Selective, and therefore, a sham

An Agence France Presse dispatch from New Delhi, and carried by The Philippine STAR last Thursday, reported the rape and beheading of a 12-year-old girl by her own two brothers and an uncle. According to the report, more than 36,000 sexual assaults on minors have been reported in 2016 alone in India.

Nowhere in the report was there any mention of any international body, particularly the United Nations or any of its concerned agencies, registering any protest, much less initiate a probe, or at least issue some passing complaint against India or any of its responsible officials.

All that was in the news story that directly involved the United Nations was a comment/confirmation by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child that in 2014, one in three rape victims in India was a minor. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson’s character in "As Good as it Gets," some urgent help is needed by the situation but there goes the UN, describing to the victim her ordeal.

There is no intervention by the United Nations. There is no investigation by the International Court of Justice. The United States has bitten its tongue. The girls at CNN won't be distracted from Trump-bashing. There is no teeth-gnashing before an urgent presscon by Agnes Callamard. Running man Robert Reyes thinks it is too foreign to merit a death threat.

Okay, it is entirely possible that any or all of the above may have, at one point, reacted to the India situation without my having noticed. If that is the case, then I sincerely apologize. Nevertheless, I find the relative quiet disquieting when compared to the din and uproar over the Philippine anti-illegal drug campaign.

If only there is no way to validate "the real" truth and all it takes for us to be informed is the spit and dribble from the US and the UN, from the ICJ, and from the Callamards and Reyeses of the world, then one would really think the Philippines is on fire and that liquidation squads are just gunning down everyone that smelled queer at every street corner.

But that is not "the real" truth, of course. You just cannot order it online. Conclusions from such a sensitive and delicate matter require actual immersion in the place of contention, with observations made first-hand over a reasonable and credible length of time. Without cold and hard facts obtained sans sentiment, everything said about the Philippine situation is invalid.

Yet it is what piques the interest of all the above. It is what occupies their time. What is happening in India, which is really sexual genocide on the helpless and innocent does not seem to be worth diddly-squat to the bellyaching moral guardians of the universe. You rape and kill a girl in India, the world looks away. Duterte cracks a dirty joke and all hell breaks loose.