Why Is This Story Missing?
Wouldn’t you think that four days of riots that paralyzed a city of 15-18 million, and left over 40 people killed and over 300 injured, might merit a mention in our newspapers? Apparently not. Here’s the violence:
“Life in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi is returning to normal following three days of violence which killed at least 35 people, police say.
They say that most of those who died were caught in gun battles since Saturday between unidentified people. (…)
The violence erupted after months of tension between the Awami National Party (ANP) and the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM).
The ANP mostly represents Pashtun migrants from the north-west and from Afghanistan, while the MQM represents Urdu-speaking people.” (…)
“Witnesses said that on Monday gunmen riding in cars or on motorbikes indiscriminately targeted motorists and pedestrians in different parts of the city.
In some areas, there were arson attacks in which houses and businesses belonging to rival communities were targeted.”
More here, here, and here. It sounds quite bad: murder, arson, turning over cars and setting them on fire, the works.
I searched the NYT, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Miami Herald, the Boston Globe, and the SF Chronicle. The Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune ran an AP story that was mostly about an attack on a US convoy, but had a couple of paragraphs about the violence in Karachi stuck on the end. Otherwise, there was nothing. If I didn’t read Karachi blogs, I never would have known.
I don’t expect to learn much about the rest of the world from TV news. But major newspapers ought to do better.
