How to deal with Crimes Against Humanity

By: Bikal Dhungel

Terrorism is the most prominent threat to world peace and humanity. It is hard to estimate how many terrorists and terrorist groups are there in the world as most of them do not provide the actual data. They either overstate or understate. Experts point that terrorism is a business, otherwise it wont survive. As it grow in numbers, the business should grow as well. People involving in such acts should feed themselves, cover the costs of travelling and the equipments needed to make exploitive materials or buy weapons. They do not work in a conventional way so money should come from somewhere. Terrorism is business also means that they run some form of illegal activities. Rich terrorist groups like former Irish Republican Army was involved in money laundering, smuggling or drugs, Taliban involves in drug trade, human trafficking and other groups involve in loot, abductions, threat etc to raise money.

Adopting the path of violence has become a popular way of getting thing that one cannot get in a traditional way. This includes the thirst for power. Terrorist groups like the ones mentioned above have taught people that violence is an optimal solution. In today's world where there are more regulations for a chocolate than for machine guns, having an access of such life threatening tools has made our world unsafe. It has also made unstable countries prone to violence eruption.

The guerilla movement of Maoists in Nepal was an act of terrorism. A group of people led by Baburam Bhattrai and Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda started capturing police offices of rural Nepal in order to acquire weapons, combat dresses, walkie talkies and money. The movement that spread in a quick pace had a motto “ destruction before construction “. At least, everything they could were destroyed. From bridges to health posts, roads, schools, government buildings, private properties etc to name the few. In the name of fighting for Social Justice, thousands of poor and illiterate youths from rural places were handled weapons. ( to note: children of both Baburam and Prachanda were sent for higher education to renowned universities )

At last 14,000 deaths. The Maoists used all sorts of threats, tricks and lies to get a majority government and ruled the nation. People who were ready to kill innocents some time could be trusted that they will do good for the public ? The theory of psychology doubts it. It can only be trusted in very few extra-ordinary cases. Maoists were not like that. The Maoists ruled for some time with no result towards progress and the economical situation of the country deteriorated. Gangsters were given the responsibility of sensitive organs like the finance ministry which need high experts of monetary policy. Having a look at Barack Obama's council of Economic Advisors, there are nobel prize winning veteran economists with life long experiences and still, they face economic crisis often. How can such untrained, irresponsible and inexperienced people run finance ministry. No wonder that they use such organs for their own benefit and let the future generation pay the high price. Several similar examples are there but this is not the topic of this essay.

The recent election was a slap in the face of Maoists as they lost most of the seats in the government and became only a tiny opposition party but still involved in the government. The cases of Human Rights abuses, killings, abductions etc continually came to the limelight when Maoists were ruling. They used all their power and influence to hide these happenings arguing that this will hamper the peace process. It is a well known fact that Maoists violated human rights like the killing of civilians not involved in the fighting, recruiting children in the guerilla warfare etc. So, what is not clear for the general public is what will happen to these criminals.

My answer to this question is: Patience. Yes Patience because the demise of Maoists is on the way. This party is in the process of being smaller and smaller and one day, it will dissolve. That will be the best time to arrest the master minds. Before going further, it is important to understand that, we cannot punish all the guerilla fighters. Economist and Terrorism expert Loretta Napoleoni mentions that terrorist groups have maximum 4- 7 masterminds. All others are blind followers. These followers do whatever the masterminds order them to do. That is why they also have no opinion about why they are fighting and we never read or hear any interview with a normal guerilla of any terrorist groups. In many cases, the guerillas were also recruited by force. So, we cannot punish all of them for the atrocity. In the case of Maoists, it is also logical to punish these few masterminds. But we need to wait a long time for that. If we arrest them now, the remaining supporters will come to the street to protest and it will easily turn violent. Time should be taken to show the public that the path of violence they took was a huge mistake and this kind of actions should not be tolerated. Then it is time to bring truth forward and arrest them.

We should learn from history. Similar atrocities were committed in other areas as well. In the Yugoslavian war of early 90s, it took a long time to bring the guilty into justice. The trial of Slobodan Milosevic took a long long time and it was only after almost 20 years that he was pleaded guilty of war crimes in the international criminal court in the Hague, Netherlands. Similarly, Karazic, Ratko Mladic etc were jail sentenced roughly 20 years after the war. The timing was thought logically. It also gave a signal in Yugoslavia that any war crimes can take the masterminds into jail, even after the peace process and after decades.

So, the victims of Nepalese Civil War should have a patience. Someday, the engineers of the Civil War who used innocent people for a purpose non other than gaining name, fame, properties and a form of empire for people around them will be brought to justice. People like Prachanda, Baburam, Mohan Baidya, Agni Sapkota can never enjoy a good night sleep, the nightmare of International Criminal Court will be haunting them until the day it turns from a nightmare to reality. As I have mentioned in another article “Join the ICC”, it is also good if country like Nepal, which is prone to violence join the International Criminal Court. This will stop the possible mass murderers or anyone who decide to choose the path of violence because the ICC can arrest them. Moreover, it will also stop the foreign countries to commit such crimes in Nepal because the law of ICC says that even if the oppressor is not the member of ICC but it commits such crime in a country that is the member of ICC, it will be brought to justice. So, this can be a factor that can stop any massive scale violence in the future.