Summer of Blood

Describing unenlightened folk such as Islamic fundamentalists as ‘medieval’ is commonplace nowadays. Columnists do it out of idleness when they’re seeking a single word that implies unenlightened, old-fashioned and cruel. Politicians do it because they know it is controversial enough to make headlines, without actually being racist.

But sometimes, just sometimes, calling a modern society medieval is entirely accurate. Read this, from the English-language Pakistani news site The International News. There’s tantalisingly little reporting, but here’s the first line, just to whet your appetite:

“Twenty-eight bonded labourers, including women and children, were freed from the private jail of Haji Sher Jamali, a local PML-Q leader, police said on Tuesday.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Comment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.