Were the lives of those killed at the World Trade Centre more valuable than the innocents murdered in Chile's US-backed coup, asks Tito Tricot
Monday September 16, 2002
Our dreams were shattered one cloudy morning when the military overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. Twenty-nine years later, at midday, Chile's's firemen sounded their sirens paying tribute to thousands of men and women who lost their lives without really understanding what was happening.
It was a moment of remembrance, not for the victims of the military coup, but for those killed at the World Trade Centre in New York. Sad as that might have been, it is even sadder that Chilean firemen have never sounded their sirens to remember our own dead. And there are thousands of them, including many children, who were murdered by the military.
It is not a matter of comparing sorrow and pain, but for the past year the US media has tried to convince us that north American lives are worth more than other people's lives. After all, we are from the third world, citizens of underdeveloped countries who deserve to be arrested, tortured and killed. How else are we interpret the fact that the military coup in our country was planned in the United States?
The truth is that no US president ever shed a tear for our dead; no US politician ever sent a flower to our widows. The US government and media use different standards to measure suffering. It is precisely this hypocrisy and these double standards that make us sick, especially when on such a symbolic day for Chileans, the president of Chile, Ricardo Lagos, attended a memorial service at the United States embassy where the ambassador, William Brownfield, stated that "people who hate the United States must be controlled, arrested or eliminated".
In what kind of a world are we living? Can we stand idly by while in the name of the fight against terrorism countries are bombed or invaded by the US war machine? I think not, especially because, irrespective of the horror of the World Trade Centre attacks, the US has no moral right to impose its will on our continent. After all, we in Latin America have ample experience with US terrorist tactics. In our continent alone 90,000 people disappeared as a direct result of the operation of the School of the Americas and US "counterinsurgency" policies - 30 times more than the victims of the World Trade Centre.
One cannot - and should not - attempt to quantify suffering, but we do have the right to denounce this double standard....
It is not Al-Birr (piety, righteousness, and obedience to Allâh, etc.) that you turn your faces towards east and (or) west (in prayers); but Al-Birr is (the quality of) the one who believes in Allâh, the Last Day, the Angels, the Book, the Prophets and gives his wealth, in spite of love for it, to the kinsfolk, to the orphans, and to Al-Masâkîn (the poor), and to the wayfarer, and to those who ask, and to set slaves free, performs As-Salât, and gives the Zakât, and keep their word whenever they make a promise, and who are patient in extreme poverty and ailment (disease) and at the time of persecution, hardship, and war. Such are the people of the truth and they are Al-Muttaqûn (the pious).
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