Don’t say ‘Destroy America’

‘We’ll destroy Amer­i­ca’ is a state­ment becom­ing too com­mon here in Pak­istan espe­cial­ly in the rhetoric of politi­co-reli­gious folks. But this sim­ple expres­sion of anger, or some­time meant as a pun can land you in seri­ous trou­ble. A cou­ple of young Brits had had to go through a pret­ty tough time after tweet­ing that they were com­ing to ‘destroy Amer­i­ca’. They were arrest­ed in the Los Ange­les and held for 12 hours.

Were they ter­ror­ists or some­thing? No. Actu­al­ly they used this phrase as a slang to mean their inten­tion for some par­ty­ing. Leigh Van Bryan, a 26 year old bar man­ag­er, and his 24 year old bud­dy, Emi­ly Bunting, had no idea what they were going to face mere­ly for tweet­ing: “Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy Amer­i­ca.” The armored guards picked them up imme­di­ate­ly upon their arrival.

It’s very unfor­tu­nate that today we have to live in a con­stant state of fear and para­noia, trapped in a ver­i­ta­ble police state where Big Broth­er can arrest you sim­ply because he mis­un­der­stood a joke.

(Pub­lished in The Laal­tain — Issue 6)