While reading the New York Times, I discovered a shocking article regarding the Taliban, “Video of Taliban Flogging Girl draws Widespread Outrage.” Reading further into the article, I noted that the 17 year old girl denied the request to marry a Taliban commander and was publicly flogged as a result of her actions. In our history class we recently discussed the Taliban and in particular its control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan. This event took place in Swat Valley - which is the region Pakistan gave to the Taliban.
In other articles we have read about concerning the Taliban, women have no rights. Even with that knowledge this article still comes across as a shock. Someone watching the event was filming with their video recorder on their cell-phone, while the young girl yells phrases such as, “For God’s sake, please stop, stop it, I am dying.” It doesn’t specify who put the video on the Internet, I imagine (and hope) it was someone who was trying to show the world what the Taliban is really about and this video is just one plea of help.
This is a really interesting situation, because I'm sure that there were good people there who think that doing that was terrible; however they are not speaking out because they are scared of the consequences. This seems similar to some situations during the Holocaust.
ReplyDeleteMegan,
ReplyDeleteA lot of "good" people get labeled as bad for doing nothing in a situation. I believe that you have to take care of yourself before helping others. Also, when looking at incidents like this, we cannot be too quick to label everyone as a bad person because they don't do anything. Instead, we need to look into the situation and the situation of each person.
I don't think that Megan meant to classify anybody that wasn't doing anything as "bad," instead to say that there are a lot of innocent bystanders that could "stand up to the bully" but don't because they fear their own lives. However, I can't really blame them for this because I don't think I would do anything different.
ReplyDeleteThis seems to be a very similar situation to that of the Holocaust. We catagorize the rest of Europe to be followers of Hitler because no one really stood up to him, but much of it was out of fear, especially of death. Personally, I believe that it's still bad, not as bad as the one doing wrong, to sit there and do nothing. I agree with Estefania. In this situation, I wouldn't stand up alone to the Taliban and put my own life at risk. Not many of us could say we would. But there comes a point when as a society, country, even world where we have to look at this and admit that we all know it's wrong. Good job sarah and finding this article. it's quite interesting and is so relevant to everything we've been studying in the past month or so. Well done :)
ReplyDelete