What can one say about a massacre that ended a kingdom?
I still remember the morning of Saturday, June 2, 2001 – a patient of mine, since deceased, told me in a state of high excitement – “Do you know – the Nepal prince shot everyone dead because his mother wouldn’t let him marry his girlfriend?”
It was only next morning that the news was plastered all over the papers…and since it was Sunday, a couple of friends and I went picnicking after my morning’s work and I read the news sitting on grass with the newspaper open on my lap and a thunderstorm (I remember it perfectly well) brewing.
Those early accounts were sort of …confused…and I remember responding caustically to one highly coloured account in Outlook magazine somewhat along these lines – “Anyone who has ever fired an automatic weapon will wonder how Prince Dipendra managed to aim and fire, let alone handle the recoil of two of the heavy weapons, one in each hand, and that too while drunk and stoned. Add to that the fact that he managed to shoot only members of his own family, sparing Gyanendra’s, and you have a ready-made episode of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.”
This year, when I was in Kathmandu, I came across a couple of books on the subject of the royal massacre at Narayanhiti palace – and, since I had been interested in the subject of regicide in general and this particular bout of bloodletting in particular, I chose one of them – that was the book I’m reviewing here.
Part travelogue, part narrative history, written throughout in a racy style with constant references to the historical past and to the present, this is quite a piece of work. I’m sure my personal response to it was conditioned by the fact that I know, having visited them, at first hand most of the places the authors mention. I know the Nepali people (there are many in this city as well) – maybe someone else would respond differently to it. I may be too close to the events in question.
Briefly, anyway, here’s what happened. Intrigued by the newspaper reports of the massacre, the present authors – a husband-and-wife pair from Australia – chucked their jobs (am I envious or what?), went off to Kathmandu, stayed there (well, technically it was in the “separate” city of Patan across the Baghmati river that they stayed) for five months, interviewed a variety of people, and finally produced this work. I suppose you could call it a labour of love.
So what is it about?
Ignoring the filler background, much of it irrelevant to the point at hand but entertaining to read, this is what happened:
On the evening of Friday, June 1, 2001, the Crown Prince of Nepal, Dipendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev, was hosting a family get-together at his own residence inside the Narayanhiti palace complex in Kathmandu. Dipendra had long wanted to marry the love of his life, one Devyani Rana, but for reasons difficult for any normal human brain to comprehend (the young woman’s bloodline wasn’t pure enough to suit her) the queen, Aishwarya, had forbidden the wedding. At some point during the evening, Dipendra spoke to Devyani Rana on the phone. Nobody knows what they talked of, but he then began smoking marijuana on top of Scotch whisky, collapsed (it was suspected by most who saw him that he was faking), and was literally carried to his room.
Once there he made some kind of miraculous recovery, and was back within 20 minutes, dressed in military fatigues and carrying four firearms. He then proceeded to shoot dead his father and sister, not to mention at least five other royals, injured plenty more, and then finally cornered his brother and mother in the garden and shot them to pieces too. He was then found with a pistol bullet through his head, allegedly self-inflicted (odd though that the bullet entered on the left side of his head while he was right handed!).
All this while the royal aides-de-camp were conspicuous by their absence. In any case, even if they had been at hand, protocol forbade them from taking out the prince – even if he were a homicidal maniac, he was a prince. (I wonder what the guards of the British monarchy would have done in case Charles Windsor had reacted similarly when forced to choose Diana Spencer over Camilla Parker Bowles! Entertaining to speculate, huh?)
Although in a terminal coma, Dipendra was proclaimed king the next day, and in the three days he took to die he held the status of a living god. When he finally did die, he was succeeded by his father’s conniving younger brother, Gyanendra, a character so despised by the Nepali people that his accession to the throne made inevitable the end of Nepal’s 238-year-old monarchy. And good riddance too.
Well, that’s what the book is about, though it does talk a lot about Nepali history and a lot of stuff to put the authors in the scene. As I said, much of that is extraneous – it does make the book more suited to shorter attention spans and light reading, which I guess makes it more saleable. Towards the end the book also falls back on the overused American technique of breathless two-paragraph chapter parts, shifting back and forth between characters, so that it reads as if written for a movie script.
Pity, really.
A massacre that ended an empire and put in place an elected Maoist government that might yet prove South Asia’s answer to Hugo Chavez deserves better. I might have given it five stars.

                                          CUT THE TALL TREES

 

When Jean-Claude returned to the shack after walking the doctor to his car, the old man was still alive. He wouldn’t last much longer though; it was obvious, even to Jean-Claude’s eye. The doctor had said as much to him. The old man’s family, however, hovered anxiously, still hoping. They crowded round him, silent, but asking questions with their very postures.

 

Jean-Claude looked round at them. They were tall, dark and fine-bodied, though their clothes were tattered and none of them wore any shoes. They stared back at him anxiously, as if he could make things happen just by saying them. He searched his mind for some acceptable euphemism.

 

“The doctor said he’s slipping away,” he said finally.

 

One of the women, either the old man’s daughter or his daughter in law, began to sob, quietly. The rest of them, men, women and children, kept looking at him with that vibrant tension in them. It was all too much to bear. Besides, he had not come here to watch an old man die.

 

“I should be going,” he said. “But first, I want to talk to you.” He nodded to the old man’s son, who was tall, very thin and already greying. He was the only one of the clan whom Jean-Claude knew personally; he worked as an odd job man and plumber in Jean-Claude’s former office.

 

The man followed him out. Jean-Claude stood, breathing deeply, for a moment before speaking. From the shack, an unpaved earthen track led down to the road at the bottom of the hillock. A small patch of garden on his left was full of straggling vines and some pumpkins, while a bicycle whose frame was fashioned out of wood leaned on the fence on the right. The doctor’s vehicle had vanished, and only Jean-Claude’s own car now stood at the bottom of the hill.

 

Jean-Claude felt the plumber standing at his shoulder, waiting. He spoke without turning his head. “He’s going to die.” It sounded abrupt and insensitive. “I’m sorry,” he added.

 

“We know.” The plumber’s voice was gentle. “He’s old. It’s hard on the younger ones, though.”

 

“Yes…the doctor said it’s too late to do anything. Even if you’d begun the medicines it’s too late now, but in any case we don’t have the medicines available.”

 

“It’s the war. The doctor did not take any money, sir.”

 

“No, that’s all right.” Jean-Claude had himself slipped the doctor his fees while accompanying him to his car. It was the least he could do, after summoning the man himself and persuading him to come. “He must be a kind man.”

 

“There are no kind men”, said the plumber. His voice was heavy with old knowledge. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

 

“This.” Jean-Claude turned to face the plumber. They stood close together, and although Jean-Claude was tall he had to tilt his head upward to look the other man in the face. “You need to get out of here.”

 

“I’m sorry,” said the man. “I don’t understand.”

 

“I just told you,” said Jean-Claude. “You and your family ought to leave the country, as soon as you can. It’s vital. At least go to the demilitarised area.”

 

“But why?”

