Filming Violence: Like Gaza, Like Jos North

By

Khicingwe W. Simji

kwsimji@yahoo.co.uk

 

 

Gaza is seaport and the capital city of the Gaza Strip, on the Mediterranean coast. It is located north of the Sinai Peninsula and southwest of Jerusalem. According to the Encarta encyclopaedia, this historically and religiously important city “has been disputed since ancient times.”

 

Gaza was mentioned several times in the Holy Bible; significantly it was the land of the Philistines where Samson brought down the temple in his last act of coup de grace. The Arabs captured Gaza in the 600 BC and it became an important commercial city. In the 12th century the city was captured by Christian Crusaders but in 1187 the Muslims regained controlled before it fell to the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century AD. At the outbreak of the World War I (1914-18), Gaza along with Palestine became part of the British mandate. With the return of the Jews and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Egypt attacked and annexed the Gaza Strip. In 1967, during the so-called Six-Day War, Israel took over control of the area until 1993, when, under a peace deal with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), it conceded Gaza to the Palestinian Authority. In 1994, the former leader of the newly established Palestinian National Authority, Yassir Arafat made Gaza the capital and the very first inaugural ceremony of the Authority took place there.

 

Enter Hamas. The name Hamas is an acronym standing for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (in other words, the Islamic Resistance Movement). It has as its objective the obliteration of Israel and the creation of a single Palestinian State based of fundamentalist tenets of Islam, especially the anti-Jewish teachings of Sheikh iz al-Di Al-Qassem (?-1935), Syrian-born Palestinian sheikh and cleric, after whom the military arm of Hamas is named. Although Hamas, existed on the fringe for a long while when Arafat’s PLO fought and ruled, by the turn of the millennium thousands of the impoverished population of Palestinians, especially those in the crowded slums of Gaza, fed on a constant diet of anti-Semitism and frustrations with the slow pace of reforms, began to be swayed by their fanatical ideology.

 

In 2006, Hamas won an election in Palestine through the support of Hezbollah and other extremist movements and regimes in the Middle East region. For refusing to renounce terror as a policy, Hamas was instantly outlawed and shunned by democratic and progressive governments around the world. Indeed, since coming to power it has continued to promote terror against the State of Israel. For months before the open conflagration at the end of last year, Hamas had been firing rockets at Israel from Gaza in a clear but coordinated act of provocation. This act of terrorism was well known and documented by the international media. Even international do-gooders like Jimmy Carter were drawn into it and tried to mediate (The Nation, January 13, 2009). But Hamas, consistent with its history of impunity continued in the folly of terrorism, dropping rockets on civilian populations especially children’s playgrounds and recreational facilities,  until the Israeli Government reacted in self defence with heavy air bombardment of Gaza from where the rockets were being launched.

 

And that was when hell broke loose, not just on the innocent souls in Gaza that had to bear the brunt of Hamas mindless acts of terrorism, but in the international news media where a carefully orchestrated and Hamas-tailored propaganda transmitted horrid on-the-hour images of dead Palestinians to the shock of the world. These grisly images haunted and outraged the unwary world opinion at the so-called Israeli “aggression” in Gaza. The pictures that have been beamed across the world on international television networks of the casualties of the war-on-Gaza are, indeed, without description; children killed in their schools, dead women laying in their tiny rooms as children cry over them, piles of corpses of elderly citizens prepared for mass burial, screaming young girls lost in the debris of the bombardments, etc. Anyone who has watched these TV news footages would be moved to tears and, perhaps, anger against the Israelis “responsible” for the carnage.

 

But there precisely is where you have been fooled; these heart-rending film clips are the handiwork of plodding Hamas media pundits using the pains and suffering of real people, their own people, to score dubious political points against their adversaries, Israel and the United States. You marvel at the sheer steady-nerved and cold-bloodedness of such a grisly propaganda? Move over to the real world of Hamas’ terrorism; this is place where no value is too sacrosanct or life too sacred to be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. In fact, the masterminds of this nascent propaganda “innovation” in crisis coverage have absolutely no qualms about getting real, very often innocent, human beings act parts in their macabre movies as long as it helps in selling their political point of view.

