They Shoot Journalists Don’t They? - The Nepali Media Can Undo Some of Their Own Mistakes

(Courtesy: Mr. Ripley)

At first you gaze at the grisly photographs of the exhumed remains of journalist Birendra Shah with guilty curiosity. The kind that makes you watch the people in suits and dresses falling off a doomed World Trade Center on September 11 or the countless crushed bloated bodies amid a sea of dirty debris after the devastating Tsunami in 2004.

But after the initial takes, this natural yet guilty indulgence is replaced by sadness, anger, and a desire to take action against those responsible for the mayhem. You sense the humanity that was crushed: the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, a symbol of modernism and dynamic global energy created by a sometimes flawed but always progressive American culture, disappearing from New York City’s skyline within hours.

You feel a sense of hopelessness and compassion when you begin to read about the stories of little children and the elderly swept away or crushed by the explosion of an massive ocean.

So as you finish scrolling through all the images: the boots of the APF men standing over the body; the black plastic tarp where the exhumed corpse was placed; the caked lime on the body to supress the stench; the slender arms and curled feet in shades of a bruised purple; and the beginnings of liquefaction of the body; two things about the body stand out.

First, through the caked lime and remnants of his hair, you see what appears to be an eye. It’s half open in a reverse crescent but through the death that encompasses his entire body, you glimpse pain and fear in that eye – the kind of pain and terror he must have experienced when he realized why he had been lured into the jungle. The look is the same you’ve seen in a poached elephant’s eyes depicted on the National Geographic Channel. Pain, horror, and sadness are reflected in Birendra Shah’s eye – so different from the smiling and intelligent person he appears in his other photographs.

The second is, of course, is the pen. Birendra Shah’s pen protrudes from his left shirt pocket Like a fallen warrior’s still-sheathed sword. The shiny silver and black in striking contrast to the fast-fading structure of his body. It almost appears that it wants to jump out to tell his story – radiating a suppressed intellect of its own.

If there is one encouraging spark in Birendra Shah’s murder that the media is appears to be fighting back. They refused the explanation provided by the creepy Krishna Prasad Sitaula – who, even before history is written, will go down as the most duplicitous character that presided over the Home Ministry. He has either hindered investigations or presided idly over preventable killings and the death toll and the insecurity that permeates Nepali society today. The prospect of an ethnic conflagration at any moment is real – yet he is at no loss to make grandiose political statements.

Yet the media shares a tremendous amount of blame Birendra Shah’s death – they are the ones that have provided cover for the Maoists, peddling the delusion by spinning words like “surakshit abataran” (safe landing for the Maoists) and misguided analysis that there was some chasm in methods between the top Maoist leaders and their cadres.

When one publishing house formed the “Center for Investigative Journalism” during the insurgency and “Royal rule”, it became evident that the only types of investigation this unit was responsible for (at that time) was to investigate “crimes” by the Nepali Army and to attract foreign NGO dollars – along with the Caucasians raised with post-modern notions of how the world should be.

It would be victory against what history teaches us if a violent movement like the Maoists could simply be tamed by media pressure – a naïve notion that dogs the media to this day – as evidenced by their “demand” for an apology. Even as the last rites of Birendra Shah were barely over, there are reports that another journalist has been missing for four months.

After listening to the rhetoric from prominent members of the press over the last 17 years of “democracy”, one hopes that Birendra Shah’s murder signifies a fork in the road – where civil society intellectuals and journalists begin to aggressively expose what the Maoists are doing to Nepal.

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