The Cure for Terrorism: Forbid All News Coverage (Izvestia, Russia)
"The wise course of action would be to pass laws prohibiting
coverage of terrorist attacks by the media and blogosphere, and shutting down
the Web pages of bloggers who break the rules. ... In order to prevent
terrorists from achieving their main goal - leading the news of the day - the
time has come to abandon the principle of informing the public about acts of
terrorism. ... We must use the authority of the state to withhold information about
terrorist attacks to safeguard the security of our citizens."
Former vice governor
of Volgograd Oblast Oleg Matveyichev
on how laws could prevent further tragedies.
On December 29 and 30, two explosions took
place in Volgograd. On Dec. 29, a female suicide bomber set off an explosion at
the Volgograd-1 Railway Station. The following day at around 8am, there was
another explosion on a city trolley.
According to preliminary information,
the first explosion killed 18 people and injured more than 40. The second took
the lives of 16 people and injured dozens more. In fact, that was the third
terrorist attack committed in Volgograd in the last few months. On Oct. 21st
last year, a bomb went off on a bus in the Krasnoznmenskaya
area, also by a female suicide bomber. Seven people were killed and 30 more injured.
After Sunday’s attack, police said that
the terrorist responsible was in the city for less than an hour, and had not communicated
with anyone by phone. So she wasn't a resident of the city, but nevertheless like
other terrorists, she chose to strike here in Volgograd.
And like everyone else now, I ask myself
the same question: why Volgograd?
I believe the main reason is symbolic.
Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, is a
heroic city and guardian of our nation's history: seventy years ago, events
unfolded here that altered the course of the Great Patriotic War.
Those who fought in the Battle of Stalingrad
are convinced that the spirit of victory over the fascist invaders was born
right there in the city. In late September, Volgograd hosted the sensational premier
of FedorBondarchuk’s film Stalingrad [video below].
Ads abounded on billboards, TV, in newspapers, and on the radio.
As a rule, terrorists pursue several goals.
One of them is to strike at people’s values and places they hold sacred.
Volgograd is such a sacred place for
Russians. Therefore, the motive of the terrorists seems unarguable: to spoil the
inconvenient memory of victory and attachment to national shrines.
Another discernible pattern: most acts
of terrorism occur on the eve of festivals or events that are socially,
politically, or culturally significant. The most horrifying example being Beslan,
which took place on September 1, 2004. [September 1 is known as Knowledge Day, and is the
first day of school after summer]. September 1 will
now forevermore be tied to that tragedy. In May of the same year, an act of terror
took place in Grozny on Victory Day (May 9), which killed AkhmatKadyrov, first president of the Chechen Republic.
Two years earlier, in October 2002, a hostage
crisis took place in Moscow's Dubrovka Theater. Audience
members the terrorists took captive were watching the musical Nord-Ost,
adapted from the VeniaminKaverin
novel The Two Captains.
To this day, the heroic epic remains a favorite for many generations of
Russians. The musical was the first of its type in Russia, and had been widely
advertised. A huge number of people traveled to the Dubrovka
Theater to see a production unique in its scale. Nord-Ost will now forever be linked with
the Moscow theater hostage crisis.
Volgagrad
Oblast, where the city of Volgagrad is located, is
shown
in red. It is located just 350 miles from the site of the 2014 Winter
Olympics in Sochi.
Taking these as examples, we can see
that the choice of Volgograd was no accident. Volgograd was the right place in
terms of making negative associations with tragic events. Militants who planned
revenge for the destruction of the "Black
Widow's" first accomplices, prepared an attack with the expectation of
striking a blow at a sacred place and against people's values. The timing, just
before the New Year, is no coincidence. Many people were preparing to
celebrate, and now instead of joy, there are mourning and funerals.
We must understand that this was done deliberately.
By and large, terrorists are a product of our modern civilization and
media-saturated world, where there is a content rivalry over the headline theme
of the day.
In addition to targeting peoples' values
and desecrating their national shrines, a key task for terrorists is to get on
television and be widely discussed in media. If you think about it, is it their
ultimate aim to kill 15 people? Of course not.
It can also be assumed that the terrorists
are trying to intimidate Russian society, but on closer inspection, this notion
falls apart. None of us are disposed to run scared at the first rustle.
The first strategic goal of terrorists
is therefore to highlight their cause, and attract the attention of as many
people as possible to the problem of Islam.
There are other motives, however, that
drive the forces behind terrorism. The people teaching and disseminating religious
literature among the militants are the same ones who fund terrorist attacks. As
a rule, suicide bombers don't have jobs, yet for years they study secretly in
special camps and always have bread in their stomachs.
Meanwhile, those behind them have global
aims: to provoke ethnic and religious tensions in Russia. Any act of terrorism
causes divisions in society, causing ethnic Russians to look suspiciously at
Muslims - and vice versa.
Tragedies like those in Volgograd also
owe something to immoral internationalism, which President Vladimir Putin
identified as a threat in his message to the Federal Assembly.
I am not afraid to suggest that a handful of terrorists read the Quran and were
inspired by Islamic values. The same can be said of Russian nationalists: if
you dig a little deeper, you discover that they don’t really know our country’s
history or literature. In other words, such attacks are primarily designed to
provoke tensions between marginalized groups in society.
The second strategic objective: to
create negative feelings toward the Russian authorities. As a rule, after a
terrorist attack, the suffering victims start to blame the authorities for
being unable to protect their own citizens. Moreover, because of so-called "Stockholm Syndrome,"
the victims sometimes begin to take the side of the terrorists. They say our
government forced their life decisions and they had no other option.
For the most part, the aim of this type
of terrorist attack is to create divisions within society along national or
religious lines or toward the federal government. And of course, their main
tool is media hysteria. The State Duma already rubber
stamps enough laws, including many to combat terrorism.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
It seems to me that perhaps the wise
course of action would be to pass laws prohibiting coverage of terrorist
attacks by the media and blogosphere, and shutting down the Web pages of
bloggers who break the rules.
After the terrorist attack at Moscow's Dubrovka Theater, it was forbidden to show the terrorists on
live television, but I suggest that the measure is no longer sufficient. In
order to prevent terrorists from achieving their main goal - leading the news
of the day - the time has come to abandon the principle of informing the public
about acts of terrorism.
Of course, this would require the consent
of the public. In the USSR, news about terrorist attacks was never disseminated,
but information was spread through underground radio. Back then, the silence of
the authorities fueled government opposition. In our case, since a public consensus
would first be necessary, the situation is far different. We must use the authority
of the state to withhold information about terrorist attacks to safeguard the
security of our citizens.
In the event of an act of terrorism, there
would be no fanfare. Security agencies would conduct an investigation,
accomplices to the attacks would be wiped out, and the victims' families would
be compensated. There would be no religious or ethnic rifts created in society.
In this situation, sooner or later, terrorist attacks would be fruitless.
Every day we delay passing such laws raises
the risk of a new attack. I assure you, once such laws are put in place, after
a few tries, the militants would stop sending suicide bombers into our cities.
*Oleg Matveyichev is a professor at the Higher Institute of
Economics and a former vice governor of Volgograd Oblast.
