Knight and King’s Subjects
Innocent soul with her hands bound at the feet of a knight, looked up.
There wasn’t fear in her eyes,
There wasn’t any anger,
There was a pity.
For she knew blade will descend upon her head.
This excerpt says that the innocent souls have gone through a lot of pain inflicted upon by their majesty. Thus knight could only see pity and not the anger or fear as she knew it was ordered by the majesty so he will abide by it.
I am trying to use Knight as the metaphor for Government and King’s subjects for common folks.
Through this, I will try to show that when pain in any form is inflicted upon a person incessantly, it arouses a sense of pity and not fear or anger for those who inflict it upon them.
1st Instance
Pegasus is a spyware that can be installed on devices running certain versions of iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system, developed by the Israeli cyberarms firm, NSO Group. It came in limelight after WhatsApp sued the company for its Pegasus spyware that was allegedly used to snoop on journalists, activists, lawyers and senior government officials in 20 countries around the world, including India, in May this year. In their defense, the company told that they only sell the spyware to the government.
If you can recall the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident, journalist for The Washington Post and former general manager and editor-in-chief of Al-Arab News Channel, occurred on 2 October 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. This Israeli Software Helped Saudis Spy on Khashoggi, Lawsuit Says. So all these hacks on common folks were carried out by Government.
One of the very famous instances for spying on the public was brought into the limelight by Edward Snowden who copied and leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency in 2013 when he was a Central Intelligence Agency employee. Which revealed the extent of surveillance of the U.S. government on common people and also the lie they told about it in the FISA court.
Conclusion
The Government is not stopping here and in the name of security of the State, they continue these unethical deeds. So, now I am not angry anymore but I just pity these officials.
2nd Instance
The delegation of European Union MPs, visited Kashmir to assess the situation in the state. The visit, aided by the non-profit Women’s Eco-Nomic and Social Think Tank (WESTT), was described as unofficial. Madi Sharma (a member of this NGO), who Arranged this EU Delegation’s Kashmir Visit mailed them stating that meeting with “Prime Minister” is also Scheduled during their visit. Thus according to this statement what I conclude is that this visit was official as ‘Prime Minister do not just give away his time to just meet some delegates who are not even on an official tour’. Also, this will back the Center’s move on Article 370. During this, some of the MPs reverted the mail asking for an independent visit to people residing in Kashmir without any security. Eventually, their invitation was canceled and I am pretty sure you can sense the probable reason for this.
I am not here to recite the tour story so coming to the point, people of Kashmir are totally devoid of their fundamental rights. No internet connection from the past 3 months. They were restricted from communicating outside their country for 50+ days. Because of curfew and total shutdown, their mental and physical state is getting affected. Students and patients are among those who are suffering the most.
Conclusion
I am totally aware of the pros and cons of this move but just wanted to show that the public here is facing dictatorship by the government and they are inflicted upon psychological and even physical pain since God knows when…and I myself have seen the pity in the eyes of a Kashmiri resident…