 

As I write this, thousands of Nigerians must have similarly watched the chilling film on the November 2008 violence in Jos North Local government which is being distributed in towns of the Northern states and circulated via GSM phones. To the ordinary Nigerians, who might have watched them, the film on its face value, just as the Hamas projected pictures on the international media, could be taken as the gospel truth on the Jos crisis, notwithstanding its serious technical and credibility deficiencies. But the question that bothers more discerning citizens is why anyone would want to exploit the sufferings of fellow human beings to sell a political point of view. But Nigerians are known copycats; as in Gaza, so in Jos North.

 

However, like in the Gaza example we ought to be more circumspect of this novel phenomenon which the internationally acclaimed lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, has called “the CNN strategy” (in an article published widely and also culled by the Daily Trust, January 16, 2008, p.18, under the title: Israeli Viewpoint: The criminal cynicism of Hamas). 

 

According to Dershowitz, “the strategy is as simple as it is cynical: provoke Israel by playing Russian roulette with its children, firing rockets at kindergartens, playgrounds and hospitals; hide behind its own civilians when firing at Israel civilians; refuse to build bunkers for its own civilians; have the TV cameras ready to transmit every image of dead Palestinian, especially children; exaggerate the number of civilians killed by including as “children” Hamas fighters who are under 18, and as “women,” female terrorists.”

 

Watching the Jos Crisis movie, I couldn’t help thinking in the same way as Dershowitz; when was the “Jos North Muslim Umma, Information Desk and Media Interview Committee” the producers of the movie set up to so capture the November 28/29 crises?  And when it was set up, did it know that a bloody crisis was imminent in Jos? And did it have a role in “the Russian roulette” of burning churches to stir up the requisite violence for the filming crew for the movie: “A Fact File on the Jos North Nov. 28th-29th Post-Election Genocide”? Or, was that the task of yet another, presently unknown, committee to get the actors of this morbid movie moving on cue? In short, who stirred the trouble so chillingly captured by the lenses of this Committee? It is now no longer in doubt that the Jos crisis, whether over local government elections or not, took the form of religious crises immediately upon the burning of churches in the wee hours of November 28, 2008. Why was it so? Why was the PDP or ANPP State/Local Offices not set ablaze? Why was the PLASEIC office not destroyed? Why was the Jos North local government headquarters not torched? The answer is simply; If you want to make Rabbit soup, you must first get a rabbit. You can’t get a movie script on religious genocide, and go about shooting political scenes of PDP and ANPP thugs flinging it out on the streets, can you? That wouldn’t have made it a religious genocide, would it? Point is; the Jos North crisis film makers know a lot more about the origin of the crisis than their film reveals.

 

According to Dershowitz, the CNN strategy works because “decent people all over the world are naturally sickened by images of dead and injured children. When repeatedly flashed across TV screens, they tend to react emotionally.” Permit me to quote Dershowitz at some length here: “Rather than asking why these children are dying and who is to blame for putting them in harm’s way, the average viewer, regardless of their political or ideological perspective, wants to see the killing stopped.

 

“They blame those whose weapon directly caused the deaths, rather than those who provoke the violence by deliberately targeting civilians (AND CHURCHES- addition mine).”

 

This is the situation in Jos North whereby instead of objectively looking at the cause of the religiously-manipulated crisis and apportioning blame accordingly, the media propaganda, according to some pre-determined cue, began a chorus about a so-called genocide. With the release of this gruesome “movie” whose aim is to cause religious disaffection in the country, one begins to understand the orchestrated media campaign against the Government and people of Plateau State. The Nupe born Islamic fundamentalist and Daily Trust columnist, Mallam Mohammed Haruma apparently wrapped in a pre-globalism time-capsule was even boorishly penning a column Gaza: Blaming the victim ( January 14, 2009) and critiquing the Western Press for supporting Israel when indeed it was the same Western International Press, succumbing to Hamas’ cheap “CNN strategy” propaganda on their networks, that made for the let  up of hostilities and allowed the Hamas a breathing space to negotiate a desperately needed ceasefire. This is the same Haruna that had written about the Jos crisis calling it genocide essentially on the basis of hearsay.        

