Perspective (Spotlight Weekly)

Nepal: A Killing Field in Making as Human Rights Gradually Drift Away

By Bipin Adhikari

The carnage in Nepal is going unchecked. The recent chain of violence and horrific exchange of murder of innocent Nepalese people by the security forces and the Maoist rebels just show that the people of Nepal and their prorities appear no where on the agenda of those who are fighting on their name. The country is under the siege. It is living under lost authority and disillusionment.

There is nobody to see what is the cost of a victory if those who are fighting abandon everything that they argue they have come to stand for?

The last two weeks have seen the worst attacks and counter attacks, in which several unarmed people, half-fed peasants, ordinary women, and children have been shamelessly killed. There was not a single press release by the Maoists or the security forces regretting over the cowardly killing of these ordinary people. Shame on a revolution or a national security system which builds on the blood of innocent bystanders including media men. This all is happening while the whole of the nation on whose behalf the attacks and counter attacks are allegedly being made is realizing that the current path is a tragic dead-end.

Violence must be condemned. The assumption that violence can deter violence must also be condemned. Violence cannot be the rational for owning and using guns. If the only tool in the tool box is a hammer, every problem is going to look like a nail. This ailing country should not wait more to spend significantly more effort and resources on alternatives. It must be willing to invest in them. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr rightly pointed out, “the ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

The civil society of Nepal has not condemned violence effectively. Violence so far has only been the issue of the people who have suffered it directly. Any civil society worth certain public values must make the public clear where they stand on these killing sprees. Most pathetic and ridiculous are the intellectuals, professionals and academic people of this country, who deplorably still don’t have enough words to condemn the ongoing mayhem. This country has suffered quite a lot due to their dishonesty and opportunistic analysis of the situation. They think they are safe behind closed doors, no matter even if their brothers and sisters outside are being gunned down, bombed or lynched. Small wonder that the Maoist war as well as the response of the political state to this war has never received honest appraisal from this privileged class in the country. It is that failure to condemn these attacks, and counter attacks, to express awareness of the national threat, that has in fact made that voice sound as shrill as it has. It has been a tactical error. It would be a tragedy if their critical vested interests occupied so much space that we lost our focus on the priorities of this ailing state. It is time for defenders of due process, civil liberties and the rule of law to take to the moral high ground that this poor nation deserves.

Analysts say the Maoist leadership, who walked away from the ongoing dialogue, was also under pressure from within its own ranks, with hardened fighters straining to launch fresh offensives against government forces. But very little is reliably known about who is perpetrating from behind both these forces to fight a war which none of them can win. Isolating the violent act itself from the events and forces which created it, make it impossible to understand. If greater effort is not put forth to find out these elements, especially those who conspired to get the third round of peace talks broken, it is going to get a lot worse. Rebel leader Prachanda has already said they have not closed the door on dialogue, but more work is needed to create a "favourable atmosphere" for talks. With some honest efforts, the security situation, while obviously precarious, can still be brought under control, provided the right strategy is followed to deal with the Maoist insurgents. Obviously, the immediate need of the hour is to bring the existing Constitution back to track, and open the democratic process to deliberate with the Maoists on the merit of their demand.

Yet we appear to have lost the ability to discuss human rights dispassionately, never mind compassionately, in this situation of conflict. What many fail to grasp is that human rights are not some variable standard that we are immune from. We must also ask ourselves whether individuals have the right not to be killed as innocent victims of state and Maoist ambitions and counter-ambitions. Even in other respects, a commitment to fundamental human rights in the prevailing situation is the minimum ideal which must be considered sacrosanct, and saved from being contested, and prevented from being at the risk of being mown down by the state and Maoist forces. But the techniques of the human rights movement should not just be speaking out, yelling out, pointing out what is wrong, rarely accompanied by the recognition that there's a crisis, a genuine problem, which needs a solution. We must learn from the experience of Cambodia. The delay in recognising this harsh reality might gradually change our motherland into yet another killing field of Asia.

[Adhikari is a lawyer. He may be accessed at human_rights_Nepal@yahoo.co.uk ]