A New Daniel Pearl

Abduction and killing of journalists, it’s always common in every autocratic regime. Such things were not odd in Nepal during Panchyat System. We have still living victims of that era. Lets not talk about Rana regime.Not only they were against journalists, they were even against public education. That’s why we have fallen so much behind in education system. Benefit of present education is just a certificate. Even certificates imported from Bihar are equally powerful like them. After 1990, it was kind of relief for journalists however most journalists ended up as party candidates. Some magazines even had party flags right at the front page. Readers used to gather in groups and grab their favorite magazines. News were so much fake that same events were described in entirely different manners. Those magazine just helped political parties to wash the people's brain by their ideology. After Maoists waged war against government, a lot of journalists became victim. Many of them lived in the fear of that they would be next Dekendra Thapa or Gyanendra Khadka. This series went on and on. Still some journalists didn’t fear from their .303 and continued publishing what they found. Umesh Gurung, Bikram Giri et.al. were abducted and released repeatedly. Such shameful events were in shadow because everyone was feared to speak. Still there were some journalists who were proud to be associated with Maoists. Anyone can believe any philosophy. But why don’t they write what they saw? A month back, same thing happened. Birendra Shah who had reported about the involvement of Nepal's Maoist guerrillas in timber-smuggling was abducted at gun-point in broad daylight. After more than 4 weeks, no one knows about his whereabouts. Most news agencies have called Shah Nepal's 'Daniel Pearl' after the Wall Street Journal journalist who was kidnapped and killed by terrorists in 2002. This means we have lost his smile like Danny. Probably after some days somebody will call this as an unfortunate event and we Nepalese people will loose one more Nepalese citizen and a journalist. It wont be unusual if we see some journalists quiet as they used to be in the past.