When Bobby Kennedy became Attorney General, to his dismay he realized his department could go after people who committed specfic acts of crime like murder, or kidnapping, but the big mafia bosses who were the real powers behind those acts were not officially recognized to exist. My point being, there is crime and there is organized crime. Tackling organized crime is the bigger challenge. If you let organized crime run amok, and only go after specific acts of crime, you would be fighting a losing battle. But if you go after organized crime in a sophisticated way, individual acts of crime and petty crime are much less in volume.
My point being there is terrorism and there is state terrorism. What you have in Nepal right now is state terrorism. You have a gang of about 30-50 individuals at the most who stand to benefit greatly, mostly in terms of money, if the status quo is maintained. The top guy is literally above the law, and the rest of them also act like they are above the law. There is some mafia thinking going on over there.
How do you deal with this?
First you perform a diagnosis. You crunch the numbers. How many people have suffered from the human rights abuses? How many have been killed? Then you look at the state treasury. Follow the money. It stinks as to how irresponsible the mafia has been. Even since the king's direct rule, there has been no accounting of Rs. 50, 00,00,00,000. In four short years, the king has broken all records. Apparently he does not think of the state treasury as the people's money. We have gone back a few hundred years when the kings thought so. The coup of last year was a time machine invented by this king. He turned back the clock.
Let me tell you how big that number really is. If it takes Rs. 1,000,oooo to build a high school in Nepal, for Rs. 50, 00,00,00,000 you could get 50,000 high schools. But there are only 4,000 villages in Nepal. Say we gave two high school per village, and then gave a bunch to the towns, for a total of 10,000 high schools, and if a hospital cost as much to erect as a high school, then we could have had 10,000 high schools and 10,000 hospitals for that kind of money, and we would still have used up only 40% of the money.
I am looking at the sum and I am thinking, for Rs. 50, 00,00,00,000, every village in Nepal could get itself two high schools, two hospitals, a post office, a village council building, a drinking water system, a telephone network, decent roads.
Don't quote me on this too eagerly. I have not really crunched down the numbers. But you get the idea.
This king has turned back the clock in more ways than one. The Nepali people's money has been stolen. The Nepali people have literally been robbed en masse at gunpoint. Other than the direct physical abuse thousands have been subjected to, millions have been deprived of better lives that could have been possible with the money that they already had collectively.
This is not to speak of all the foreign aid that has been scared off. This is not to say of the malaise that has been inflicted on the economy.
So there is physical abuse, and there is money. And then the basic human rights.
Right to free speech is priceless and non-negotiable. Right to peaceful assembly is priceless and non-negotiable. The basic human rights are all non-negotiable. You don't get those rights from any king. You have them because you were born human.
There was a time when every little or big country on earth had a monarch. That is like saying there was a time when malaria was widespread, polio was widespread. There was once the bubonic plague. But most countries by now have got rid of the monarch. Now it is Nepal's time to do so. And Nepal is in the process of doing it.
The question is not if the monarchy will end or not. The question is how. That question can partly be answered by the monarch himself. He has the option to climb down. Or he could get kicked out through a revolutionary act.
A constituent assembly is his best option. If he will not take it, the country is going to have to become a democratic republic under an interim president before it goes for a constituent assembly.
The streets of Nepal have gone from warm to hot. The movement has become a revolution. There is no turning back. The Nepali people know what they want. They want freedom.
On The Web
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