I didn´t know Uma; nor had I ever read her writings or listened to her on the radio. I got to know about her tumultuous, yet inspiring, life only after her untimely death. Strangely, it now feels as if I had known her for years—her image has flashed through my mind dozens of times each day, since she was stabbed to death a week ago.
Uma was a gutsy lady—sharp and fearless. It takes guts to be a woman journalist in Madhes, and you need an extra dose of it to move away from your home to another district, to live by yourself in a rented room, and do journalism while braving the likes of Matrika Yadav, Babban Singh and others of the criminal groups mushrooming in Madhes. She wrote articles exposing Matrika Yadav, and in one of the public functions when Babban Singh was speaking on women’s rights she reprimanded him for the rape cases he was implicated in. Such examples of her audacity are aplenty.
Uma´s death is an irreparable loss to Nepali journalism; its repercussions could be equally damaging. How many families will now encourage their young daughters to join journalism in Madhes? How many reporters in the districts will muster courage to report what they see? How will society know about what is happening on the ground and how dreadful will it become in the absence of media?
For now we have focused, as we must, on nabbing the murderers. News of the arrest of two suspects in Uma´s murder has brought us some relief. But bringing the culprits to book should be only the first step. In the long run, we must address a slew of factors that have created a political and social context where it is easy and okay to take someone´s life, where it is easy to extort and intimidate people and get away with it.
Let´s take Madhes first. The southern plains are a law and order nightmare. Police say there are about three dozen armed groups operating in the Tarai under political cover though most of them have criminal intentions. One of my Madhesi friends from Rajbiraj told me that his parents asked him to return to Kathmandu a day after he came visiting because an armed group had called to extortion from them. With most middle-class Pahade families already leaving Madhes, the criminal outfits have now turned to any decent Madhesi family around for their extortion.
When I asked a senior police officer, overseeing police operations in the central Tarai, why such criminal activities were on the rise, he pointed a finger at the politicians and said, "Every time we nab someone, we get political pressure to release him." According to him, it´s not just one party in particular but almost all of them that interfere whenever it suits them. "Either these leaders have some personal connections to the criminal outfits or they are completely in the dark that their cadres are a part of such outfits."
When police created a Special Task Force (STF) to take on the criminal elements operating in Madhes the regional political parties publicly opposed it and dubbed it a state apparatus for suppressing Madhesi aspirations. So long as the regional political parties shy away from taking a lead in addressing the law and order mess in Madhes no one else is going to bother about it either. The Maoists already feel that they have burnt their fingers in Madhes and do not want to get hurt any further.
It is, however, not just the social-political context in Madhes that is feeding violence, the national political scene, particularly the state of impunity, is such that violence, even murder, becomes passable.
Prime Minister Puspa Kamal Dahal has publicly said "To argue that violence has no place in politics is but hypocrisy". Not just that but he has also threatened to capture the state should anyone try to remove his party from power. Finally, look at the impunity that Maoist cadres enjoy: Kali Bahadur Kham, the prime suspect in the murder of Ram Hari Shrestha, recently got a berth in the party central committee; a man accused of killing journalist Birendra Shah was appointed to the management committee of a local school; Dhading YCL cadres, who abducted and killed two young UML supporters from Kalanki, are still at large; and two Maoist cadres, who were arrested after much public pressure for leading the physical attack at Himal Media, were welcomed with garlands and vermilion powder by Maoist cadres after they were released on bail (which means even if the state took action against the attackers the party actually celebrated them).
What message does this send in society? If cadres of the party that leads the government can intimidate, extort, kill and get away with it, criminals will only receive a psychological boost for what they are up to. Crime happens in a social-political context and to expect that the arrest of some criminals here and there would bring peace without addressing the context is a forlorn hope.
Related story
Saudi crown prince vows to bring Khashoggi killers to justice