 

In discussing this phenomenon of the so-called CNN strategy, many people have wondered why the Christians have not produced their version of the tragic events on multi-media. I think such questions are either naïve or mischievous; war, as one world leader once remarked is no tea-party. Hiring a camera will not be the first thing on your mind when you are told that war has broken out. Unless you are the aggressor armed with a knife or a gun, your first instinct will be to flee to safety. It therefore speaks volume that anyone, in recent crisis which took the whole town by surprise, was so steady nerved to have thought of making a “film” in the face of such calamity.

 

But more than just steady nerves, it certainly takes the stoniest-hearted to film such tragic real-life human calamity for whatever altruistic purpose. Taking such risk or morbid interest, in my opinion, could never have been for any reasonable purposes but evil. We don’t need to speculate about the pecuniary interests involved but we know that the film is now being circulated widely to draw the ire of the Muslim umma nation-wide against the government and people of Jos who these mischief-makers desperately want to brand as xenophobic and also want to frame against them charges of genocide. We also know that this kind of treasonable acts against the nation fetches lots of money from their foreign sponsors who have all along been envious of Nigeria’s progress as united and strong country. As many good people of this nation know, most of the ethno-religious crises we have been witnessing in this country, especially in the Northern parts, have been sponsored by obnoxious terrorist organizations that don’t mean well for this nation.

 

The widely circulated “movie” is more than just a film on the Jos Crisis. It is a further reinforcement of the biased framing of any sectarian violence in Jos as genocide. While Kano and Bauchi states regularly relapse into the most inexcusable killings of fellow Nigerians, it is Jos that is always singled out for the harshest chastisement by the Presidency and the National Assembly whenever civil disturbances breakout. It is like the Federal authorities have adopted a dual standard; one that it applies to the killing of Christians and another to the killing of Muslims in events of ethno-religious crises in the North. In many parts of northern Nigeria today, Christians and non-Hausa Fulani Nigerians live in mortal fear of what fate could befall them, at the shortest notice, from very extraneous questions such as: will America invade Iran, will Israel attack Iran, will an okada rider crack a joke considered “blasphemous” by his listeners, will an American or European Christian leader make a verbal slip considered offensive to Islam, etc? For such superfluous reasons as these, Christians have been massacred in many northern states in the past. But more worrisome is the fact that in the face of the killings, neither the Presidency nor the National Assembly ever did anything against these aggressors in the same manner that they always try to find scapegoats in the events of any flare up in Jos. This has given the impression that the Federal Government only bares its teeth when the victims of violence are Muslims or Hausa Fulani. This filming of the crisis in Jos stems from the philosophy that Hausa Fulani Muslim casualties are more reckoned with in this country.   

 

The Jos Crisis film is potentially a lethal poison in the veins of already bellicose communal relations in the North and one expects that the security agencies should have by now arrested and arraigned its producers and distributors for treason and dissemination of falsehood.  For, indeed, the spread of falsehood and criminal discontent lie at the heart of the project with its hopelessly puerile film trickery and cheap forensic deception that are just too obvious to the trained eye.  

 

Apart from questioning the motive and modus operandi of the producers of the film, the film lacks all ingredients of credibility. But they are cashing in on our people’s gullibility, more especially in the North where the darkness of illiteracy overwhelms our people and make them too susceptible to maninpulation. The film exhibit several shortcomings.

 

The carefully laid out corpse in an enclosure is intended to give the visual impression of a massacre, a la Rwanda or Srebrenica. But the truth is that the positions of corpses were tempered with; indeed they had been carefully re-assembled by the film producers and their extras in the mosque where they were filmed. As far as the picture genre is concerned such piling of corpses created the crowded sight which in turn creates the notion of bloodbath which the film crew intended to create. But as any greenhorn investigator will say, the evidence has been tempered with; a euphemism for saying it is no longer reliable evidence.  

 

However, while allowing that the ferrying of corpses to the mosque to be filmed was, to an extent, visually effective in the sinister objective to create a “massacre”, this incredulous action has however raised serious doubt about the authenticity of the claim that the victims were Hausa Fulani Muslims. There is absolutely no way of identifying a corpse by religion; absolutely impossible even going by common stereotypes of dressing or facial features. Was it not the same Hausa Fulani writers that have been boasting in recent newspaper articles that the Plateau indigenes imitate their dressing or language? Besides, it is a well known fact that in time of crisis people could improvise (or is it disguise?) in order to flee to safety.

