flag, busy spreading hatrate only..where all the messanger of LOVE & PEACE have dissapeared…?
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