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| People gather in St Peter's Square for Vigil for Peace Photo: USA Today |
On Saturday Pope Francis held a prayer vigil
for peace in Syria. As I wrote earlier - Vigil For Peace Well Attended - more than 100,000 people attended the vigil in St
Peter’s Square. This morning I began eagerly searching the net to see what the
media was reporting on the subject.
This vigil had a very good turnout and given
that it was so relevant to the most news worthy event taking placing in the
world right now, I expected it to receive a great deal of coverage. It has however
sadly barely received coverage in the international media. In South Africa
media coverage has been all but not existent.
When one Google’s an important event like
this and your own insignificant Blog post - Vigil For Peace Well Attended - pops up in the top 10 results, there is clearly a
very definite failure by the media to report on it.
It is sad that the media will not report on events
such as these. This would surely give people a broader perspective of the
different opinions on the subject of military strikes on Syria.
There is no doubt that people need to hear
more than just the continual justification of military intervention from world
leaders like Obama and Kerry. Greater coverage of calls for peace would
certainly lead Obama, Kerry and the other proponents of military intervention
to think again. They would have to if they suddenly found that the mainstream
media was carrying more and reports of anti-war sentiment.
During the vigil Pope Francis said: “Leave behind the self-interest that hardens
your heart, overcome the indifference that makes your heart insensitive towards
others, conquer your deadly reasoning, and open yourself to dialogue and
reconciliation.”
Pope Francis went on to say: “How I wish that all men and women of good
will would look to the cross, if only for a moment. There, we can see God’s reply: violence is not answered with violence,
death is not answered with the language of death. In the silence of the cross,
the uproar of weapons ceases and the language of reconciliation, forgiveness,
dialogue and peace is spoken.”
This is certainly advice that Obama, Kerry
and all the warmongers should listen to. Dialogue and reconciliation is what is
needed in this situation. Not the selfish and stubborn promotion of an agenda
that will only further self-interests while leading to more deaths and
countless more suffering.
If anyone needs to be punished then the ICC
is the means to do that. Launching military strikes, that will inevitably lead
to the death of countless individuals, which will most likely include many
innocent civilians, is not the way to go about punishing one man for the crimes
he has committed against humanity. Military intervention doesn’t punish the
criminal; it punishes the people of Syria.
So why are the mainstream media not blaring
this message to their audiences every 15 minutes, instead of only the constant
justification of military intervention from the warmongers? Surely at the very
least both messages, for and against military intervention, should be given
equal airtime by the mainstream media? Are the media also just stubbornly
driven by their own selfish self-interests?
As for the media in South Africa, who all
seem to have time to take to twitter to criticise the mistakes of the new news
network in South Africa - ANN7. Why haven’t you found time to publish anything
about this prayer vigil for peace? Shame on you! You really are all equally
unreliable as a source of news. Thank goodness we have the Internet and do not
need to rely on South African media to keep up with what’s happening in the
world.
