Open Access“Divine Violence” After the Kharotabad Killings
Author(s) -
Syed Sami Raza
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
review of human rights
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2520-7032
pISSN - 2520-7024
DOI - 10.35994/rhr.v1i1.68
Subject(s) - law enforcement , politics , law , torture , government (linguistics) , alien , meaning (existential) , cover (algebra) , economic justice , political science , human rights , order (exchange) , social media , plan (archaeology) , sociology , media studies , criminology , history , engineering , psychology , citizenship , archaeology , business , mechanical engineering , linguistics , philosophy , finance , psychotherapist
In 2011 the law enforcement agencies of Pakistan killed a group of foreigners traveling across Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The agencies then tried to cover up the incident by calling it a potential suicide-bombing attack. However, they could not succeed in the cover-up plan primarily due to a photograph of one of the killed aliens—a woman—that appeared on local media. In this photograph the alien woman is shown lying on the ground near a sandbag-covered check-post waving for mercy/justice. The photograph becomes viral on both electronic news and social media and impels the government to order an inquiry. In this article, I engage the concept of “divine violence” and explore the photograph’s politics of aesthetics, which I argue contextualizes the photograph’s meaning during a creative moment for human rights.