An Open Letter to The Guardian Post Publisher and Editorial Board of The Guardian Post,
Subject: Stop Moral Laundering, State Violence Under the Guise of Peace.
Dear Mr Ngah Christian,
Your recent article urging “separatists to end violence” is not a call for peace. It is a public exercise in moral laundering. You have chosen to lecture those bleeding in the streets while sparing the hand that wields the match. That is not balance. That is bias disguised as responsibility.
You Are Addressing the Wrong Culprit
This conflict did not begin with armed resistance. It began when peaceful lawyers were beaten, teachers were shot for striking, unarmed civilians were killed, and entire communities were razed by state forces. Armed resistance followed the collapse—by design—of every lawful, peaceful avenue. To scold the oppressed while muting the state that ignited the violence is not neutrality; it is complicity by omission.
“End the Violence” Without Justice Is a Demand for Surrender
Your article calls for an end to violence while carefully avoiding the essentials of peace: no demand for withdrawal of occupying forces, no call for the release of political prisoners, no insistence on accountability for massacres, no restoration of self-governing institutions. Peace without justice is not peace. It is submission.
You Recycle a Discredited Colonial Script
Your framing revives the oldest colonial refrain: “Violence is regrettable on all sides; the oppressed must be reasonable.” History has already judged this logic—against the Mau Mau, against Algerian resistance, against South Africa’s liberation—and it lost.
You Erase the State’s Monopoly of Terror
This is not a symmetric conflict. One side deploys jets, armored columns, and trained battalions with diplomatic cover. The other survives amid ashes, displacement, and homemade defenses. Pretending these are morally equal actors is intellectual dishonesty.
You Are Asking for Quiet, Not Peace
Let us be frank. What your article seeks is not peace but quiet—quiet enough for business as usual, donor comfort, and elite stability. Quiet enough to keep appearances intact while communities burn. Peace without justice is merely well-managed oppression.
Final Word
Wars do not end by preaching to those whose backs are against the wall. They end when media finds the courage to confront power, not flatter it. Until state violence ends and justice is pursued, resistance will not vanish—no matter how many editorials demand patience from the wounded.
History does not remember those who begged the oppressed to be silent. It remembers those who spoke truth when silence was safer.
Respectfully,
Ali Dan Ismael
Editor-in-Chief, The Independentistnews
January 21, 2026