 

“That I can’t tell you…but bad times are coming, times so bad what’s going on now will look like a picnic. Please, Henri,” he used the plumber’s given name for the first time ever, “get out now, while you still can.”

 

From the shack behind them came a thin cry of grief. The old man had just died.

 

“I have to be getting back inside,” said the plumber, and padded away.

 

Jean-Claude waited a minute more, hoping perhaps the man would come back, and then began trudging down the path to his car.

 

 

On the way back home Jean-Claude drove by the National Assembly, the CND. He did this every time these days, almost as an act of masochism. The CND had been occupied by the enemy for almost two weeks now, in accordance with the Arusha accord, and the enemy was here, in the heart of the capital, occupying the national assembly, no less. He saw them every time he drove by, in their entrenched positions, pointing machine guns at the people in the street. It hurt him physically to see those men in their German uniforms and their shiny new weaponry, sitting pointing their guns at him, and there was nothing he could do. It always put him in a bad mood, but he still couldn’t bypass the CND. Whenever he was anywhere near, he drove past it. It was compulsive.

 

He drove straight home. He had been scheduled to report to the MRND office, but the last thing he wanted at the moment was to go there. He felt tired and disheartened. One man could only do so much; and less, far less, if he had to watch his back at every moment.

 

His wife met him at the door. She held a finger to her lips. “DouDou’s ill,” she whispered. “She’s just fallen asleep. Don’t make any noise.”

 

“What’s the matter with her?” Jean-Claude felt fear shoot through him. “What’s wrong?”

 

“Nothing, nothing. It’s just flu. She got it from school. Don’t worry. It will be all right.”

 

It wouldn’t be all right, though, Jean-Claude thought as he sat back in his old easy chair and sipped a cup of black coffee. The chair had been his father’s, and normally he found it very relaxing, while black coffee helped him to think. Just now neither worked. He was tense and unhappy.

 

The night before last he had talked to the UNAMIR men, the Belgian colonel in the blue UN beret and his sidekick, the Belgian captain who was probably an intelligence operative. He had thought long and hard before deciding to go to them. If anyone, or anything, could stop the coming holocaust, it could only be the UN, however much he distrusted it. He had to depend on them, not just for the sake of the country, but for his family and himself.

 

He couldn’t go to them directly, of course. Being seen with the Belgians would be tantamount to signing his own death warrant. Instead he finally used the one politician among those to whom he had access whom he could reasonably trust, the man who would be Prime Minster if the transitional government was ever sworn in. He had met Felicien Twagiramungu in the patio of his house, where they could be taken to be free from eavesdroppers, and had told him what he wanted. The premier-in-waiting had said he would see what he could do.

 

So the evening before last the meeting had taken place, in a small room at the back of Twagiramungu’s house, with the curtains drawn and only one table lamp for illumination. Outside the night hung heavy and dark, the usual brilliant stars hidden by thick low clouds. Jean-Claude hated the Belgians, who had done so much harm to his country and who lay at the root of all the current troubles, but he swallowed his anger and talked quietly and slowly enough for them to take notes.

 

He had told them enough to let them know that he knew what he was talking about and that what he had to share was worth the effort. He had held back enough for them to get back to him again, because he wanted something from them in return.

 

“I want passports out of here, for my family and for myself,” he had said, “to Canada or France or the Netherlands. And I want my francs changed into US dollars. I don’t want any money from you, just my currency changed to dollars, and safety for me and mine. In return I’ll tell you everything I know, about the leadership, the financing, and the structure of the militia, and its links to the MRND. I’ll tell you everything you’ll need to know to stop what’s coming.” And, he added, they had better see to it soon if they wanted to stop it at all. The Belgians had seemed impressed. He waited now to find out if it had been worthwhile.

 

He sighed and turned on the radio, keeping the volume low so his sleeping daughter would not wake. The only station he listened to these days was RTLM, but his wife would always change the tuning to some other channel – any other channel, it didn’t matter which. She hated RTLM. He did too, but it was vital to listen to it. It was even compulsory.

 

“The people of this country think radio is god’s voice,” he had told the Belgians the previous night. “If the radio tells them something will happen, they take it as ordained that it will happen. If the radio tells them to do something, they will do it even if they don’t really want to, simply because they heard it on the radio. You have to understand this.” The Belgian colonel had nodded and scribbled in his notebook.

 

RTLM was playing music, rock with its own and unique African beat, and, as he anticipated, the lyrics had begun to turn ugly. “Hate the cockroaches,” sang the musician, “stamp them out and kill, kill, kill.” Any minute now the presenter would come on with some racially charged rhetoric. He winced.

 

“Why do you listen to that garbage?” he had been asked by his wife, many times.

 

“I have to,” he had said finally. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but I’m expected to listen because everything that’s happening, everything that’s planned to happen, is wrapped round that station. I have to know what it’s saying because Marcel might ask. Also I must know because I need to know what’s going to happen.”

 

“I wish you’d never left the army.”

 

“I wasn’t given a choice, ma cherie.” Whenever he thought she was being deliberately obtuse, he used the French phrase she had grown to dislike. “I was ordered to take over the training in the communes. You know that.”

 

The presenter came on with his usual inflammatory rhetoric against the Inyenzi, the “cockroaches.” Jean-Claude shut his eyes and held the radio up to his ear. His head was beginning to pound.

 

He wondered when the UN would act, and precisely how. He was supposed to meet the Belgians again tonight, in a couple of hours. Maybe they would do something after seeing what he intended to show them.

 

The telephone rang. “It’s for you,” his wife murmured. “It’s Marcel. He wants to see you right away.”

 

 

Marcel Ngirumpatse had a flat, shiny face. The president of the MRND was thick-bodied and greying slightly at the temples, and his expressive black eyes gleamed with barely suppressed anger.

 

“The UN knows,” he said. “They know the arms are being stockpiled for distribution. The bastards went to meet the President today, the Canadian general and the Secretary General’s representative. They told him they know arms are being stocked. Then they even came over here, and told me they knew I was stockpiling weapons. They said that to my face. Someone’s been talking.”

 

Jean-Claude felt the cold grip of fear in his bowels. “What do we do, then?” he asked.

 

“We must give out the arms,” Ngirumpatse said. “We can’t afford to wait. If the UN raids those caches it will be too late.”

 

“But our men can’t be seen with arms,” Jean-Claude pointed out. “It would be a ceasefire violation and then the bastards may simply call off the accord.”

 

“Big loss that will be,” Ngirumpatse said. “We want the accord to be called off, or don’t we? Do we or do we not want to wipe out the cockroaches?”

 

“We aren’t set up yet to wipe out the cockroaches, sir.” Jean-Claude’s brain was in overdrive. “Look, the UN mission is full of our spies. Even the Canadian general’s driver is our man. If they plan a raid we’ll know early enough to be able to move the caches.”

 

“And what if they raid the caches all together – what then?”

 

“Sir – the risks are greater if we hand the weapons out. Our men have clubs, machetes and spears. Everyone knows this. Now if someone sees them with AK-47s, what will they think? That weapons are being handed out, right? Until we’re ready, we can’t hand those weapons out.”

