TNN, Nov 27, 2010, 04.35pm IST
KATHMANDU: The image of Nepali school teacher Muktinath Adhikari does for Nepal what the photograph of Aisha Bibi on the cover of Time magazine, the 19-year-old Afghan girl whose husband cut off her nose, does for Afghanistan – serve as an unforgettable reminder of brutality and lawlessness.
Today, four years after Nepal's Maoist party ended its decade-old "People's War", the grainy but still shocking photograph of the school principal tied by the guerrillas to a tree with his own muffle in a grim parody of the crucifixion image, shot in the stomach and then left to die before scores of petrified school children and villagers in western Nepal, rose in public memory again even as the party that killed him was holding an extravagant meeting in the adjoining district.
While the news of the Maoists' ongoing sixth plenum meeting in Gorkha district has been dominating headlines since Sunday, the Nagarik daily and its sister concern in English, the Republica, on Saturday veered off the trodden path to revive the brutal abduction and murder in 2002 of Adhikari, principal of Panini Secondary School in Duradanda village of Lamjung district, neighbouring Gorkha.
Adhikari was among the 28 teachers killed by the Maoists in 2001-2. The then underground party also maimed dozens of others, including Khem Bahadur Rana, the headmaster of Bahakot High School in Syangja district, whose hand was hacked off. The Maoists had been demanding that all teachers hand over 25 percent of their salaries to fund their uprising and Adhikari had refused. Moreover, he had also tried to unite the other teachers into opposing the demand.
Adhikari's murder still remains unpunished and his son, who formed an association of people orphaned by the Maoists, has disappeared quietly after the Maoists in 2004 gunned down Ganesh Chiluwal, who had founded the Maoists' Victims' Association, in Kathmandu in broad daylight. With the Maoists now being Nepal's largest party and still in possession of an army of fighters, which they are refusing to disband, the shaken eyewitness who took the photograph of Adhikari, dangling from the bloodied tree, still prefers to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.
Gunaraj Luitel, Nagarik's associate editor who went to Lamjung for the reportage highlights how the Maoists, who had pledged to wage war on exploitation and feudalism, actually killed people who had tried to "hold society together", like Adhikari. The Nagarik remains an object of wrath of the Maoists who had also killed journalists both during the insurgency and even after it. But Luitel shrugs. "It had to be done," he says. "We are in danger of forgetting the brutality and needless killings that occurred in the name of revolution. We have to highlight what actually happened."
Today, four years after Nepal's Maoist party ended its decade-old "People's War", the grainy but still shocking photograph of the school principal tied by the guerrillas to a tree with his own muffle in a grim parody of the crucifixion image, shot in the stomach and then left to die before scores of petrified school children and villagers in western Nepal, rose in public memory again even as the party that killed him was holding an extravagant meeting in the adjoining district.
While the news of the Maoists' ongoing sixth plenum meeting in Gorkha district has been dominating headlines since Sunday, the Nagarik daily and its sister concern in English, the Republica, on Saturday veered off the trodden path to revive the brutal abduction and murder in 2002 of Adhikari, principal of Panini Secondary School in Duradanda village of Lamjung district, neighbouring Gorkha.
Adhikari was among the 28 teachers killed by the Maoists in 2001-2. The then underground party also maimed dozens of others, including Khem Bahadur Rana, the headmaster of Bahakot High School in Syangja district, whose hand was hacked off. The Maoists had been demanding that all teachers hand over 25 percent of their salaries to fund their uprising and Adhikari had refused. Moreover, he had also tried to unite the other teachers into opposing the demand.
Adhikari's murder still remains unpunished and his son, who formed an association of people orphaned by the Maoists, has disappeared quietly after the Maoists in 2004 gunned down Ganesh Chiluwal, who had founded the Maoists' Victims' Association, in Kathmandu in broad daylight. With the Maoists now being Nepal's largest party and still in possession of an army of fighters, which they are refusing to disband, the shaken eyewitness who took the photograph of Adhikari, dangling from the bloodied tree, still prefers to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.
Gunaraj Luitel, Nagarik's associate editor who went to Lamjung for the reportage highlights how the Maoists, who had pledged to wage war on exploitation and feudalism, actually killed people who had tried to "hold society together", like Adhikari. The Nagarik remains an object of wrath of the Maoists who had also killed journalists both during the insurgency and even after it. But Luitel shrugs. "It had to be done," he says. "We are in danger of forgetting the brutality and needless killings that occurred in the name of revolution. We have to highlight what actually happened."
Read more: Image of brutality returns to haunt Nepal's Maoists - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/Image-of-brutality-returns-to-haunt-Nepals-Maoists/articleshow/7000875.cms#ixzz16VLCAnSH
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