National 3 (Spotlight Weekly)

Bad Press

After ignoring the Nepali hostage crisis, the international media were quick to pick up on a country lashing out in its hour of mourning.

By JOE BAVIER

The heavyweights of international journalism are on display at the entrance of the bookstore Bidur Dangol runs in Thamel. The International Herald Tribune, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel hang outside. Stacks of the latest copies of Newsweek and Time sit just inside the door.

Vandalism : organized or spontaneous

As a fortunate side-effect of his job, Dangol is arguably one of the most well-informed men in Kathmandu. But over the past three week, the world press has let him down.

“When they were just being held, nobody bothered,” he says, referring to the foreign media's ignoring of the Nepali hostage crisis. “Once they were dead, and there was movement in Nepal, then they reported.”

It had been a tough week to make international headlines when 12 Nepali workers were brutally executed by Islamic extremists.

In Iraq, media attention was riveted on another hostage crisis. Two French journalists were being held by militants in response to France's decision to ban Muslim head scarves in public schools. Suicide bombs once again rocked Israel, blowing up two buses, killing 16, and injuring more than 100. And in the United States, the Republican Party's national convention was still a hot topic.

With such stiff competition for column inches, the plight of a dozen migrant workers from the developing world never stood a chance.

And even when the news of single largest hostage massacre in Iraq since the American invasion broke late last Tuesday, complete with grainy post-execution photos and gristly video footage of the beheading of one among them, the pens and lenses of international media seemed already to have moved on.

Then came the headlines: “Anti-Muslim Riots Break Out in Kathmandu”-Le Monde. “Thousands Chant 'Down with Islam' in Protesting Slayings”-The Washington Post. And “Nepalese Attack a Mosque and Muslims in Kathmandu”-The New York Times.

After neglecting to give the country the attention it desperately sought during the nearly two weeks its sons had languished in captivity, the international press had finally decided to focus on Nepal in its most shameful hour.

Depending on where you might live in the world, accounts of the riots varied greatly.

Protesters either “set on fire” (Le Monde, France), “tried to set on fire” (The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia), or did “only minor damage” (Agence France Presse) to the Jama Masjid mosque. Germany's Der Spiegel also reported a Muslim community center had been torched for good measure.

Either three (The Washington Post) or “up to one hundred people” (Der Spiegel) were injured.

According to a report filed by French news agency, Agence France Press, Qatar Airways was stormed and ransacked. London's Guardian reported “the offices of Arab airlines” were “set on fire”. And in The New York Times, “the national carriers of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Pakistan” were set upon by angry mobs.

But though there may have been discrepancies in the details, the overall nature of the riots was in no such doubt in the eyes of the international press.

Le Monde wrote that the riots were “anti-Muslim” and most other dailies mentioned the mosque attack in the first line. The New York Times went even further: “Thousands of enraged Nepalese attacked a mosque and more than a hundred Muslim-owned businesses and homes here on Wednesday to protest the killing of 12 Nepalese workers by terrorists in Iraq.”

The following day, the Times issued a half-hearted retraction admitting the businesses attacked “were both Muslim- and Hindu-owned, not just Muslim.” But by then the damage had been done.

In a country with a long history of harmony between Hindus and Muslim, a fact which makes it a rarity on the Sub-Continent, most Nepalis were deeply shocked by Wednesday's events. And religious leaders and government representatives rightly condemned the attack on the Jama Masjid mosque as senseless act of violence, entirely at odds with the national character.

But for those on the outside looking in, it made for an easy target. And in the rush to highlight a perceived inter-religious conflict in Nepal, most of the international press missed what was the major target of the violence.

To the Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies, the riots were far from religiously motivated. According to the trade organization, more than 300 manpower offices were attacked, with some 270 being completely destroyed, most during a period of little more than three hours on Wednesday.

Whether you believe conspiracy theories of a highly organized offensive against the employment agencies, or see the attacks as simply a spontaneous reaction against an industry blamed for making hefty profits by sending the economically vulnerable into harm's way, one thing is clear. Wednesday's violence was indeed highly focused. But Kathmandu's Muslims were not the primary target.

This aspect of the riots was largely overlooked.

The New York Times gave four lines to the manpower agencies, stating that “several” had been attacked. AFP reported that “more than a dozen” employment agencies had been affected. Many newspapers didn't mention them at all.

Though the distinction between what happened, and what was reported may not make much of a difference to the residents of the capital as they clean up in the aftermath. In the eyes of the international community, it makes all the difference in the world.

Economically-driven violence may make the business pages, but religious riots make front-page headlines.

Nepal, unjustly or not, now finds itself in the unenviable company of Israel, Nigeria, and India, countries with long histories of heated sectarian violence.

The German Foreign Ministry quickly advised tourists against venturing to Nepal, citing the unstable situation following the riots. The U.S. and Australia, which were already warning against non-essential trips to the kingdom due to the Maoist insurgency, appended their travel advisories to include the recent violence. Other countries soon followed suit.

None of these governments has issued such restrictions against France, which has experienced a wave of vandalism and violent attacks against the country's Jewish population. And even warnings issued against Israel, which has been the scene of suicide bombings on a regular basis for several years now, are focused on specific parts of the country.

As the international press has moved on the next story, it is the domestic headlines that Nepalis are forced to live with.

“Six Tour Operators Remove Nepal from Destination List”-Kathmandu Post. “Tourism Business Likely to Fall by 40 Percent”-Himalayan Times.

Today, the capital's hotels and guest houses are largely empty. Travelers have moved on to Pokhara, or India, or have simply ended their holidays and gone home. And Bidur Dangol has a lot more time to read.

“Yesterday, I had hardly two customers. The rest were my friends.”

(The author has done a degree in journalism in the U.K. and interned at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. He has worked as a reporter in London and most recently did a nine- month stint as a freelance journalist in the United States. He is currently in Kathmandu)