 

“All right,” Ngirumpatse said at last. “You keep the caches where they are, for the time being. But the slightest move from the UN and we hand the arms out.” He waited till Jean-Claude was almost out of the door and then called him back. “And step up the training at once, do you understand?”

 

 

“It wasn’t our fault,” the Belgian captain said. “It was the UN in New York. They ordered the general to go and tell your President about the weapons. I was there. I know the general didn’t want to do it.”

 

“Yes, well, the arms are still where they were,” Jean-Claude said. “But they won’t be there much longer. I strongly suggest you people get a move on while you still can.” He looked out of the car window at the building. “The cache’s in the basement, but they have guards.” He looked at the Belgian. “I can’t take you in there.”

 

“No,” said the other one, the Senegalese in civvies. “I’ll go.”

 

When they came back out, Jean-Claude was satisfied at the deeply preoccupied expression on the Senegalese officer’s face. The man had seen and handled the stacks of rifles and boxes of grenades for himself. He couldn’t possibly have any further doubts as to the reality of the situation.

 

“There are three more caches in this city,” Jean-Claude told both of them in the car. “I’ll show you them all, as soon as you get me my passports and dollars.” He turned to look back at the building as they drove away. “And you know what that building is, don’t you? It’s MRND party headquarters. What more proof do you need that I know what I’m talking about?”

 

“We don’t need any proof,” said the Belgian. “It’s New York that’s the problem.” He sounded tired and depressed, and that worried Jean-Claude most of all.

 

 

Jean-Claude stood on the viewing platform and watched the young men from the village practice. They stood in the shade of the trees at the edge of the clearing, and one by one they would come out, grab a machete from a pile, and slash at a dummy tied to a pole. He noted with automatic approval that their earlier half-hearted hacking, delivered from the elbow with no real power, had given way already to genuinely devastating blows delivered from the shoulder. The dummy sagged from the pole; the stuffing had begun to leak from half a dozen rents at strategic points. If it had been a human, the dummy would have long since been in pieces.

 

Jean-Claude nodded as he watched the latest young man hit the dummy at the junction of neck and shoulder, precisely as instructed. It would have sent a man’s head bouncing off his shoulders like a rubber ball. So long as he kept the purpose of the training out of his thoughts, Jean-Claude felt only satisfaction at the progress his wards had made. He looked around. The soldiers of the camp sat a way off, near the rudimentary kitchen with its blackened cooking pots, chatting and playing cards. One or two looked over this way, then got back to their game. They were dishevelled and obviously demoralised. Jean-Claude shook his head in disgust. They wouldn’t be of any use against the Patriotic Front rebels, he was sure. He wondered who in the army’s top brass thought they could ever stand up to the enemy.

 

His deputy sat back against the wheel of one of the green buses that had brought the trainees from the city. Jean-Claude walked over to him. “They aren’t bad,” he said.

 

“No.” The deputy peered up at him, but made no move to get up. “They’re much better than the last lot. When do you think it’s going to begin?”

 

“What’s going to begin?”

 

“You know.” The deputy made a chopping motion with his hand. “Wiping the cockroaches out.”

 

“Is that what we’re preparing for?” asked Jean-Claude innocently. “I thought we were getting village defence committees set up in case the war started again.”

 

The deputy squinted up at him uncertainly. At last, he nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “There are spies everywhere. One can’t be too careful what one says.” He sat back and moodily began to toss a pebble up and down. “All the same,” he said, “I wish it would begin. We need to kill them all.”

 

 

Jean-Claude returned home one night after another meeting with the UN officers. He was exhausted and anxious. The UN wouldn’t ever promise anything, and the time was passing quickly by. He had no idea how much longer Ngirumpatse would wait to try and provoke another incident, but he didn’t think it would be too long. The last attempt to provoke the Belgian soldiers into a firefight had failed only by a whisker. He had warned the UN officers, but they had told him the Belgian troops weren’t really controllable. Any day now the whole thing might blow up in their faces.

 

He glanced at the newspaper he had bought. Kanguru was the print equivalent of RTLM, filled with screaming anti-UN headlines and exhortations to wipe out the Inyenzi. It called on all patriots to stop the transitional government from ever taking office – and so far there was no evidence the transitional government ever would.

 

“Where is DouDou?” he asked his wife. “Shouldn’t she be home by now?”

 

“She’s at her friend’s house,” Helene answered. “You know the one she’s always with? Diane Something? It’s just down the road.”

 

“I want her back home,” Jean-Claude said. “She shouldn’t be at that place, not now.”’

 

“Why? She’s been going there for ages. You know it. Why do you want her back all of a sudden?”

 

“You know why.” Jean-Claude felt his throat tighten. “They’re Tutsis.”

 

“So? I’m half-Tutsi. So what?”

 

“Don’t be stupid, Helene. You know what the times are like. Any bloody day this country is going to tear apart with a killing worse than you can ever imagine.” He threw the paper down on the table. “Take a look at that rag, see what it says about the Tutsis. It doesn’t even call them that. Inyenzi, it says, cockroaches. Insects to be stamped out. Why shouldn’t I be worried?”

 

“But what can you do?”

 

“Nothing. I tried, but they won’t be warned. They just won’t listen. And the UN’s useless.”

 

“You went to the UN?”

 

“Didn’t I just tell you? But they won’t even listen to me. I wanted us safe, you know. I wanted to take you and DouDou away from here at once, and with the money we have converted into hard currency, we could have had a life outside. But the UN won’t do a damned thing.” He turned away from her. “I’ve been talking to them for three weeks now, and nothing, just nothing, so far from them. They don’t even make promises any more. Well, I’ve had it with the UN. I’ll see if I can find some other way to get us out of here.”

 

“We could just leave. Walk across the border to Uganda or somewhere.”

 

“With what, our francs? I don’t want us to be destitute, Helene. And do you even know what they would do to us if they caught us?” He glowered. “And I’ve been trusting the damned UN. I risked our lives, yours and mine as well, to get the UN to do something before it’s too late. What did they do? Nothing, of course.”

 

“Why didn’t you tell me all this about the UN?”

 

“Why should I make you worry? Things are bad enough as it is. Every day I expect to hear that the crazy men have found some excuse to begin the killing. They’ve got a signal all set, do you know that? It’s ‘Cut the tall trees.’ If they hear that, they are to gather and begin to kill. And they’re good at killing, very good. I know. I trained many of them myself.”

 

“Why did you – you trained them? To kill?”

   

“Of course. That’s what I’m paid to do.” He paced back and forth. “Why doesn’t that girl come back? I thought at the beginning, you know, that I was training genuine defence units against the Patriotic Front traitors. I hate them, I told you that often enough. They’re not even Rwandans any more. They’re just Ugandan mercenaries who want to take this country over. So I was happy enough to start training Interahamwe defence units against them. But then I found it wasn’t fighting they were training for, it was killing.”

 

He turned to face her suddenly, took her by the arms and brought his face close to hers. “They’re training to kill all the Tutsis. Once the word’s given, they’ll take the Tutsis and butcher them like chickens, and kill any Hutu they don’t like into the bargain. It doesn’t matter to them the Tutsi’s a Rwandan just like them, as much a man or woman as they are. They’ve been indoctrinated. Brainwashed.”

