Hacks in high places

Originally published in The Saint, October '09

This summer just past, I spent three sweaty months in Nepal – not teaching kids, building loos or saving snow leopards from certain extinction. Instead, I interned with a political/cultural monthly magazine, Himal Southasian, covering the South Asia region from Tibet to the Maldives. English-language, high-brow, subversive – Himal was a magazine that readily appealed to a Southasia-phile such as myself, and my internship afforded a privileged window into the uncertain world of Nepali journalism.

On arriving back in St Andrews in late September, we all get subjected – and gleefully subject others – to the same nauseating question: ‘So, how was your summer.’ To this I could give a petulantly smug answer: ‘Well, I practised journalism in the Himalayan foothills. Oh, so you worked for dad at home. How interesting.’ But, though I am loathe to admit it, it wasn’t all the India-Jones adventure you might expect. Much of the time I was working in an office – yes, with desks and computers and telephones and stuff. I’d turn up in the morning around ten, say hi to my Himal colleagues, make myself a rancid cup of instant coffee, sit before my computer, switch the thing on; and so the scrapes would begin. I didn’t interview politicians or brave arrest and torture to expose dastardly corporations; neither did I get a shiny card I could shove in people’s faces.

Yet, I was part of something exciting. Journalism is a noble cause in Nepal. As it is any country. But in Nepal it takes on a more heroic guise – a tights and cape profession. There, intimidation of journalists is something of an organised sport. They are considered fair game by much of the political class, particularly the Maoists who, after a decade of guerrilla warfare, were voted into office after the 2008 elections.

Last May, after nine months in power, the Maoists suddenly found themselves in opposition to a UML (United Marxist Leninist) -led coalition, due to the resignation of Maoist Prime Minister Prachanda (‘the fierce one’) over his ‘unconstitutional’ sacking of the conservative army chief. But they can still bring Nepal to a halt at a whisper – as they prove with the endless bandas (strikes), now more numerous than Hindu festivals. They may now have entered the ‘democratic process’, but they wear political office like a child stomping about in his daddy’s shoes. It’s all just a fun little game; and their sport is to stick it to the baddies. The baddies, of course, are anyone who happens to disagree with them. In this respect, journalists are not their friends.

This is a fairly typical news item: on 1 June, the day of another enforced strike in Kathmandu, cadres of the Newar Autonomous State routinely halted vehicles bearing press logos, smashed the windows, took the keys and beat up the journalists. All to stop them reporting the hardships endured by many ordinary citizens when the city was forced to a standstill by a political group most had little sympathy with. Rocking up to cover a banda – or any other kind of political incident; a rally, for instance – is dealt with as insubordination.

But, worst of all in these cases, no one is punished, the victims go uncompensated, and groups like the Youth Communist League – the militant arm of the Maoists – only grow in strength. More pressing than corruption in Nepal is impunity – Nepal is ranked 8th on CPJ’s Impunity Index, as a country ‘where journalists are murdered on a recurring basis and governments are unable or unwilling to prosecute the killers’. In all this, the police are little more than smartly-dressed spectators. As the YCL beats up another of their ‘class enemies,’ they merely stand by, wagging their fingers like disapproving nannies.

It doesn’t help that few of the media laws that exist in Britain, defining the limits with which politicians and the press can attack each other, are in place in Nepal. Neither the politician or journalist knows how far they should go – in the absence of libel laws or anything similar – and so both play a dangerous game, striking where they can and crying foul at the slightest affront. The press itself is no angel: there is a lot ‘yellow’ journalism among the smaller, Nepali-language papers – namely, blackmailing businessmen for hefty ‘donations’ under the threat of smear campaigns. None of this is conducive to a healthy public life in Nepal – something it so badly needs in this transitional period, where the refusal of the elected Maoists to join the ruling coalition continues the bleed the government of legitimacy.

Himal Southasian itself has not been untouched by the state’s manhandling of the media. Just a couple of years ago, as protests against King Gyandra were reaching a fever pitch – and shortly before the monarchy was deposed – Himal’s editor Kanak Mani Dixit (now also an advisor to current prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal), was put in gaol for a brief period for his dissident, anti-monarchic views. He edited a whole edition of Himal while inside, on a clapped-out Dell laptop – the very laptop I was landed with in the Himal office. So, there I was: an heir to a rebel tradition.