Some weeks ago, we expressed our deep concern about the prospect of war between Russia and Ukraine and its vocal supporters in America, Europe and silent ones in Asia and Africa. Our fear is now a reality.

Russia has been calling on Ukraine not to host NATO because having American weapons and military systems on its doorstep posed a military and existential threat to the Russian Federation. 

Unfortunately, the language of the so-called diplomats was unfriendly and outright undiplomatic. We know it from our youth and adulthood that calling your enemy ‘nonsense’ and ‘stupid’ is fuel for a fight.

Instead of shipping peaceful talks between Ukraine and Russia to resolve their problems amicably, the USA and Britain were proudly announcing the shipment of lethal aid to Ukraine. And promising to fight with Ukraine.

Lethal aid is the language of war. It is about assisting one side with bombs and other weapons of mass destruction. Attempts by Europe, notably France as chair of the EU, to convince Vladimir Putin not to invade Ukraine failed essentially because Ukraine, like Russia,  refused to back down from its stand. Had these two belligerent countries sat down, talked face-to-face in a language both commonly speak, perhaps the worst would have been avoided. 

Seven days into the conflict, the talking between Russia and Ukraine has started. This is what should have happened before the war started, after all. In short, we blame this war on the failure of diplomacy and poor choice of language.

Sad as the events in Ukraine are, we feel the war there is a blessing in disguise. We know that it sounds insensitive and callous but listen for a moment.

Europeans and Americans have always, for centuries, claimed that they were God’s chosen civilised and democratic people; that they considered freedom of expression and media an inalienable human right.  This has been deafeningly drummed down our eardrums for decades.  Aid, soft aid, has been cut from impoverished countries that thwart free expression and media.  Today, the same patronising democrats have shut down Russian media, specifically Russia Today and Sputnik, from democratic Europe.  What hypocrisy!

When President Donald Trump was banned from Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms by American media companies, we laughed about it. But that marked the clearest example of suppression of freedom of expression in America on a president.  Listen carefully, there are no independent media in the world as all media are controlled by either government, corporate institutions, faith organisations, and rich individuals who are connected to each other in a web of information control and cultural mainstreaming of the world as Stuart Hall once argued.

We will not talk about how racist some of the Occidental coverage of the Ukrainian conflict has been. War in Europe, killing blue-eyed civilised people is bad and unimaginable. War should have been somewhere else, away from Europe and North America. War is  fine in uncivilised countries such as Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, DRC, Mali, Cameroon, Niger, Mozambique, Uganda, Rwanda, CAR, and Malawi, and regions such as Latin America, Asia and Africa, but not in blue-eyed Europe. Hopefully, you now understand why North America and Europe have not sent their blue-eyed soldiers to aid Ukraine fight the red-eyed Russian soldiers. Ukraine was duped. Blue eyes cannot die for Ukaraine.

At the UN, BBC and other Occidental media are ensuring the Russian voice is not heard, and the image not seen. Par contre,  Ukraine is given all the airtime it needs, as if Ukraine it has paid for it, while  Russia is cut away immediately its ambassador starts to speak.  And this is being done by self-proclaimed democratic professional media.  We admit that the Occidentalists taught us how to practice journalism professionally, and we have tried but we henceforth call on the Occidental media to come to Malawi and learn how to be less biased even while supporting a cause.

The Occidentalist is a hardcore hypocrite!

The post Democratic Europe murders freedom of expression, media appeared first on The Nation Online.