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It happened on November 13, 2015 Friday. News broke of a terrorist attack in Paris France.

Several areas were targeted and initial report stated that there were over a hundred dead and a hundred more wounded. People were being shot in random and suicide bombers detonated themselves in populated areas of the city. The French President called it an act of war and promised to be merciless in its retaliation. The rest of the world responded in horror and disgust. This was demonstrated mostly on social media. People called out for prayers and justice for the people of France. The French flag was plastered in everyone’s profile pic to show support for the City of love. My heart goes out to all those people that perished on that senseless attack. Hundreds of children lost their parents, and parents losing their children. I can just imagine the pain and anguish to wake one day realizing your loved ones gone forever because of an inhuman and senseless act.

However, these are not the only senseless killings in the world. On the same year armed terrorists attacked Garissa University College in Kenya. They gathered everyone they could mostly students in an open area of the school and started shooting. 148 people died with 79 injured. A day before the Paris attack Beirut Lebanon known to be the Paris of the east was also rocked by two separate bombings that killed 43 people and injured 200. It is the same inhuman act that killed a lot of people too; this led some of us to ask why did the world turn a blind eye on Lebanon, Kenya and many other countries that fell victim to the same terroristic act?

Some analysts suggest that racism is still evident in the world we live in today. People are more likely to be concerned about victims they can identify with, in color and race. Thus big news networks are more interested in covering this instead of the others that has lesser impact as far as ratings are concerned. In social media Paris had relevance over everything else because it is after all the glamorous Paris, the City of lights.

It is however unfair to generalize this because most people have a real connection with the city. In the Philippines we have hundreds of Filipinos that live there and some have visited the City and developed certain affection to it. The big news network did cover what was breaking but of lesser extent probably due to geographical and logistic concerns.  What is important is to express concern on terrorism as a whole, It is not just an attack on a certain nation, color or race, It is an attack on the entire human race and everything it stands for. 

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