 

“But how do they know whom to kill?”

 

“How do you think? They have a list of Tutsis, of course. They know who’s Tutsi and who’s a Hutu who doesn’t hate the Tutsis, and such Hutus are worse than Tutsis so far as they’re concerned. The schools in the villages have even begun seating the Hutu and Tutsi pupils separately to make the Tutsi kids easier to kill.” 

 

“I’ll get DouDou,” said Helene, going quickly to the door. ”I’ll bring her back home.”

 

“You do that…” Jean-Claude thought a moment. “Don’t tell her friend’s parents anything. Just tell DouDou she isn’t to go there again until we tell her she can.”

 

“And when will that be?”

 

Jean-Claude pretended not to have heard the question.

 

 

“You heard what happened?” Jean-Claude’s deputy was on the phone, a high thin note of excitement in his voice. “The President’s dead!”
  

“What?” Jean-Claude shook his head to clear the mists of sleep from his mind. He had just returned from checking the militia groups in training. In the meantime, the situation in the city was going from bad to worse. “What do you mean, he’s dead? What happened?”

 

“The Belgians shot his plane down near the airport…he’s dead. The army chief’s dead too.”

 

“Hold on.” Jean-Claude sat bolt upright in bed. “What do you mean, the Belgians shot down his plane? How do you know that?”

 

“Everyone knows. RTLM says so.”

 

“RTLM. And what else does it say?”

 

“You just listen for yourself…this is it. The army’s forming a crisis committee to take over the country. You know what that means.”

 

“Yes…”

 

“It’s time to get the Inyenzi,” said the deputy happily. “It’s time to wipe the cockroaches right out!”

 

When the deputy had rung off, Jean-Claude cursed bitterly, again and again. Just a couple of days earlier he had finally found an agent to convert his francs to dollars and he had been planning to take his family over the Zaire border before the month was out.

 

He got out of bed and walked over to the window. The city was dark and unnaturally calm. Most of the houses lay dark and still. A military truck raced by; from the window he could not tell whether it was army, or gendarmerie, or Presidential Guard. The phone rang again. It was Ngirumpatse.

 

“Get over here quick,” the MRND chief said. “We have to begin handing the weapons out. The brush must be cleared, Jean. It’s time to cut the tall trees down.”

 

Jean-Claude left without saying anything to his wife. She lay in bed, clutching DouDou, who squirmed in her sleep, uncomfortable in her mother’s grasp and wanting to be back in her own room. He paused at the gate, went back inside, and got his multicoloured baggy Interahamwe combat fatigues. He put them on before going out again. He was safer wearing the outfit, because it marked him out as being on the government’s side.

 

In the distance, near the CND, heavy firing had begun.

 

 

Jean-Claude stood at the roadblock, anger a bitter metallic taste in his mouth. Around him his men gathered, hefting clubs and machetes, a couple of Presidential Guardsmen armed with automatic rifles keeping them company. Almost all of his men were, like him, dressed in multicoloured Interahamwe combat fatigues. He had often thought it made them look like clowns.

 

Well, he thought, nobody was going to laugh at them now.

 

He hadn’t actually wanted to be standing here, but Ngirumpatse had been definite. “I want you to keep an eye on the men,” he had said, over the sound of RTLM spewing anti-Tutsi venom. “Make sure they maintain discipline. And Jean-Claude?” He had turned to find Ngirumpatse leaning over his desk towards him. “I’ll be keeping an eye on how you take care of things…” The threat had lain heavy in the air. “Don’t fail me.”

 

A crowd of people had appeared on the street, straggling towards the roadblock. Jean-Claude felt the tension around him rise. His anger was a real live thing now, mouthing and gibbering. He tried to fight it down.

 

“Ahhh…” said one of his Interahamwe as the crowd approached. Another bent quickly and ran his machete along the road surface to sharpen it. Scrape-scrape, the machete went. It was an enormously intimidating sound.

 

“Papers,” said Jean-Claude to the first members of the crowd to reach the roadblock. “Your identity cards, please.” The words were hardly out of his mouth before the crowd began to flow backwards, crumble at the edges, and groups of people tried to run. Jean-Claude’s men exploded then. There was no holding them back any more. Screaming, they hurled themselves at the crowd, which collapsed in on itself. Howling mad with bloodlust, the militiamen threw themselves on the people. Machetes flashed.

 

A terrified face rose before Jean-Claude, all glaring eyes and a red mouth opened wide. A shiny black arm tried to shield the head, and Jean-Claude’s machete slashed easily through muscle and bone. The man fell. Blood spurted in the air, and it was only from the rawness of his own throat that Jean-Claude realised he, too, was screaming.

 

“Inyenzi,” he muttered savagely, not knowing of whom he spoke, and swung his machete again.

 

 

 

 

 

[Note to reader: According to Lt Gen Romeo Dallaire's masterly book on the Rwandan genocide, Shake Hands With The Devil, a Hutu officer responsible for training Interahamwe militia offered to disclose all details of the genocide in preparation and actually disclosed everything I talked about in this story, and even more. The UN did nothing, and the officer, who went by the code name Jean-Pierre, finally dropped out of view. Dallaire speculates about his fate; I've chosen the most intellectually satisfying of the three possibilities (escape and execution being the others) he suggests.

 

I changed a couple of names: Felicien (instead of Faustin) Twagiramungu, and Marcel (instead of Mathieu) Ngirumpatse. ]

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

        

 

 

In yesterday’s paper I read that Nuon Chea (“Brother Number Two”) of the Khmer Rouge is finally to stand trial for war crimes. Coincidentally (I assume) a few days back they were showing that old favourite of mine, The Killing Fields, on HBO – though they did edit out the iconic scene of Dith Phran (played by Haing Ngor) stumbling upon a carpet of human bones in the paddies…maybe to protect the tender sensibilities of kiddies who gorge themselves on cartoon violence every day.

I’m, in most things, far left wing in my political views – and I think the Khmer Rouge was the worst disaster ever to affect the left movement anywhere. Let me try and explain why.

There have been a lot of previous disasters in the left; Stalin is one example, but he was far from the unmitigated disaster most people like to pretend he was. He did guide the USSR from the wooden plough age to the age of nuclear reactors; and during that time he got the country through a devastating civil war, economic collapse, and even more devastating world war, and a Cold War he neither instigated nor wanted. That’s not exactly peanuts. Also, Stalin was far from a pure left wing dictator; in his methods he was much more a fascist nationalist than a leftist.

Mao Zedong, in his later years, also set himself up as a demigod; but in his earlier years, when he would debate and engage with his peers, he was very far from the personality cultist he is thought of as these days. Most of his real accomplishments – the civil war, the Long March, agrarian reforms, the uniting of the country behind his movement, the anti-Japanese war (in which the ‘official’ Chinese government of Chiang Kai Shek did nothing at all) – all these date back to those early years. Mao also realised something which he never tired of trying to drum into the heads of his imitators, something which I call the essence of Maoism: one should not try to replicate the Chinese blueprint in other countries, because the conditions in each nation are different. Mao himself applied this in his own struggle. The Chinese Communist party, in following the Russian imposed model, was on the verge of collapse when Mao took over the reins and (in direct opposition to conventional Marxist theory, which stressed on the urban worker as the vehicle of revolution) turned to the peasantry. We all know what happened then.

