The surprise lies not in preposterous demands made by Indian government agencies and officials (because they often do so) but that their Nepali counterparts acquiescing to such demands.
An expose by Republica on Friday shows how hollow and hypocritical our Maoist high-ups are. The newspaper unearthed a demand by India to have its own security check at the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) on passengers traveling in Air India flights.
Every single Nepali individual involved in giving permission to Air India to have its own security apparatus at the TIA must be summoned in the parliament and asked to explain their decision. This indeed is about sovereignty.
All this stems from an incident 10 years ago, the infamous hijack of Indian Airlines’ IC-814 flight from Kathmandu in December 1999. One person was killed by the hijackers and the Indian government succumbed to the criminals’ demand of releasing terrorists arrested by it in lieu of freeing the passengers held hostage at the Kandahar airport in Afghanistan. It is a painful incident no doubt but there is this overt and covert attempt to blame Nepal for the tragedy. One innocent Nepali, Gajendra Tamrakar, was instantly branded hijacker.
India has its own history of plane hijacking, both on its domestic and international flights. Of course, they were in the past. But so was the hijacking of IC-814.
The worst tragedy that India suffered has been, till date, the hijack and subsequent mid-air bombing of Air India’s Kanishka on June 23, 1985. The Montreal-London-Delhi-Bombay flight crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off a coast of Ireland, killing all 307 passengers and 22 crew members.
That flight started from Montreal, Canada.
I do not think the Indians can make a similar suggestion to the Canadian government, let alone the latter even giving a second thought to such a demand.
Since 1990, there have been nearly 25 hijacking of planes and since the hijack of IC-814, there have been at least 10 such incidents, with the most notorious occurring in the United States on September 11, 2001: Four hijacked planes killed nearly 3000 people and destroyed the twin towers of World Trade Center in New York. The security at the US airports was unmatched before the 9/11 catastrophe.
The point is we are still grappling with the scourge of plane hijacking which occur with a political goal in mind. And even the best security set-up can be hoodwinked and tragedies may occur.
There has been no hijacking out of Nepal since the December 1999 incident. The security checks conducted by the Nepali security personnel have been successful in preventing any such crime.
The Indian demand smacks of high-handedness and expose, once again, how poor Indians are in dealing with the sensitivity of its neighbors.
There are several problems with the Indian proposal. First, of course it touches upon the sovereignty issue. This is real unlike the ones raised by our communist comrades (of all hues) when it suits their agenda. You cannot, I repeat, you cannot allow any foreign security personnel under any excuse to operate on your land .Second, as the Republica’s journalists wrote, it may compromise the security sensitivity of other airlines since it provides “unrestricted mobility” to the security officials of Air India.
Other governments and airlines will make a similar demand. You cannot say only the Indian flight is vulnerable to hijack. Imagine a passenger going through Nepali security personnel’s frisking and check and then subjected to similar experience by security personnel from other countries. Moreover, it could lead to a logistical problem of space.
National Aviation Security Committee (NASC) must immediately recommend the civil aviation minister to take a proposal to the cabinet to undo the damage done by the Maoist-led government.
The Himalayan Times reported that Pushpa Kamal Dahal told Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal on Saturday not to allow Air India to install screening-machine on TIA ground! What a posturing, what hypocrisy. It was his government and his cabinet and party colleague Hisila Yami who gave permission to Air India to have its own security apparatus at the TIA. The Maoists, who never fail to remind others how patriot, nationalistic and sovereignty-conscious they are, have to consider what their party chairman and then prime minister Dahal and Yami have done to this nation.
Or perhaps, I am expecting too much from Maoist party leaders. After all, India did provide them shelter for years during the 1996-2006 insurgency and always feigned ignorance about their presence on their soil. If the Maoists do not speak on this subject, we cannot trust them to protect national interests. This party is known to court Indians and they can go to any length. This is a very serious issue and silence won’t help them.
I do not think Yami, the minister who gave permission and the party chairman are fit to hold any party positions, let alone national posts. The so-called hardliners – nationalists as they call themselves – in the Maoist party who shout from rooftops about threats to the nation’s sovereignty and independence because of other parties’ decision are conspicuously quiet. Both Dahal and Yami need to explain to the nation what was the compulsion or rationale behind accepting such a preposterous demand. Not only these two, every single bureaucrat and security personnel involved in granting this permission must be summoned in the parliament and asked to explain their stupid decision.
And it is not just the Maoists; we would like to know what the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML thinks about this.
And Maoist comrades, instead of harping on non-existent issue of civilian supremacy, this is one real thing. So speak up. We are awaiting your response.
damakant@myrepublica.com
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