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The Law, Justice and Human Rights Committee of Nepal’s Federal Parliament has declared the Rukum Paschim killings to be a crime against humanity. The committee has also directed the government to immediately bring all culprits to book and instructed the Ministry of Home Affairs to form a Dalit cell in District Police Office of Rukum Paschim to deal with cases related to violence and discrimination against the community.

The committee had summoned Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa and Attorney General Agni Kharel to inquire about government action on the killing of six Dalit youths in Chaur Jahari of Rukum Paschim in western Nepal.

On May 23, locals from Chaur Jahari Municipality in Rukum Paschim had set upon a group of 19 youths, mostly teens, coming from neighboring Jajarkot district. Six youths were killed, and one is still missing. Others ran away to save themselves when the mob tried to lynch them to death. Reportedly, the locals were angry upon knowing that Nawaraj BK, a Dalit, had come along with his friends to marry a girl from their village.

Stating that the incident was a case of caste-based discrimination, Kharel expressed his commitment to not let the investigations go awry. “We make laws and policies. That’s fine. But whether we implement them is the major question,” he said at the meeting. “In this case, we will ensure that the investigations will be fair. We won’t come under anyone’s influence.”

Subhas Nembang, deputy parliamentary leader of the ruling Nepal Communist Party, said the culprits will be brought to book no matter how influential or powerful they might be. “This is not only against the Dalit community. This is a crime against humanity.”

Chief whip of main opposition party Nepali Congress, Bal Krishna Khand, condemned the state failure in stopping crowds from coming out of their houses and carrying out the killings in the middle of coronavirus lockdown.

Members of parliament Min Bishwakarma, Dibyamani Rajbhandari, Bimala BK, Ram Kumari Chaudhari, Sher Bahadur Tamang, Parwati Bishankhe, Laxmi Pariyar, and Matrika Yadav also unanimously condemned the incident and demanded immediate action from the government.

‘Police no silent watchers’

Speaking before the committee, Home Minister Thapa said the police were not silent spectators to the incident, unlike what was being reported. He claimed the police did their best to save Nawaraj and his friends.

“We are investigating if there was some lapse on the part of the police. If some police personnel made a mistake, we will take departmental action against them,” he claimed.

There were about 50-60 locals who had surrounded the youths before attacking them. Thapa said the local police did not notice them earlier as they possibly came into the village on the sly.

The kin of the dead have lodged complaints against 20 persons in the village for the killings. The police have arrested 18 for investigations, while two are absconding.

A United Nations Development Program (UNDP) survey of 700 businesses and 400 individuals, and consultations with over 30 private sector organizations and government agencies, came to a sobering finding: “The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted supply chains, shut or threatened the survival of small and informal enterprises, and made people highly vulnerable to falling back into poverty through widespread loss of income and jobs.”

This situation can be tackled only with swift and extreme measures. The consensus is that the government decision to continuously extend the lockdown without seemingly exploring other alternatives is dead wrong. (Even though the lockdown seems to have eased up a bit of late, the country is far from being fully open to business.) 

Sociologist Mrigendra Kumar Karki fears complete and partial lockdowns, which are likely to continue in the foreseeable future, will further widen the gap between haves and have-nots, as it is the poor who will suffer disproportionately. “There must be comprehensive short- and long-term studies on the multifarious impact of the lockdowns, and policy measures swiftly enacted to mitigate the effects,” he says.

Karki also points to the political implications of the extended lockdown. He argues people are gradually losing their trust in the government. “There is a feeling that the government won’t be able to help them if they get infected. People at the community level are themselves preparing to deal with the virus,” Karki says. He fears the mistrust between the state and its people will widen in the coming days.

In the Initial days, the lockdown disproportionately impacted daily-wage earners. The government tried to address the problem by providing them food-grains through local governments. Now, the lockdown is starting to weigh heavy even on those in organized sectors who rely on monthly salary for their livelihoods. Many private organizations have either not paid their staff, or delayed the payment. To take just one example, of around 500,000 people employed in tourism, many have already lost their jobs while others are on unpaid leave.

The extended lockdown is harming all sectors. “With almost 85 percent of the working population in Nepal informally employed, such work avenues provide no significant assurance to the informal economy. It instead has possibly worsened poverty, put food security at risk, increased social tension, and threatened mental health amongst informal workers,” says the aforementioned UNDP survey titled Rapid Assessment of Socio-Economic Impact of Covid-19.

Long, dark tunnel

Dr Kapil Dev Upadhyaya, a consultant psychiatrist at Center for Mental Health and Counselling (CMC-Nepal), says people are getting increasingly frustrated at the prospect of having to stay cooped up in their homes indefinitely.

“It is not only about the lockdown. People seem worried they may not be treated if they catch the virus. They have little faith in our shambolic healthcare and quarantine systems,” he adds. As a result, Upadhyaya foresees many more “mental and physical health problems” down the line.

The number of suicide cases has increased. According to the data provided by Nepal Police, 1105 people committed suicide between March 24 and May 30, a daily average of 16.25 compared to the average of 14-15 before the lockdown.  

As the economic hardship starts to bite, the fear of looting, burglary and other forms of social crimes has increased, too. Such incidents are more likely in rural areas with low presence of security forces.

There is also an urgent need to provide jobs to the unemployed. In 1996, when the Maoists began their armed insurgency, they had recruited large numbers of unemployed people from rural areas. “Today, a failure to create jobs for the youth could once more threaten Nepal’s political stability,” says asks Hemant Malla, a retired Deputy Inspector General of Police. Notably, the Maoist splinter group led by Netra Bikram Chand has already launched an armed insurgency.

