The Swedish, Indian and International Media
Sub: Osama’s recent statement on Bush’s allegation !
One of the things that I really miss in Sweden is the English newspaper. Almost all the newspapers that I come across are in Swedish. But usually when I get the time, I do visit www.thelocal.se and today to my amazement there was this interesting write-up of the Swedish government being slightly jittery over Osama’s response to G. Bush “If Bush argues that we (Al-Qaeda) hate freedom, maybe he (Bush) could explain why we haven’t attacked Sweden, for example.”
The same thought surprisingly came to me within a few weeks of my stay in Sweden. As an activist in the Indian environment where one constantly sees and hears of injustice, misery, poverty, breakdown of order and consequent rebellion, retaliation, I asked my self, could it ever happen that there would be a bomb explosion or attack on Sweden ! Nah, infact probably never; a person would be real insane to do that. Because here in Sweden from what I have heard and experienced over the last couple of months of my stay is that the Swedes are one of the most tolerant, just, honest, most respectful people in the world.
Swedes have, unlike America, never had the ulterior motive towards expanding their military bases all over the world. They have never participated in any alliance bombings like the British who joined US “to maintain its special relations with them”. Unlike terrorist CIA, their intelligence snooping is nil; they have no draconian laws like the patriot’s act for arbitrary detentions; they have no large scale or small scale, ethnic, minority injustice; they have the best prisons in the world for reform, because of their concern for human rights so much so that even Saddam Husein preferred to be in Swedish prisons. So why would anyone want to create terror or havoc in Sweden, when there is optimum freedom and a proper mechanism for redressal of justice. Why would anyone feel frustrated, unhappy and feel that the state or a certain group of people have been unjust !
I would suggest that the Swedes, take Osama’s comment as a compliment, rather than read meaning into it, because even a “devil” and a person accused as the “world’s number one terrorist” has had the humility to acknowledge that Sweden has one of the best systems in the world that respects freedom, democracy.
Osama’s recent sentence throws light that per se he doesn’t seem to be against humanity, not against people, but clearly against the hegemony of the US and schizophrenic presidents in the white house like G.Bush who hallucinate WMDs and have pathological urges for oil ! His statement is rather similar to the quote of famous revolutionary Malcom X “You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom”. The world should deeply retrospect on what Osama Bin Laden has said this time.
Osama has more sanity in him than G. Bush and American neo-cons.
RONALD L. REBELLO
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