As soon as any protest takes place in Bharat, human rights groups get activated demanding ‘accountability’ from the government. The same groups conveniently look the other way when it comes to the West. The recent police crackdown on farmer protests in Netherlands is a case in point.
According to an ABC News report:
Dutch police shot at a tractor during a heated night of farm protests and detained three demonstrators, the latest incident in a string of protests against government plans to cut pollutant emissions that many farmers fear would hurt their livelihoods.
Police in northern Friesland said Wednesday that no one was hurt in the incident that involved warning shots and direct targeting of a tractor that broke free from a line. Police said there was an attempt to drive into their vehicles and officers.
Because shots were fired, an official investigation into the incident was started.
Dutch farmers angry at government plans to slash emissions have blocked roads and supermarket distribution centers for several days, sparking fears of food shortages.
The unrest among Dutch farmers was triggered by a government proposal to slash emissions of pollutants like nitrogen oxide and ammonia by 50% by 2030. Provincial governments have been given a year to formulate plans to achieve the goal.
The reforms are expected to include reducing livestock and buying up some farms whose animals produce large amounts of ammonia. Farmers argue they are being unfairly targeted and are being given no perspective for their future.
A similar situation was witnessed in Canada when the Trudeau government had declared an emergency to quell truckers’ protest. In late January this year, thousands of Canadian truckers and their supporters descended on Canada’s capital Ottawa to oppose the government’s Covid-19 vaccine requirement for truckers crossing the border into the US, which has the same policy. On February 6, Ontario province, where Ottawa is located, declared a state of emergency to quell the convoy protests.
Despite no violence during the protests, Canadian cops abused common citizens by issuing hundreds of tickets and arresting people, including the elderly. The city also threatened to arrest anyone who brought gas to the protestors, but hundreds of Ottawans defied those orders. When compared to the so-called farmers protest which crippled Bharat’s capital for an year and involved multiple incidents of violence, none worse than the anarchy unleashed by tractor-riding lumpens who stormed Delhi’s Red Fort on Bharat’s Republic Day (January 26, 2021) and left around 400 police personnel injured, the Ottawa protests were definitely peaceful.
Another key difference is that the Ottawa protests seem genuine and organic and people involved are ordinary folks from all walks of life. The agitations in Bharat were staged and as some rational voices in the West also acknowledged, the protests represented the interests of politically powerful (and heavily subsidized) remnants of Bharat’s traditional landlord communities.
Many Western countries and human rights activists have been repeatedly targeting Bharat. They have been unnecessarily interfering in Bharat’s internal affairs be it the CAA or the farm laws. Several Western nations including Australia, France, and Belgium among others have witnessed large-scale Covid related agitations. Even the UK saw a police crackdown on agitators protesting the rape and murder of a woman by a police constable.
These Western nations have enough dirt in their backyard to clean but these nations don’t think twice before ignorantly and arrogantly commenting on actions taken by the ‘developing’ world. Human rights and other activists who are otherwise dormant and conveniently silent, activate their international toolkits as soon as there are protests in Bharat.
(Featured Image Source: ABC News)
