How many wars have been fought in the world from March 1971 to December – from the time of Bangladesh’s bloody liberation war to March 2022, and how many millions of innocent people have had to leave their homeland and go to another country to live as refugees forever? Has anyone kept this account?

By Dr. Partha Banerjee

Today, New York Times, CNN, BBC and almost all US and Western media are crying out for the refugees fleeing Ukraine from the Russian invasion. In Poland alone, between one to one and a half million Ukrainian men, women and children have taken refuge. Then there are countries in Western Europe – such as Germany, France, England, Spain, Italy that will get war refugees. There are other countries around Ukraine, such as Belarus, Hungary, Czech Republic, Moldova, Georgia, Romania, etc., and they would get the brunt of the refugee crisis.

Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine is bound to hurt each of these countries socially, economically and politically. And then,who cares about the devastating effects on the environment and climate, and how many millions of trees will be cut down, parks and grasslands burned, how many millions of gallons of water will be lost forever? And who cares about how these wars and bombings will leave an indelible mark on the minds of survivors, especially children?

During the Bangladesh liberation war of 1971, we saw how many millions of innocent families had to go through this trauma. How many women’s dignity was brutally robbed. How many people lost their limbs. However, the news of the brutality of the Pakistani aggressors on Bangladesh is not known to many ordinary Pakistanis. When I tell them about these atrocities and mass rapes, they are amazed. They have never heard of such things while living in their country. Even though they heard about it, the media of their country did not give them any accurate news about the horror. This is also my term “Journalism of Exclusion”. Today we see a modern version of it in the New York Times, CNN, BBC and Western media.

This modern, new brainwashing shows how Russia and Putin are wreaking havoc on Ukraine, how many innocent lives are being lost, hospitals, shelters in cities like Melitopol, Mariupol, Chernihiv and Kherson have been smashed by these Russian bombs. We see pictures in the western media day and night, and in their subordinate Indian and Bangladeshi media. And naturally, we get shocked.

But there is a big problem here. No one in the world today researches into a news story on social media, and almost everybody considers that flying news to be a fact and shares it with their friends and relatives, just as no one verifies the news of New York Times or CNN. They get passed on as the ultimate truth. And the competition is on for who can express how much earlier. However, the New York Times continues to spread anti-Russian news in the national media, creating absolute and unverifiable war propaganda.

In that one-sided journalism, any logic, analysis or investigation becomes extinct, and any discussion of history is completely forbidden. In this so-called “Land of Freedom” America today, if any of the mainstream media talks about history or makes a comparison between todays Ukraine and yesterday’s Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria or Vietnam (let alone the perpetual aggression and atrocities in Israel), that media will immediately lose its popularity, and big corporations – from cars to drugs to McDonald’s to Pizza Hut to Disney World – their advertisements. With that, they’ll wrap up the ad, and the media will stumble. With that risk, no mainstream corporate media has the courage to conduct honest, impartial journalism.

But honest, impartial journalism was very much needed at this moment. Today I am discussing the war and its refugee problem. One has to be stunned to see the one-sided discussion of immigrants and immigration in the US media – in relation to this new war in Russia. Where were the crocodile tears in the American and Western media when the United States and Britain killed millions of people in Iraq and Afghanistan, and literally bombed the two countries into dust for no reason? Every picture, every news we see today reminds me of that hypocrisy, double standards.

The discussion of history is not popular. You may lose your job, your phone may be hacked, your family may be put under corporate surveillance. American corporations already know all your personal information or favorite news through your use of Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube for free. Any corporation can contact you on your phone or email at any time. If you have an Alexa-type online robot in your home, everything you say through it can go straight into the hands of corporations. You have no privacy left in this so-called Land of Privacy.

During the liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971, Vietnam, Indonesia and Chile were also fighting huge wars, and behind each war was the direct or indirect hand of the United States and its military-industrial complex. At the same time, in South America, Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, US-backed oppressive statesmen played a game of crushing the opposition, military and autocratic regimes unleashed terror, and millions of people lost their lands, homes, relatives, and took their wives and children and fled their beloved country and familiar environment – for shelter in another country.

From Philippines to Angola, from Bangladesh to Sri Lanka, from Sudan to Congo, from Kosovo to Ukraine — behind all the wars, as I said before, there is the support of the United States, Britain and their trillions of dollars, trillions of pounds of arms and war corporations.

Just like if potato chips are not popularized, farm potatoes will not be sold and will rot, the same way if we do not fight and continue the war, these trillions of dollars of manufactured weapons will be left in stockpiles, and their profits will fall sharply on the stock market. And arms companies are not the only ones involved in war profiteering. Included are pharmaceuticals and airplanes and helicopters, computers and software, thousands of electronics and online businesses, from soap to oil to gas to food to soft drinks to cereals. In fact, without war, and without never-ending war, the US economy would be completely destroyed. Because of this (and you can do a Google search) since the end of World War II, United States of America has been involved in some form of war somewhere in the world.

Today, Saudi Arabia is continuing a barbaric war on Yemen. And they are using Americans weapons. But you will not find any news about it in New York Times or CNN or BBC at all.

There is a constant war between India and Pakistan in Kashmir. There are constant wars between many countries across Africa. And Israel…well, let’s not talk about it.

Everywhere – from Burma to Bangladesh to Bolivia to Burkina Faso – ordinary people are the victims of war. They are just like the destroyed people of Mexico, Honduras, Salvador or Guatemala who have lost their country, lost their relatives, lost their land and are migrating to other countries. At the moment, as many as ten to fifteen million war refugees are migrating from Ukraine to Poland.

Millions of people migrated from Europe to America during the Second World War. America gave them shelter. Many of the refugees from the new wars in Europe have found refuge in Germany, Netherlands and France.

But the anti-refugee, anti-refugee political and social climate is very strong in America today. Will USA find shelter for war-torn refugees from Ukraine?

Will the BBC put pressure on the Queen? Can all the Ukrainian refugees find a safe haven in Britain today?

Just the same way how back in 1971, millions of poor, uprooted innocent people from Bangladesh took refuge in India?

Dr. Partha Banerjee, human rights activist, educator, and media and international relations expert based in New York. Email – thescriptline@yahoo.com.