Press TV has interviewed Kevin Barrett, editor of VT in Madison, to discuss the recent killings of Shias by Nigeria’s armed forces.
The following is a rough transcription of the interview.
Press TV: We are seeing more people come together to protest the killing of the Shias in Zaria and the release of Sheikh Zakzaky, yet it seems to be falling on deaf ears?
Barrett: Well it is right. We have seen this kind of thing before.
Last January one of the biggest massacres in the history of Nigeria and indeed of much of the world happened at exactly the same moment as the attacks in Paris on Charlie Hebdo magazine, and the world was inundated with the killing of perhaps a little over a dozen people in Paris while thousands have been massacred in Nigeria and there was virtually no comment.
It does seem that white lives matter far more than [dark skin] lives and we are seeing the same from now and again as Sheikh Zakzaky has been apparently shot multiple times, taken into custody. Many of the people who were shot in this massacre because that is what it was, it was a premeditated massacre, they were given no medical treatment. This is an outrage. Many hundreds of people have been murdered by the Nigerian military. It is clear that this was a provocation. It was not some sort of legitimate self-defense in terms of a plot, an alleged plot against the army leader.
On the contrary, we have reported that the military surrounded these mosques and compounds, fired into them and that is the provocation that led people to create a barricade to try to prevent the military from coming in and killing more people. And they (the army) escalated the situation and came in with overwhelming force and just massacred men, women and children indiscriminately.
It is an utter and complete outrage and the world needs to sit up and take notice. Nigeria should be sanctioned and I do not know if that is going to happen though because again we are living in a world in which there is profound racism, a profound sentiment in the minds of the elites that rule the West that the rich white Western people’s lives matter but the lives of ordinary peaceful people in Nigeria who were murdered by their own government in the hundreds or thousands do not even matter.
Press TV: Well why do you think this issue is not being brought up in the UN Security Council?
Barrett: That is a great question. Again the United Nations is really not a democratic representative body in terms of representing the people of the world. It is really a top-down organization.
The real power rests with the Security Council which is tightly controlled by the most powerful nations on earth which are in fact owned by the international bankster cabal based in London, Tel Aviv and New York and these people really do not care about the lives of ordinary people at all, much less the lives of ordinary people in Africa.
The United Nations is supposed to have a mandate to take on human rights issues but once again they are averting their eyes from a situation that is crying out for justice.
Press TV: And how about this story and how is being portrayed and it is not even being portrayed that is the sad thing, it is not even being broadcasted on any mainstream media, what happens to people in Nigeria, what happens to the Shia minority there?
Barrett: That is right. We have had endless concocted stories – many of them completely fabricated – of human rights abuses, real and alleged in places like Libya and now Syria.
What we just saw in Nigeria was vastly worse than anything that the governments of places like Libya and Syria have done, marching on a peaceful religious group and just murdering hundreds and hundreds of people indiscriminately for no reason. Yet we are told in the West that we have this R2P responsibility to protect, meaning that the West has to go and bomb any countries that try to maintain an independent foreign policy and refuse to accept their vassal status.
Those countries are destroyed under the pretence of protecting human rights, while these much greater human rights abuses in places like Nigeria and indeed what the Saudis are doing in Yemen and in various other examples around the world, Kashmir and of course Palestine, these are largely ignored or downplayed. And this situation that is going to have to stop.
Eventually the alternative media outlets like Press TV and the rest of the genuinely independent alternative media is slowly but truly waking people up. We cannot accept these double standards anymore, this hypocrisy. We need real human rights and every human being has equal value. All lives need to count.
Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror.
He is the host of TRUTH JIHAD RADIO; a hard driving weekly radio show funded by listener donations at Patreon.com and FALSE FLAG WEEKLY NEWS (FFWN); an audio-video show produced by Tony Hall, Allan Reese, and Kevin himself. FFWN is funded through FundRazr.
He also has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS, and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications.
Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin; where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host.
ATTENTION READERS
We See The World From All Sides and Want YOU To Be Fully InformedIn fact, intentional disinformation is a disgraceful scourge in media today. So to assuage any possible errant incorrect information posted herein, we strongly encourage you to seek corroboration from other non-VT sources before forming an educated opinion.
About VT - Policies & Disclosures - Comment Policy