 

In any case, the Igbo community and others have kicked against the mass burial given to the victims of the violence, and filmed in the said grisly movie, asking for exhumation of the corpses for proper identification. They argue that many of their relations were among the corpses taken into the mosque. Indeed, it was reported that a visitor from Abuja who came to commiserate with the Muslim victims at the mosque was taken aback by a corpse wearing a crucifix. Some other people have alleged that the corpses were taken away from where they were killed because these were areas occupied by their murders and they were taken to the mosques to “get rid of evidence.” It is a serious indictment that people were given mass burial, portrayed in the film, exclusively on the say-so of a religious group without the coroners’ identification or approval. How were these Muslim clerics able to know that the corpses burned beyond recognition were Muslims and went ahead to bury them?   

 

Another forensic flaw in the film was its inability to show how the carnage took place in the mosque or the places shown in the film. The mosques bear neither visible bullet marks nor even bloodstains. Roasted corpses lie next to bullet-wounded corpses without any clear reason why the cause of death would be so different among corpses found in the same place.

 

However, more fundamental questions are raised on why the corpses were not filmed in their places of death. This leads to a lot of disturbing questions which the film-makers will not find comfortable in addressing. Such questions will expose their post-violence preparation, logistics during the crisis, sponsors, etc. By the time the police get to question them we shall indeed be better informed on the nature of the whole crisis. But will the police ever arrest them? Or will it be another chasing of the wind as the case of the 26 arrested armed mercenaries who some police are claiming are members of a vigilante group but they (the police) are not explaining, to anyone, how the vigilantes were armed and bearing fake military and police uniforms as well as forged identity cards and were caught, lest we forget, in the heart of security-challenged Jos, during curfew hours! 

 

Finally, it needs stating that while the “CNN strategy” by the Jos North film-makers is aimed at whipping Islamic sentiments against Plateau indigenes, it has nothing to do with advancing the interest of Islam. Islam we all know is a religion of peace but these mischief –makers instead of praising Allah for restoration of peace in Plateau State are baying for blood by circulating such provocative material.  

 

Some of our youths are always readily mobilised to demonstrate for causes which have no relevance to their lives or improves their welfare. No long ago the respected Emir of Zaria was assaulted by some unruly youths in Zaria; but the self-appointed leader of the sect passed it off as a protest against the “Zionist” attack on Gaza as if the Emir, the leader of the Umma, had anything to do with it.

 

But you ask yourself, why is it that these self-styled Islamic leaders have never organised demonstration against what is considered as the world’s worse humanitarian crisis? Their fellow Africans and Muslims in the Dafur region of the Sudan are facing genocide in the hands of President Omar Bashir, an Arab Muslim, who has an international arrest warrant dangling before him for crimes against humanity at the war crime tribunal at The Hague? The answer is simple: they are not defenders of Islam or Muslims; they are just simply brain-washed Arabists. The Arab and Muslim government in Sudan has killed more Muslims and Africans than Israel has done going by the casualty figures in Dafur released by the United Nations, yet the Arabist megaphones and admirers in Nigeria will sooner kill their Nigerian neighbour in protest against the Israeli war in Gaza than send a word of solidarity to the millions of Dafuri Muslims being ethnically cleansed by President Bashir. 

 

 

We ought to applaud the role of the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Saad Abubakar for the very fatherly role he has played in fostering inter-religious and inter-communal peace since he assumed the throne. Since the Jos crisis, he has spoken forthrightly in mature and measured tones. We have confidence that with people like him the nation will overcome this present challenge to its survival. There should be no rooms for charlatans and imposers bearing all manners of false titles pretending to speak for the Muslim umma or the Christian majalisa but only advancing their quest for societal relevance.

 

Nigerian youths, Christians and Muslims, ought to wake up to their responsibly and resist being used by mischief-makers for selfish ends. They should demand for jobs and economic opportunities instead of allowing themselves to be used to perpetrate violence against fellow citizens.

 

Mr. Simji can be reached at kwsimji@yahoo.com