As long as you keep the goal of egalitarianism in sight, find your own way to it: that is the real message of Mao.

Now, back to the Khmer Rouge. In my ever un-humble opinion, the Khmer Rouge is the Taliban of the left. Just as the Taliban, by its excesses, has tainted every Islamic movement anywhere in the world (even when those movements have no relationship to the Taliban and are engaged in legitimate struggles, the anti-Zionist fight for instance, like Hizbollah in Lebanon) and turned the world against them, every Maoist movement has to bear the cross of the Khmer Rouge and the killing fields of Cambodia. Bush recently, for instance, claimed that to withdraw from Iraq would lead to a Cambodia like situation, one of the stupider comments to come from a not very intelligent individual with no knowledge of history.

There are many other parallels between the Khmer Rouge and the Taliban.

Just as the Taliban were born out of American interference in Afghanistan, the Khmer Rouge was born of American interference in Cambodia, when it helped overthrow the government of Norodom Sihanouk and imposed the corrupt Lon Nol, when it illegally bombed and invaded the country and rendered it waste.

Just as the Taliban enjoyed initial strong American support, the Khmer Rouge was supported by the US and its Thai satellite after the Vietnamese ousted it from power, almost up to its final 1998 disintegration and surrender. The Thai regime sheltered it; the Americans gave it diplomatic recognition and allowed it to occupy the Cambodian seat at the UN. (This also kind of raises an interesting point: do US governments, and their allies, like to support regimes that would theoretically be of the extreme opposite to US-professed values, against relatively more moderate and liberal regimes? Remember American support for the Taliban, the Saudi Arabians, the Afghan warlords, and consistent American opposition to such relatively liberal Muslim states as Najib’s Afghanistan, Syria and Ba’athist Iraq. Contrast American support for the Khmer Rouge to its long standing sanctions regime against the much less extreme Vietnamese Communists. Remember that Hamas was initially promoted by the Zionist regime of “Israel” as a counter to the secular Fatah.)

There are other points of similarity. Both the Taliban and the Khmer Rouge were welcomed with open arms by a citizenry weary of war and rampant corruption; both made themselves speedily hated by their actions – I admit the Taliban couldn’t hold a candle in that respect to the Khmer Rouge, which set out to alienate the people of Phnom Penh in one single day.

And let’s not lose sight of one crucial point: whatever one thinks of them, both the Taliban and the Khmer Rouge were led by people who were both personally incorruptible and thought they knew what was best for the people. This fact has to be kept in mind if one is going to look for an explanation of either regime; otherwise one is at a loss to explain why anyone would try to do such apparently nonsensical things. At the ground level Taliban soldiers were often corrupt, and I’ve no doubt that there were a lot of corrupt Khmer Rouge as well; but just as Mullah Omar was on a holy war against corruption of Islam and western contamination, not to mention banditry, rapine and warlordism, Pol Pot (Saloth Sar if one is to give him his real name), Khieu Samphan and the rest of the Angka Leou (the Khmer Rouge High Command) were radicals, sure, but none of them were actuated by any love of luxury or personal acquisitiveness. They thought, bizarre as it sounds, that by putting anyone with spectacles or dental fillings in labour camps and by emptying the cities they were actually purifying society of the curse of intellectualism. The Taliban didn’t put women in shuttlecock burqas and ban girls’ education just to be cussed; they thought they were imposing pure Islam. The Khmer Rouge actually thought that forcing schoolteachers to grow rice and lawyers to take care of cows was creating a pure Marxist society. That by these standards Karl Marx himself would have ended up in their camps didn’t seem to strike anyone, or if it did they ignored it. Irony being dead, as we all know.

As an aside: doesn’t it strike you that revolutionary leaders, anywhere, have got to be humourless? A sense of humour and revolution don’t seem to go together somehow. Any exceptions come to mind?

So, the personally honest and utterly blinkered leaders of both movements not only destroyed what they set out to create but contaminated others, utterly unconnected with them, because these others were tarred by the same brush. The US, India, and others backed Nepal’s horrible royal regime against the Maoist rebels who were trying to bring in some kind of egalitarianism to the country, citing, among other things, the Khmer Rouge’s record. Similarly, any Muslim rebellion against oppression (as in Occupied Palestine) is crushed on the pretext of fighting Talibanic values, in the form of Al Qaeda.

This is why I’d love to see the Khmer Rouge leaders hanged by their ears. Not just because of what they did to Cambodia, but what they did to the leftist fight against imperialism, worldwide.

And I’m sure plenty of Muslims would love to see that happen to Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden as well.

    

Uniformed UN soldiers load foreign (read white) civilians into trucks and fire into the air to fend off desperate locals who know they face certain death if they cannot get away. As the trucks drive off, gangs of machete-wielding killers, who have been waiting, step out of the jungle and walk towards the terrified people. One of the militiamen casually bends and scrapes his machete on the surface of the pavement – scrape, scrape, the noising drilling through all other sounds – to sharpen it.

In its casual, brutal murderousness, that scene is the essence of “Sometimes in April”, which I finally managed to get a look at yesterday. Set in Rwanda in 1994, at the time of the genocidal massacre of Tutsi and Hutu civilians by the Rwandan army and their allies the Interahamwe militia, and ten years later during the war crimes trials that followed, it is a searing look at the violence that permeates and runs through what we pretend to be our civilisation.

“Sometimes in April” is the story of two brothers, and the different paths of their lives, and how war touches the people around them.

Enough is known of the Rwandan civil war of the early nineties that I wouldn’t want to repeat what many people already know. But, before I begin a review proper, here’s a bit of potted history that might help.

Rwanda is a tiny nation in the depths of Central Africa which – like its neighbour Burundi – is inhabited by two tribes, the Hutu and the Tutsi. These tribal distinctions are more than a little arbitrary, being accentuated by colonial administrators who chose the “taller, fairer, more advanced” Tutsis as their collaborators to rule the Hutu majorities. Part of the process of identifying who was a Hutu and who a Tutsi – after generations of intermingling of these tribes, the genes were thoroughly mixed – was the measuring of noses and other physical features to find out who had the more “European” physiognomy, and hence was a Tutsi. As always, this policy led to the creation of a Westernised collaborationist class ruling over a suppressed mass of their own people and developing a vested interest in perpetuating their own rule. Equally inevitable was the mass resentment that finally – post independence – flared out into rebellion and retribution.

By the early nineties, Rwanda was in a ferment, with the army (now almost entirely Hutu) fighting a vicious insurgency by Tutsi refugees largely based in neighbouring Uganda. Meanwhile, as the world looked on unconcerned, fascist Hutu militia armed and prepared to wipe the Tutsi people from the face of the earth.

