I won’t be overlaying my profile picture on Facebook with the colours of the French flag, and here’s why:
It’s not that I don’t feel utter condemnation for the barbaric attacks on the people of Paris, or sympathy and support for the victims and their families. It’s just that I don’t believe that Western lives are worth more than others, and have trouble with the level of hypocrisy displayed whenever “western lives” are lost.
When ISIS carried out bombings in Beirut two days earlier, killing innocent men, women and children, there was no Facebook option to overlay your profile picture with the Lebanese flag?
When they carried out coordinated suicide strikes on mosques in Yemen back in March killing more than 130 innocent civilians, there was no Facebook option to overlay your profile picture with the Yemen flag?
The brutal sanctions placed on Iraq by the West in the 90’s killed MILLIONS of Iraqi civilians, and yet ever year we commemorate less than 3,000 people who died in the US on 9/11.
If we are to update our profile pictures every time there is a significant loss of life, then we should do just that. But I think it’s morally wrong to be outraged only when Western lives are lost.
