Dev Kumar Sunuwar

SPECIAL EDITORAL : Law and disorder
MAR 02 –
A second media entrepreneur has been shot dead within a month. On Monday, Arun Singhaniya, was killed in Janakpur, the cultural and political hub of the Tarai, on a day the people there were celebrating the festival of colour and hope, Holi. Singhaniya ran Janakpur Today, a local newspaper, and Radio Today, an FM station. Both are known to take strong positions against armed groups that proliferate the Tarai.

Like Jamim Shah’s killing in February, Singhaniya’s killing seems to be the handiwork of a sharpshooter. The deaths have other noteworthy parallels. Like Shah, Singhaniya was shot at pointblank range; like Shah, he was attacked in a crowded neighbourhood where both must have thought they were safe until their deaths. Both were in the media and were, in that respect, public figures. Perhaps the killings have a message written large on the wall: the days of high-profile assassinations are here, no one is safe.

But why? Who is/are behind all this? Who’s next? Are these freak deaths, which just happen to have some parallels? Is there a larger design to silence the press? With the press silenced, who will give voice to the new killings? There are a number of disturbing questions before us. But the most pertinent one: What is the Madhav Kumar Nepal government going to do about the sudden slide in the security situation? The buck stops there. He has two options before him now: either get a handle over the security situation or quit.

The threats, meanwhile, have continued. Today, a reporter with Nayapatrika daily, received a death threat for an investigative follow-up to Shah’s Feb. 7 killing.

Now look at the sorry state of State response. In a press meet held in the week following Shah’s killing, police failed to either pin down the motive or the culprits behind the killing. Three weeks later, it’s nearly a forgotten story, notwithstanding the fact that the killing took place in broad daylight in one of the safest neighbourhoods in the Capital.

Police chief Ramesh Chand Thakuri is currently on a UK visit; he was in China when Shah was killed in early February. Doesn’t the prime minister realise the gravity of the situation at hand? Does he have any control over the state apparatus?

When FNCCI delegates visited him on Tuesday to make a plea for improved security, Home Minister Bhim Rawal was notably absent. At one point, the prime minister even expressed his helplessness to the business leaders: “There’s a lot of poli-tical pressure on me and I have not been able to deliver,” a businessman present at the meeting quoted him as saying.

Of course, threats existed even during the conflict. But targeted assassination attempts could still be traced to certain parties, and hence less confusing, though no less frightening.

In the absence of an effective law and order machinery and, even more importantly, political will to tackle impunity, every killing now reveals that it is possible to evade justice no matter how heinous the crime. Every killing emboldens those with a grudge against particular individuals. If the State had responded strongly to Shah’s killing, Singhaniya’s death yesterday would have perhaps been averted?

Indeed, the Nepali people have become almost inured to the news of targeted assassinations, well aware that the investigation attempts follow a familiar pattern. After initial lethargy, the government responds in the face of mounting criticism; a fact fin-ding commission is formed, then the story dies a premature death.

It is possible, from previous experience, to foresee what will happen in the investigations regarding these deaths. The government will declare its ‘sincere intention’ to pursue those guilty. Police investigations will begin. It will succeed in unraveling a complex network of people and events connected to the murder and even arrest a number of implicated people. By then, the scenario will have become so convoluted that the public will be thoroughly confused regarding the motives and characters behind the murder. And there, matters will be put to rest.

This happened in the case of the murder of journalist Uma Singh in January 2009. Despite evidence that her journalism was a cause for her murder, it was claimed that a property dispute was behind it. The complex scenario that is unfolding behind the murder of Jamin Shah similarly indicates that police investigations will not be able to get to the root and the prime plotters could yet again be allowed to go scot free.

Prime Minister Nepal, in saying what he said to a worried business community today (“that I am helpless”), has once again taken an evasive position, unbecoming of a leader of a nation desperately looking for reassurance. Time has now come for him to demonstrate political will and win the confidence of the Nepali people. That’s not too much to ask of the head of the governnment.