Over the span of a hundred days, starting in April 1994, between three quarters of a million and a million people – mostly Tutsi, but also any Hutu who opposed fascist and racist policies – died in a genocide unleashed by the militias with the active backing of the Rwandan Army. One has to remember that we are talking of a tiny country, virtually a dot on the map of Africa, to understand what such numbers mean. It has been said that there was not a single Tutsi family in Rwanda at the time who had not lost members in the genocide.

The world did nothing. While parsing phrases to see if what was going on was “genocide”, or “acts of genocide”, or something else altogether, the western nations did nothing except withdraw all their own (white) civilians trapped in the country, leaving behind everyone else. UN peacekeepers from Belgium were withdrawn after some of them – forbidden to defend themselves – were kicked, beaten, hamstrung, castrated and ultimately suffocated by having their own genitals stuffed in their mouths (no, I am NOT inventing this tale). The then (female) Prime Minister of Rwanda, whose bodyguards they were, was shot dead during this episode.

The violence ended when the Rwandan Patriotic Front finally overwhelmed the Rwandan Army and forced its remnants and the militias to flee the country and take refuge in neighbouring Congo (then Zaire). While I’ve pointed out elsewhere that the RPF swiftly got involved in the expanding Zairian civil war (which continues to this day), it did finally capture some of the perpetrators of the massacres and bring them to trial. Many others, however, were – and are – sheltered and protected by France, Belgium, Kenya and other nations. I doubt if many of them will ever be punished for their crimes.

In 1994, Augustin Muganza is a Hutu army officer married to a Tutsi whose brother is a rabid hate spewing commentator on RTLM (Hutu Power Radio). As he watches his trainees taken over by the violent fascists of the Interahamwe, who openly advocate killing the “cockroaches”, and as he sees the army openly acquiring and stockpiling weapons for an attack on all Tutsis, he is stricken to his conscience. His closest friend, Xavier, a Tutsi officer, shares his misgivings. In the meantime, the insurgents of the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front shoot down the aeroplane of the country’s president, Juvenal Habayarimana – who was ironically on the way back from peace talks. (In another of the ironies of history, Habayarimana’s plane’s wreckage fell in his own backyard.)

This was the excuse the militias were looking for to begin an all out assault on the Tutsis. Augustin, who is under suspension from his army rank, shelters his Tutsi fellow officer and his family in his own house, later getting his brother – the RTLM man – to try and drive them, along with his own wife and sons, to safety. The brother vanishes, and so does the family (wife Jeanne and two sons), so far as Augustin knows. As we see, the brother does try to get them to safety, running the gauntlet of several roadblocks before being finally stopped and his ploy rumbled. (What finally happened to the family is revealed only at the very end of the film, in a reunion of the two brothers).

Ten years later, in 2004, Augustin is a teacher who gets a letter from the brother, Honore, who is a prisoner facing trial for war crimes (this is where the film begins, after a preface showing the colonial administrators at their racist worst). With his girlfriend Martine – a teacher in the school where his other child, a daughter, studied – Augustin sets out to find out what happened to his family and bring some kind of peace to himself.

Shifting back and forth between 1994 and 2004, “Sometimes in April” takes the viewer to the heart of darkness and the implicit irony of those who sat and watched the genocide unfold without lifting a finger to stop it sitting in judgement a decade later, and the need of the survivors to balance their new lives with the requirements of justice, retribution, and closure.

“Sometimes in April” needs to be seen in comparison and contrast to that other movie based on the events of that genocide, “Hotel Rwanda” starring Don Cheadle. While “Sometimes” is infinitely the better movie, it is not so much a separate experience from “Hotel Rwanda” as a complement to it. One should watch “Hotel Rwanda” first for background, and then “Sometimes” is the richer experience.

In what ways does “Sometimes” score over “Hotel Rwanda”? In virtually every one that matters. “Hotel Rwanda,” which I reviewed earlier, is – relatively speaking – a mainstream Hollywood movie, with clear cut “good“ and “bad” and no shades of grey. It has a clear cut hero, evil villains, and the movie ends as soon as the hero’s task is over, with a rather fancifully happy conclusion. Even the violence is seen at one remove – on the TV screen. Except for one surreal scene of a truck driving over corpses in the dawn, the rest is almost entirely just loud threats and waving of machetes.

“Sometimes” does not shy away from its violence. It shows everything – rotting corpses in swamps, the role of churches in assisting the genocide and where women prisoners were used as sex slaves, the casual way in which people were butchered and thrown into rivers, everything. Loads of corpses are hauled along in a convoy of trucks, and nobody really turns a hair. The film shows one of the most gruesome incidents of the genocide – the killing of 120 girl students of the Sainte Marie school because the Hutus among them refused to separate themselves from the Tutsis so the latter could be killed, and – at the same time – doesn’t ignore the casual brutality of the RPF when it summarily executed anyone it felt like after its own victory. “Hotel Rwanda” would never do something like that.

And “Sometimes” does not pretend things are all “happy ever after” once the shooting stops. It explores the tribunals – the big one run by the UN in Arusha, and the little ones in the countryside, where pink clad murderers are paraded before villagers to be identified for the crimes they committed.

It’s a harrowing experience, but worth the watch, and more. Not for weak stomachs.

I've no hesitation in awarding it five stars.

Directed by Raoul Peck
Produced by Daniel Delume
Written by Raoul Peck
Starring Idris Elba
Oris Erhuero
Carole Karemera
Debra Winger
Music by Bruno Coulais
Cinematography Eric Guichard
Editing by Jacques Comets
Distributed by HBO Films

Real quotes from US soldiers and Marines in Iraq. Not to be missed.

Japan, which is pushing for a resumption of commercial whaling, continues to massacre dolphins. A very disturbing video - be warned.
As I said before, until we as individuals hurt these nations by boycotting their products, causing real and painful harm to their economies, we cannot expect any change in their behaviour. As "democratic partners in the war on terror," blah blah, they will not be targeted by our own governments, most of which don't care about the environment anyway.
Meanwhile, Indian river dolphins (Platanista gangetica) are being slowly and systematically wiped out, quite deliberately, for their oil, which is used as fish bait. River dolphins are a rare and vanishing species very different from the sea dolphins and infinitely more vulnerable to hunting.

The truth about Hiroshima.

I wonder what the National Rifle Association, et cetera, have to say about this? A sane society would have banned gun ownership long ago.

But I forgot. It's the Land of Freedom.

I wonder why I, sitting on the other side of the world and an opponent of most things American, am the one who is angry.     

Some things just can’t be avoided.

I admit that this is the third time I’m returning to the subject of the Virginia Tech shootings – previous posts, for those who missed them, are here and here. But the mess of ill-informed debate, racism and misdirected anger is getting so bizarre that it deserves another look.

While surfing YouTube – a process that ended with my import of this video, I came across a lot of drivel, abuse, and non sequiturs. I personally got targeted by a none-too-grammatical lady who calls herself redhead6868 – whose theme song seems to be “I’m older than u (sic), therefore I know better, sweetie, and I own guns and my husband hunts FOR DEER (sic)”. OK, so there is no effort involved in blowing redhead6868 out of the water (and, no, I did not go to the effort of finding out how old she is). I’m talking of the others.

