Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova shared a Facebook post on Saturday about the OSCE’s silence regarding the recent spree of terrorist attacks against Kazakhstani media. She described some of these acts of violence in detail prior to questioning why that organization hasn’t condemned them. Her point is that the OSCE is hypocritically engaging in double standards that raise questions about its supposed impartiality. This is an important observation to reflect upon.
The Hybrid War of Terror on Kazakhstan is multifaceted and the countless crimes that were committed during the last few dark days of that country’s history have yet to be fully documented. Nonetheless, disturbing reports such as those that were detailed by Mrs. Zakharova have emerged showing that media outlets and representatives were specifically targeted by the terrorists. This further reaffirms President Tokayev’s conclusion that all of this was preplanned.
Targeting the media is integral during any Hybrid War. The perpetrators aim to control the population’s perceptions, to which end they try to intimidate journalists into silence, if not outright slaughter them. The terrorists also wanted to destroy the country’s media infrastructure, which they largely succeeded in doing. This speaks to their anti-democratic motivations that discredit the US-led Western Mainstream Media’s false infowar narrative that they’re “peaceful pro-democracy protesters”.
Storming media offices and attacking journalists is the exact opposite of what a “democracy” is supposed to stand for. To the contrary, it proves that Kazakhstan’s national model of democracy was regarded as a threat to the authoritarian terrorists who sought to silence its media during the course of their Hybrid War of Terror. They’re not fighting for democracy, but to violently dismantle it. The OSCE’s lack of interest in any of this casts suspicion on its motives.
Purportedly impartial international organizations are often hijacked by political forces in order to weaponize them against their opponents. That precisely seems to be the case with the OSCE, which is largely under American influence. For that reason, it’s reluctant to say anything about the terrorist attacks against Kazakhstani media out of fear that these facts will discredit the faux “democratic” cause of the criminals that are responsible for this nationwide tragedy.
The takeaway is that so-called “international authorities” on any given issue such as media freedom and the like shouldn’t be given the power that they have to shape society’s perceptions. It’s one thing to generally respect one or another organization, and another entirely to regard it as the supreme authority on any given issue like many consider the OSCE to be. That’s objectively not the case as proven by its silence in the face of the many terrorist attacks that recently targeted Kazakhstani media.
Western society’s perceptions of these organizations might not change, but others’ are much more malleable since it’s non-Western societies like Kazakhstan’s that bear the brunt of the OSCE’s lack of impartiality. Raising wider awareness of its hypocritical double standards that are attributable to American meddling in that organization can eventually go a long way towards getting folks to reconsider the blind trust that many of them previously placed in the OSCE.
That entity’s self-assumed role in serving as a seemingly impartial authority on media freedom and other issues should be replaced in the hearts and minds of many non-Western people with other more objectively impartial organizations. The SCO, for example, can fulfill such a role if its members have the political will for it to do so. They should seriously consider it since the lack of progress on diversifying “international authorities” on any given issue enables the West to retain its influence.
The OSCE’s silence towards the examined issue isn’t the first such instance of a purportedly impartial organization exhibiting hypocritical double standards for political reasons and it also won’t be the last. Nevertheless, this latest example should hopefully inspire non-Western countries to prioritize replacing its self-assumed role in this respect with the SCO or some other organization. The longer that this takes to happen, the more difficult it’ll be to liberate hearts and minds from the OSCE’s pernicious influence.