A tribute to Benazir Bhutto. Title links to her NYT obituary.
The coverage, though mournful of her assassination and the ensuing chaos, describes her as "complex" and "contradictory." They say her lifestyle was hypocrisy to her populist stance. That her politics were clandestine, her ignorance of weapons programs during her rule dubious.
And yet, more than 100 people died upon her return to Pakistan in October. More than a score killed with her yesterday. She stood for freedom, hope of basic human dignity for oppressed people. And people believed in her. It seems wrong to paint a woman innocent people died for as "contradictory."
Similarly, the people of Haiti believe in Aristide, still protesting in throngs for his return. He too struggled for basic human dignity. He too was repressed, removed twice from power amidst charges of corruption. The second time, he was kidnapped on a U.S. military jet, overrun by paramilitaries empowered courtesy of my country smuggling weapons through the Dominican Republic. The evidence of a coup d'etat fostered by the U.S., France, and Canada is incontrovertible. And yet in every current news article about Haiti, STILL the press refers to a "popular uprising" that drove Aristide from power in 2004. Every time I read that obligatory phrase, I scowl: frivolous words demeaning thousands of Haitians' deaths and hundreds of wrongful imprisonments.
For both these leaders, we throw around epithets of "controversial" from our comfortable lives, while the people who matter stand and die in futile search for freedom. Our dishonesty keeps it beyond their grasp.
The poor and oppressed don't even have the luxury of truth. Power creates the stories.
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