In the first place, let me just go over the fact that Cho Seung Hui may have been an ethnic Korean, but he lived in the United States since the age of four. He grew up in an American milieu, watched American movies, presumably learned to drive at the regulation American age of 16, learned to shoot as any “red blooded he man” American (as distinct from namby-pamby liberals) would, ate American food, and imbibed American values. I find it rich, therefore, that he should be racially targeted as an Asian – and there should be fuming rhetoric as to how the “gooks” should have been killed by the “Japs” back in World War II. Going by that sort of “logic”, then, after Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P Murrah building in Oklahoma City, killing 168, people of Irish origin should have been targeted (were they? No. Arabs, who had nothing to do with it, were). (As an aside – our ever-toadying Indians are at it again. On the website known as Sepia Mutiny, the hangout of Indians resident in the US, some are going to great pains to say that we are South Asians, as distinct from East Asians, and hence “blameless”. I suppose no one among them has heard of the Reverend Martin Niemoller.)

Now, Asians, whether South or East, are rather different culturally speaking than the West. I mention this simple fact because, somehow, it does not seem to have entered the minds of most people. We Asians (and the Russians too) are much more family oriented. It is not a matter of shame to us to head to the bosom of the family when we have problems. I don’t mean this to be patronising, it’s just a statement of fact. How does this affect the current issue?

Well, all of us have problems and grievances. All of us have times when we want to withdraw from the world, or lash out at it. Some of us (I am one) are loners by temperament, we internalise our problems, but when it gets too much for us where do we head? To the family. No one is ever no longer a part of the family in an Asian society. You may live a continent away, but you are still part of the family, and your actions reflect on the family’s “honour”. This is why Cho’s family is so obviously distressed and apologised to the American people for his actions. An average Western family would have gone “It’s awful, but it was what he did, we are not to blame.” But Cho, brought up in an American milieu, did not go to his family with his grievances. He bottled them up till they exploded in slaughter.

Obviously, now, Asians also have psychopaths like – for example – this guy here. But they are almost invariably serial killers, not what I would call binge murderers like Cho. The serial killer, as any psychologist or criminologist will confirm, is a special breed. More usually than not he is of above average intelligence, whatever his conceived motives, and is very careful to space out his killings and tries not to get caught. He does not operate in a murderous frenzy triggered off by an inability to handle pressure. Unlike the binge murderer, he is not actuated by grievances that tip the balance of his reason beyond all thought of self preservation.

When we read or listen to Cho’s video manifesto, his anger against the “hedonistic” lifestyles of his peers is obvious. Listen to him: “Your Mercedes wasn’t enough, you slugs. Your trust fund wasn’t enough, you snobs.” He claims to have been picked on and humiliated, and to have been forced to have done what he did (uh – back in school I was obese, picked on and bullied, disliked for my alleged “intellectualism”, mocked for my ineptness on the sports field and inability to get girls to fall for me. Did I pick up a weapon? No. But if I had had access to a weapon, there are times when I might have. I very seriously doubt it, though). You can’t call his rampage senseless, anyway. He had grievances and he went to great pains to tell the world about those grievances.

Of course, now, it no longer matters at this stage of proceedings whether the grievances are real or imagined. For the person involved, they are real and more than real. They are so important that they are literally a matter of life and death. An Asian, under these circumstances, would likely seek refuge in the bosom of the family, or, failing that, commit suicide – a lonely suicide. But Cho, whatever his ethnic origin, was no longer psychologically an Asian.

And what of his grievances? The average person in the US is under intense pressure to prove himself. Proving himself, more than anything else, means material success. If you don’t have wealth, you are nobody (and we Indians are headed the same way, fast). Cho, the son of supermarket workers, already psychiatrically not quite all there (as his family claims, he was autistic as a kid, and as his fellow students claim, his behaviour was bizarre), looking around him and finding conspicuous consumption and the irresponsible display of wealth. For an inherently unstable person like this, the pressure to perform, to match up, is potentially too much. In Asia one can step back and take a breath, but not so in the US, not unless you don’t mind being labelled a failure.

So, Cho was an unstable young man under intense psychological pressure. What could he do about it? Denied the option, by his upbringing, to go take refuge in his family (even if he wanted to, that would be “unmanly” by US standards) he took the way he could.

And about that way – as I said, I too was bullied and abused. I wanted sometimes to get hold of a weapon. But could I? No. I don’t want to have to repeat ad nauseam what I said already about gun laws in the US, but it stands to reason that Cho, had he not had ready access to firearms, would not have run amok with a bread knife. I’ve already talked enough about gun laws in the US. Check my previous two posts (linked above) if you want to refresh your memory.

Somewhere I once read that one in every four people in the US has appeared, at some point, on television. Television is the road to recognition. If you’re nobody, if you’re famous for absolutely nothing but being famous, if you are, say, a Nicole Richie or Paris Hilton, get on TV and your reputation’s made. Cho’s video manifesto was tailor made for TV. He wanted to go out with a bang so loud as to live forever on TV, and get movies made about how he went out in a blaze of glory like Billy the Kid. He’s very likely to get his wish.

And that’s another thing.

Now, of course, while I am on this topic of TV and – by extension – video games and movies, what is the staple? Violence, violence, and yet more violence. Video games are all about violence – can anyone name a non-violent video game in recent memory?; the most loved movies are ultra-violent ones like Blackhawk Down, much appreciated by the dickless weapon worshippers, of whom more anon. Compare and contrast European television and movies to American ones to see how violence is not necessarily the route to high cinematic art. Oh yes, I do realise that films and videos are not to be taken seriously. I realise that, you realise that, but millions of people round the globe don’t necessarily realise that. Fantasy and fact get blurred, all too easily.

Now a guy who keeps shooting men and women on a video screen naturally gets somewhat used to the idea of pointing a weapon at someone and pulling a virtual trigger. But that is not necessarily all he does. For in the US, hunting is something anyone who is not a pinko liberal commie faggot Islamofascist traitor terrorist lover is brought up into; getting a gun is not just easy, but is a rite of childhood’s end, as is learning to use it. In other parts of the world, a teenager who shoots animals would be regarded at least as a potential danger and certainly as an oddball; in the US he is taught to shoot animals, usually by his own father. Once one begins killing, killing comes easier and easier. Inflicting death becomes a pleasure in its own right. A way to get your rocks off. And also a way to feel empowered. You’re ground down at work? So what? You can blow away a bull moose! Nimrod the Hunter had nothing on you!

I have always held the theory that people who love guns are monumentally sexually insecure – guns are the weapon worshipper’s way of tackling his penis envy, as is driving SUVs, the traffic equivalent of the gun. Now I do agree that until someone points a gun at someone and presses the trigger the gun is unlikely to kill or injure anyone, but the fact that thirty thousand people die yearly from gunshot wounds in the US shows that guns do get pointed and triggers pressed remarkably often. That’s nearly a hundred times a day.

