It’s Syrian deaths over Sridevi for Tamil Nadu netizens
By Express News Service | Published: 02nd March 2018 03:49 AM |
Last Updated: 03rd March 2018 11:12 AM | A+A A- |
Netizens drew parallels between the death of Sridevi being accorded so much importance than the lives of hundreds of others who died in Syria.
CHENNAI: While the nation mourned film star Sridevi’s death, Syria’s humanitarian crisis sparked an unusually high interest among Tamils on social media. The outpouring of support was clearly visible on all social media platforms, where people of all ages condemned the ongoing violence and shared their helplessness and grief over the innocent lives lost.
Barring the day when Sridevi passed away, Google Trends data suggested that the number of news searches relating to Syria over the last seven days trumped the number of searches pertaining to the deceased megastar. Major cities such as Chennai, Tiruchy and Coimbatore were not the ones showing maximum interest in the Syrian crisis. It was the smaller towns and villages such as Thirumudivakkam, Mayileripalayam, Vandavasi, Thirumalayampalayam and Muthugoundan Pudur that provided maximum traction.
“Yesterday they were talking about #SriDevi ma’ams legacy, and all of a sudden now they’re posing black marks. Why can’t media let it be? And why doesn’t media cover this massacre which is happening right now?” said one such tweet.
On WhatsApp, there were many forwards doing the rounds that urged users to change their display picture to a plain black image to show their condemnation of what was going on in Syria and to stand in support of the Syrian citizens.
From pictures of injured children with disfigured, bleeding faces to infants lying lifeless under piles of rubble and from pictures of helpless, distraught family members to rows of corpses, all are haunting reminders of the worst that human beings are capable of.
Hashtags like #SyriaIsBleeding, #SyriaCrisis, #SyriaWar, #PrayForSyria have been trending for the last couple of days. Many took to Twitter to express their discontent over the complete lack of coverage in the media of the humanitarian crisis. They drew parallels between the death of an actress being accorded so much importance and the lives of hundreds of others being given no screen time at all.
Interestingly, a lot of the outrage expressed about the Syrian crisis on Twitter are by various Tamil actors' fans accounts:
1
Share It & Spread It #PrayForSyria pic.twitter.com/9CIKA8fdNA
— Dhanush Fans 24x7 (@dhanushfans24x7) 26 February 2018
2
No media is ready to share about this #PrayForSyria pic.twitter.com/Xvm6Xt3ltY
— Saran Vjay (@Saran_Vjay) 26 February 2018
3
An Actress died...
— ஷின்சான் தாரா (@Thara_Rifa) 26 February 2018
Nation cries....
Nation died....
No one cares...#PrayForSyria
4
My new fav tweet:
— Vijay Trender™️ (@VijayTrender) February 27, 2018
We reached chennai trends
Make it more big#WeNeedPeacefulSyria pic.twitter.com/KEhoUEHjoU
— DHANUSH FANS COMMUNITY ™ (DFC_spreadlove) February 27, 2018
5 Even the numerous fake/fan accounts of Malayalam actress and Internet sensation Priya Prakash Varrier contributed their bit:
This is not movie pictures
— Priya Prakash Varrier (@priyapvarrier) February 26, 2018
Over 400 people have been killed in Syria in the last five days.150 of them were children.
Why is the world in silence now? #Syria #Syrian pic.twitter.com/MlHuNicWvf
(With online desk inputs)
