[\u00abThe killing of Jean Charles de Menezes\u00bb:http:\/\/electroniciraq.net\/news\/printer2074.shtml], por Ali Abunimah, \u00abElectronic Iraq\u00bb:http:\/\/electroniciraq.net\/news\/index.shtml<\/p>\n
Since news broke that London police cornered a young man on the floor of an Underground train, and, in full view of other passengers, pumped five bullets into his head as he lay on the ground, I have been following the reports with increasing anger and sadness. The four bomb attacks on London on July 7 caused enormous carnage and fear. The attempted follow-up attacks the day before the subway shooting only added to the tension.
\nIn this context, reactions to the killing were muted even after it became known that the dead man was a 27-year-old Brazilian immigrant named Jean Charles de Menezes totally unconnected with any terrorist plot. This caution then seems understandable, and that is prescisely the problem. The fact is that in Western societies, collective guilt for brown people is second-nature. We hardly notice it. There are always plenty of people ready to justify, to understand the \u00abdifficult\u00bb position of the police. But I just can’t believe that all things being equal, de Menezes would be dead if he had blond hair and blue eyes. Perhaps if he had emerged from his house looking like David Beckham, one of the officers would have said, \u00abhang on, are we sure we are watching the right house?\u00bb Someone might have asked one additional question that would have stopped the chain of events that ended with five bullets in a young man’s head.
\n(…)
\nThere is one crucial fact that has been stunningly absent from all the analysis. De Menezes was a brown man. He could have passed for an Arab or perhaps a Pakistani. To those who pursued and killed him, he must have looked the part of a suicide terrorist. After all, it doesn’t appear the police knew anything else about him, even though they had almost 24 hours to find out.
\n(…)
\nAs the authorities fighting the \u00abwar on terror\u00bb claim more and more leeway, Muslim communities feel greater pressure. It is now de rigeur to demand that Muslims living in the west \u00abdo more\u00bb to root out extremism. Yes, we must all do our part. But it is not clear to me why a British Muslim, who works as a nurse, a bus driver or an accountant, has a greater responsibility or ability to fight Muslim extremists than an ordinary white British youth has to fight the rising tide of racism from groups like the British National Party. The responsibility ought to be the same, and yet it isn’t. Muslims are increasingly held collectively responsible for whatever any other Muslim says or does, while members of the dominant society are always allowed their individuality and autonomy. White youths who get involved in anti-racism campaigns are sometimes lauded, but the vast majority who don’t are certainly not condemned.
\nOn June 28, an Israeli soldier was convicted in the killing of Tom Hurndall, an unarmed 23-year-old British peace activist, shot while he was assisting Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip in April 2003. Hurndall’s death was only a rare example of hundreds of such killings by the Israeli army to lead to a trial and conviction. Initially, Israel lied that Hurndall had been armed. \u00abIt took months and months and a lot of pushing by the Hurndall family and the British military attach\u00e9 before [the investigation] got going,\u00bb said Jessica Montell director of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. The problem is that Israel is a country where the tactics of the army are widely justified and rationalized as being the necessary actions of hard-pressed soldiers loyally protecting the country against ruthless terrorists. And the army is allowed to investigate itself. When the victim of these actions is a young westerner like Tom Hurndall, rather than a faceless, nameless Arab, the balloon of impunity can be briefly punctured.
\nOver the weekend, the Brazlian foreign minister Celso Amorim arrived in London to add his government’s full weight to the demands for an independent investigation of de Menezes’ killing. It remains to be seen whether the British government will demonstrate the same accountability they demanded of Israel, or whether the attitude that a state defending its citizens against terrorism is entitled do anything it wants with impunity has already sunk in too deeply.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[\u00abThe killing of Jean Charles de Menezes\u00bb:http:\/\/electroniciraq.net\/news\/printer2074.shtml], por Ali Abunimah, \u00abElectronic Iraq\u00bb:http:\/\/electroniciraq.net\/news\/index.shtml Since news broke that London police cornered a young man on the floor of an Underground train, and, in full view of other passengers, pumped five bullets into his head as he lay on the ground, I have been following the reports with… Leer m\u00e1s »Racismo soterrado<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-revista-de-prensa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/junjan.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/junjan.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/junjan.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/junjan.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/junjan.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/junjan.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/junjan.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/junjan.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/junjan.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}