Wednesday, March 05, 2014
Watching the courts
The most surprising thing about the Supreme Court’s demand that CCTVs be installed at all district courts within 48 hours is that this most basic of security measures hadn’t already been in place for years. Every place, from department stores to hotels, makes use of this technology to either deter would-be criminals or make it easier to identify them after the fact. We already know that judges are vulnerable; one of the reasons there is such an abysmal conviction rate for suspected terrorists is that lawyers and judges are terrified of being targeted by militant groups. This underscores how the duties of the men in robes make them potential targets. We can be certain that the houses of parliament and GHQ and many other government buildings already have CCTV installed. Why then haven’t courts been provided the same facility? This is the kind of lax approach we have taken to security that ends up costing lives. The state seems to have the attitude that since militants are determined to attack us no matter what there is very little we can do about it.
Even if CCTVs had been installed in the Islamabad court it is unlikely the attack would have been thwarted. Where the footage would have been invaluable, though, was in seeing if any of the attackers got away and then being able to identify them and hopefully apprehend them. At a time when everyone is speculating over who is responsible for the attack, being able to interrogate one of the attackers could have settled the question conclusively. Of course, we need to do a lot more than just have CCTV facilities. Prevention of attacks through timely intelligence needs to be made a priority, followed by responding rapidly to any attacks. There are some reports that the police took 45 minutes to arrive at the Islamabad court after the attack, when it should have taken no longer than a few minutes. Recall how militants have been able to breach the GHQ, naval bases, jails and police training academies without any seeming problem. The ease of infiltration can be achieved only if there is inside help or security that is laughably incompetent. Whatever the case may be the frequency of terrorist attacks in the country show that the state has yet to implement an effective defensive security policy.
Lily-white Hollywood
Hollywood exists as a myth-making machine that sells us dreams and aspirations but its greatest trick has been to convince us that this industry monopolised by old, white men is actually a bastion of liberalism. Consider this: the historic Best Picture win for 12 Years A Slave at the Academy Awards is the first time that a film written, directed and starring black people has been honoured. The standard Hollywood trope for movies dealing with slavery, genocide and the Holocaust, from Dancing with Wolves to Schindler’s List and Amistad, is to make the evils perpetrated against minority communities as a challenge for a saintly white hero to overcome. What makes 12 Years A Slave so harrowing and such an important contribution to cinema is that it exists to show the evils of slavery in all its horrors and not present a sanitised version to assuage white guilt. As welcome as the Best Picture nod may be, the academy should use it not to pat itself on the back but to reflect on why it took so long. The first time a black actor won an Oscar was back in 1939, when Hattie McDaniel got the Best Supporting Actress statuette for Gone With the Wind, a film suffused with nostalgia for the Confederacy where slaves would rather remain in blissful captivity than be freed by the evil Unionist. After picking up her award, McDaniel had to go and sit at the back of the segregated auditorium.
The 12 Years A Slave win does show that Hollywood, and indeed the US, has made slow progress since then but it is nowhere near enough. The US may have a black president but he is still subjected to near-daily racist caricatures. The continued existence of white privilege afflicts Hollywood, where there may be a few black stars but positions of power in the studio, the director’s chair and the writers’ room are still lily-white. That is a reflection of the country as a whole. Instead of the blatant racism of the Jim Crow era, code words like ‘welfare’, ‘food stamps’, ‘law and order’ and ‘the war on drugs’ are used to justify policies that target African Americans. Across the south, Republicans are trying to restrict the black vote, this time replacing literacy tests with more subtle tactics like legislating for more stringent voter identification to be provided at polling stations. One movie cannot overthrow a system rigged against African Americans but it can provide hope for gradual change.