US SHOULD THOROUGHLY INVESTIGATE CHAPEL HILL MURDERS: INDONESIA by Fardah

    Jakarta, Feb 16, 2015 (Antara) - A cartoon with accompanying text "Muslims are newsworthy only when they kill, not when they are killed," is in circulation on the social media following last week's Chapel Hills tragedy.

       The cartoon depicts three newsmen, each covering his mouth, eyes, and ears, has been circulated to describe how the Western media view the killings of three young Muslims in Chapel Hills, North Carolina.

       Newly-wed couple Deah Shaddy Barakat (23), a University of North Carolina dental student, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha (21), and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha (19), a student at North Carolina State University were killed in a Chapel Hills condominium in North Carolina on Feb. 10, 2015.

        The murders of the three Muslims by their neighbor Craig Hicks have not received any immediate attention from major Western media nor from leaders such as US President Barack Obama, who was quick to respond after the Charlie Hebdo tragedy.

       The North Carolina authorities have even played down the murders by saying that the killings were triggered by a dispute over parking and there was no evidence to suggest that the victims were targeted because of their religion.

         However, the victims' families and several world leaders, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have condemned the shooting as a hate crime.

         Erdogan even criticized US President Barack Obama for his silence on the killings.

        President Obama finally issued a statement on Feb. 13, describing the killings of the three young Muslims as "brutal and outrageous."
  "No one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship," Obama said while offering his condolences to the victims' families.

        Following the murders, public radio WUNC released an old interview with Yusor Mohammad, who was a humanitarian activist and one of the three slain Muslims, which was recorded for the StoryCorps, an oral history project that aims to create an archive of interviews for future generations.

        "Growing up in America has been such a blessing and you know in some ways I do stand out, with the hijab I wear on my head and my head covered," she remarked, when talking about the "beauty" of inclusion and tolerance she saw in the community.

        "The beautiful thing here is that it doesn't matter where you come from; there are so many different people from so many different places and different backgrounds and religions. But here we're all one, one culture," she stated.

        The government of Indonesia, the country that has the largest Muslim population in the world, also issued a statement on Feb. 13, 2015, condemning the murders.

        Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Arrmanatha Nasir noted that the Indonesian government has strongly condemned the killings in North Carolina and hoped the US police will thoroughly investigate the case.

         "We condemn every violation directed at certain groups; violation is not a solution," he remarked.

          At the moment, the government is communicating with the Indonesian Consulate General in New York, the US, to ensure the protection of Indonesian nationals in North Carolina and other states.  
  According to him, politicians are responsible for events in their countries and should clarify their stance on them.

        An Indonesian prominent Muslim figure in the US, Muhammad Shamsi Ali, told detikcom, that he believed the murders were motivated by the fact that the three young people were Muslims. 
   "I think it was motivated by the religion factor and nothing else," he added. 
  "They were born and grew up in the United States. They had contributed to their community. They loved America. President Obama, as a leader of a nation that believes in justice, must be fair," Ali stressed.

        According to a Reuters report, Hicks posted anti-religion messages and a photo of a gun he claimed to own on his Facebook page. His neighbors said he was known in the condo community as someone prone to grow angry over parking troubles and noise.

        Psychiatrist Mohammad Abu-Salha, the father of the two slain women, told CNN that his daughter Yusor, after moving into a neighboring condo where her new husband lived, had mentioned that Hicks made her feel uncomfortable.

         "Daddy, I think he hates us for who we are," Abu-Salha said his daughter told him, according to CNN.

        Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, of Chapel Hill, has been charged with first-degree murder in the cold-blooded shootings.

          Muslim activists demanded that authorities investigate the possible motive of religious hatred.

        Mohammad Abu-Salha told the News & Observer, a newspaper based in Raleigh, North Carolina: "This was not a dispute over a parking space; this was a hate crime. This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt. And they were uncomfortable with him, but they did not know he would go this far."
   "It was his execution style, a bullet in every head," Abu-Salha was quoted as saying by Reuters.

         The shooting sparked the hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter on the social media, with many posters assailing what they called a lack of news coverage and world reaction. ***2***
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