Bombs in valley schools
Those who create terror in society with their criminal acts are terrorists. And they should be dealt with as such. The only place they belong is jail. In recent times criminals in Nepal have been using various political covers to justify their crimes. Some claim to be using terror for the political rights of certain ethnic communities. Others do so for the purported benefit of a particular class. But nothing can justify maiming and killing people, children especially. But that is precisely what a group of terrorists who call themselves “Young Communist Force” were trying to do when they on Tuesday planted bombs at various schools in the valley. These private schools were apparently targeted because they shut their doors to students from poor families who couldn’t afford their exorbitant fees. But it is strange that to make their point this group had to resort to the cowardly act of planting bombs that could potentially harm small children. Police suspect that the real cause was that the concerned schools had refused hefty donations to the group. In any case, whatever demands the group has should be thrown out of the window and those involved thrown into jail. There can be no engagement, of any sort, with these terrorists who use children as their shield.
But the bomb scare on Tuesday—thankfully, no one was hurt—also raises other troubling questions. This is a society that not long ago witnessed a bloody civil war, in which nearly 17,000 lost their lives; another 1,500 were made to forcibly ‘disappear’. Notwithstanding the political changes they heralded, many blame the Maoist war for legitimizing the use of violence in Nepali society. This is a credible accusation. Any use of violence, for any purpose, results in all kinds of unforeseen consequences. The guns might have long fallen silent but the fallouts from the decade-long civil war continue to be felt. The law and order situation is yet to return to pre-war level. The conflict victims continue to wait for justice. Various armed outfits have sprouted up in every part of the country. Now, it appears that some ex-Maoist combatants who didn’t get as much as they expected from the peace process are now running extortion rackets. The two people arrested by the police in connection with Tuesday’s bomb scare claim to be ex-Maoist combatants who learned bomb-making during their insurgency days. So there has to be a fuller reckoning of the Maoist war.
Time has also come to declare our schools and colleges protest-free areas, or “zones of peace” as some would have it. Any enforced disruption of student studies should be treated as criminal acts. If the state does not strictly deal with those bent on turning our academic institutions into political staging grounds, crimes like Tuesday’s could be repeated, next time under a different political pretext. And if they are, terrified parents would think many times before sending their wards to school. Fearing for their very lives, the students won’t also be able to focus on their studies. This in turn would be a blatant violation of the right of all students to study in peace. This is why we demand that a strong precedent be set through maximum possible punishment for those involved in terrorizing students on Tuesday. They deserve no mercy.
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