It’s odd also that the same gun worshippers are most likely to support stopping the Iranians, for example, from possibly, at some remote distant future time, getting their hands on a nuclear device, even if they show no signs of wanting one, because of the alleged potential danger; but show no compunction about keeping actual and real dangerous weaponry right by their side.

In what other country of the world would an aspiring presidential candidate (Mitt Romney) lie about owning guns when he does not, and about going hunting when he has never applied for a hunting licence? Anywhere else in the world, whether a politician owns a gun or goes hunting is either irrelevant or else actually counterproductive. And as the governor of Montana (I think) – a Democrat to boot – said, “I probably own more guns than I need, but not as many as I want.”

In what other country would the right to own deadly weapons become a factor on which elections are won and lost?

The most potent irony in this is the simple fact that Cho – a mirror, as he is, held up to society – will become a product furthering that society. I can already see the books being written on him, and by next year there will certainly be one or more movies in the pipeline.

What will not happen is either a ban on guns or even reasonable control. That’s so, uh, anti-freedom. To quote Donald Rumsfeld, “Free people are free to do bad things…” I guess shooting holes in people is – by that standard – expressing one’s freedom. Rather like freedom of speech.

"Police struggle to find Virginia Tech motive"? It's...plain as the nose on your face, unless you deliberately choose to ignore it.

Even sarcasm fails as a tool sometimes.

The Cho Seung Hui video. Listen to him in his own words.

This is one crime which I had not planned to revisit. Having written of it, I had planned to let it rest.

But the more I learn of the circumstances (including the contradictions in the official account), the more I read of Cho Seung-Hui’s murderous rampage through the dormitories and classrooms of Virginia Tech, the more it seems that this is a fit case for in depth study. OK, I am not a sociologist, but neither are 99.9% of other bloggers going on about it anyway.

Not just of the shooting itself (and did he really line them up execution style? Did he really? What were they doing, not running? Execution style, over and over again, room after room?), but of how the world – particularly that part of the world I see daily - reacted to it, the possible causes and the circumstances that led to a deranged young man shooting his fellow students and teachers dead over a period of hours, in two separate attacks.

The facts are well enough known by now – at least, there’s not much likely to come out that will actually suddenly throw so much light on the whole thing people are going to go “Oh, how could we have been so blind? It’s all clear now!”- as I said, though, there is enough to go on and make some theories and maybe reach a conclusion or two.

Now, we read that Mr Cho actually spent the two hour interval between shootings sending a parcel of video clips and photographs to the media. I’m sure I couldn’t tell you how he managed it, unless he used some unmanned drop off like a post box – or he managed to change out of his killer gear, seen in all its lethal flashiness above, and back again. Did he stand in line at a post office, guns, shooter vest, and all? Did he have an accomplice post it for him?

I think one may be more or less certain that most, if not all, of the material he posted was prepared before the dormitory phase of the shooting. So he had it all planned. And if it is true that he was – you know – emitting warning signals, why wasn’t he intercepted in this age of “security”?

Besides, we know something of his history by now. This was not a stable person. Even before he went on his current spree, he had made everyone round him uncomfortable with violent imagery and writing, weird behaviour, and had been referred for psychiatric counselling. And this is the sort of flaming lunatic who can walk into a store and buy a gun, presenting a credit card, along with unlimited hollow point ammunition, and walk out again, no questions asked.

Can one still say there is nothing very, very wrong with gun ownership laws in the United States?

In 2001, America went to war after (alleged) Arab terrorists from Al Qaeda (allegedly) hijacked four planes and flew them into the World Trade Centers (sic) and the Pentagon. The total death toll in that alleged attack, if I remember right, was about 2800 odd. Well, in that same year of 2001, there were 29,573 deaths from firearms, distributed as follows by mode of death: Suicide 16,869; Homicide 11,348; Accident 802; Legal Intervention 323; Undetermined 231.(CDC, 2004) - check this site. The number of non fatal injuries were two hundred thousand. So, if 2800 deaths caused by an alleged terrorist attack can be the excuse for a global rampage that has so far killed unknown thousands of Afghans, 655000 Iraqis (and that is a figure dating back to last year) and something like 3300 American troops, what are four times that number of deaths in homicides alone? Not worth a War on Guns?

What are the primary excuses for retaining gun ownership? Why would anyone want to own guns anyway?

Now, I am no sympathiser of the National Rifle Association or of any gun nut. So obviously I will not be unbiased here. But so far as I can see pro-gun arguments boil down to the following:

1. The Second Amendment Argument. The Second Amendment to the US Constitution says “"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

Now that amendment was passed in 1789 – a time when the existence of the US was precarious, resources were scanty, a standing army was not a reasonable alternative. It was just a hundred years since men and women were being hanged in Salem, Massachusetts, for "witchcraft" because the Bible allegedly said "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." (No matter that it was just a mistranslation of the King James). It was also a time when slavery was legal, and the genocidal extermination of Native Americans was not just allowed but positively encouraged, with bounties paid out for scalps. In later days Jim Crow laws were to be passed in the US, segregation would be enforced in Southern states, and till the late sixties interracial marriage would be banned in several states. No less a person than that great liberal, Abraham Lincoln, would say: “I cannot conceive of a future where the Negro will live in equality with the white man."

Yet, where are all those laws now? Segregation is formally dead (though after Katrina we all know the reality is a different story…). You can’t go scalp hunting Sioux any more. You can have a black wife and still not be arrested, and she can sit in the front seats of a bus if she wants. And witches open websites and have magazines.

So what the hell has a 1789 law, which was meant as a replacement for a standing army and not as a free for all to hand out guns to everyone, got to do with the present? What's so sacrosanct about it? Nothing.

And is a militia necessary today? Er, I don't exactly see anyone invading the US in the near future, with weapons limited enough that the "citizen's militia" can take them on, can you?

2. That guns are a “part of US culture”.

Hoo boy. That’s about the worst cop out I have ever heard. I might as well say that there have been cultures promoting human sacrifice. And there have been, many. Just because many people choose to buy guns does not ipso facto legitimise them.

In fact, those who advance this argument are also those who are more likely than not to choose to drive fuel-guzzling, environment destroying SUVs, treat the world as a disposable commodity, and promote “individualism” as the alternative preferred to “state interference” even when the alleged state interference – for example, providing efficient public transport services in lieu of SUVs – is to the common good. It’s not just arrogant – it’s contemptuous of humanity.

3. The hunting/outdoors argument.

All right. Now this is the twenty first century.

We do not, in this day and age, have to hunt for survival. Certainly not in America. All hunting does – all any blood sports do – is degrade the participant. Even Blair the Poodle recognises this and banned the centuries-old “sport” of fox hunting in Britain. And when “hunting” includes gizmos to allow even the blind to go hunting, you know that this is just pandering to bloodlust. Where biodiversity is dropping worldwide, “hunting seasons” and “licensed shooting” are just tokens – feel good attempts to pass off the indefensible as permissible.

4. The self-defence argument.

Well, when I mentioned here that perhaps gun nuts would blame the students for not being armed so as to shoot the shooter, I thought I was being sarcastic. I never in my wildest imagination thought that the argument