(CNSNews.com) – Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday during an appearance in Bangladesh that the media could “do us all a service” if they didn’t cover terrorism “quite as much.”
“No country is immune from terrorism,” Kerry said at a press availability in Dhaka, Bangladesh. “It’s easy to terrorize. Government and law enforcement have to be correct 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. But if you decide one day you’re going to be a terrorist and you’re willing to kill yourself, you can go out and kill some people. You can make some noise. Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on.”
Kerry referenced the July 1st attack at the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka, calling it an “an outrage clearly designed to divide Bangladesh, designed to try to cut off this welcoming society from the outside world.”
“Dozens of smaller-scale attacks have been carried out during the past several years, often directed at members of religious minorities, foreigners, bloggers, and security officials, and the reason for this is obviously they want to divide you. They want to push people apart. They want to create internal strife,” he said.
Kerry called these acts of violence and others worldwide “a stark, painful reminder that those who aid terrorist groups or perpetrate these acts have no respect for national boundaries, no concern for the rights of others, no regard for the rule of law, and they do not embody the values of the people of Bangladesh or the United States, or the majority of people across the globe.”
“It is important for us to make that statement,” he emphasized during his speech about countering terrorist groups such as ISIS, also referred to as Daesh, and Boko Haram.
“In Iraq, Daesh kills people because of who they are. It kills Yezidis because they are Yezidis. It kills Shia because they are Shia. It kills Christian because they are Christian,” Kerry added. “It kills people because they aren’t who they are and who they want you and will force you to be.
“They attack culture. They attack history, and that is why I describe the fight against violent extremism as one of the world’s most important challenges,” he added.
“We are defeating Daesh, and we will defeat Daesh. We will defeat al-Shabaab and Boko Haram, and we are on the road to achieving that now,” Kerry said.
“It’s not just the battlefield; it’s the minds,” he continued. “And if we have too many young people who can’t go to school, or too many young people who are frustrated, or they can’t find a job – if we leave those minds out there for extremists to recruit, then it will continue, and none of us would be doing our jobs if we allowed that to happen.”
Last week, Kerry made similar remarks in Nigeria, arguing that people join terrorist groups because they feel “deeply frustrated and alienated – and because they hope groups like Boko Haram will somehow give them a sense of identity, or purpose, or power.”
(AP Photo/Evan Vucci, Pool) 