As the number of infected people is increasing by the day, chances of immediately and completely lifting the lockdown are slim. Other countries are gradually opening up their economy. In our case, there has been a continuous lockdown starting March 24—and the government is struggling to justify it. Unless there is a radical shift in the thinking of state authorities, things will only go from bad to worse.

On May 1, a man in Kathmandu’s Baneshwor committed suicide by consuming Celphos, a pesticide used to preserve grains. While the police are still investigating, family and neighbors reported he had become bankrupt and did not have a grain left to eat. His small eatery was closed and he was under a huge debt.

Since the start of the lockdown on March 24, a total 1105 people committed suicide across the country (as of May 30) as per Nepal Police. This puts the average daily suicides at 16.25, which used to be about 14 before the lockdown. Sixty-nine people killed themselves in the Kathmandu Valley in this time.

Although it is too early to draw definite conclusions and connect this to the pandemic and lockdown, the link cannot be altogether denied as well. The general stress level of the people—the harbinger of all mental illnesses—has definitely spiked.

Dr Kapil Dev Upadhyaya, senior psychiatrist and consultant at the Center for Mental Health and Counselling-Nepal, says the real picture of pandemic-induced mental health issues is yet to surface.

He and his colleagues get calls from patients who are, among other things, unable to sleep. Lockdown stress has increased the risk of relapse for patients who were showing signs of progress, according to Dr Upadhyaya. The cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suicides, alcohol abuse, depression, and anxiety could further rise after the lockdowns, he reckons.

Stress of stigma

Perhaps the long-term impact of Covid-19 would be more on mental than physical health. Mental health professionals have been raising alarms worldwide. The American Psychological Association reports, “Covid-19 has brought a raft of intense new stressors while removing many of the resources people have traditionally used to cope with stress.” Millions of people have lost their jobs and some even their homes and businesses.

The social stigma attached to the virus may be more dangerous than the virus itself, according to Dr Ritesh Thapa, a consultant psychiatrist and director of Lalitpur-based Rhythm Neuropsychiatry Hospital and Research Center.

“The problem is the way we have made it so big. But it is just a virus! We often get infected with a virus, and we get cured. We have already been through HIV-AIDS, Ebola, and leprosy. But in this case, the social stigma has been too much,” says Dr Thapa. Anybody suspected of having it is stigmatized and treated as an outcast. People in quarantine fare no better; so much so they start feeling guilty, leading to multiple psycho-social problems.

Dr Thapa and his team get several calls every day from patients with complaints related to depression or anxiety. Many of them have suicidal thoughts. One patient whom he suggested to get hospitalized refused to do so and later attempted suicide. He failed.

Dr Thapa too reckons not enough people are reporting psychological problems. “We can tell from previous pandemics and public health crises in other countries that it’s going to explode afterward.”

Worldwide, experts have been warning the governments that the next crisis will be economic, and will directly impact people’s mental health. In Thailand, the number of people committing suicide due to economic hardship is predicted to exceed the number of coronavirus deaths.

Besides many economic factors, unemployment resulting from Covid-19 alone might, in the worst case, result in 9,570 additional annual suicide deaths globally, says the UK-based medical journal The Lancet.

Many names of misery

Dr Thapa gets calls from three types of people who report economic hardship. First, entrepreneurs who are under stress due to monetary loss and pressure to repay bank loans. Second, daily wage earners and small-time employees who live in rented rooms. Under pressure to pay rent and buy food, they often complain of “feeling lowly and lonely, and feeling like crying.” The third type is comprised of the youths from outside Kathmandu who are working students in the city. They complain of being stuck in the Valley without jobs and of having depressive thoughts.

Socio-economic trauma of the pandemic is already being felt across the world, as a result of which the number of psychological illnesses and suicides could spike.

On March 30, the finance minister of Germany's Hesse state, Thomas Schaefer, committed suicide after apparently losing hope over the virus’s economic impact. On April 26, Dr Lorna Breen, a top emergency room doctor at a Manhattan hospital, committed suicide. She was one of the frontline medicos treating coronavirus patients.

In India, a 50-year-old Covid-19 patient committed suicide in Stanley Government Hospital, Chennai, on May 26. The next morning, another 57-year-old patient who was isolated for coronavirus symptoms killed himself in Tamil Nadu Government Multi Super Specialty Hospital.

In Britain, Emily Owen, a 19-year-old waitress from Kings Lynn in Norfolk, died in hospital after a suicide attempt in late March. She was “unable to cope with the isolation.” A few days earlier, she had warned relatives that more people would die from suicide during this time than from the virus itself.

Suicide is likely to become a more pressing concern as the pandemic spreads and leaves behind longer-term effects on the general population, the economy, and vulnerable groups, The Lancet writes.

Suicidal facts

According to a study by the Well Being Trust and researchers affiliated with the American Academy of Family Physicians, suicide and substance abuse-related deaths resulting from coronavirus are likely to increase. In the US, such additional deaths may go as high as 154,000 in the next 10 years depending on the impact on the economy. Suicide cases are already high in the country, with 48,344 people killing themselves in 2018, as per the data of the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Likewise, a spike in suicides triggered by Covid-19 lockdowns is expected to exceed deaths from the actual virus in Australia, according to researchers from Sydney University’s Brain and Mind Center. In the best-case scenario, suicide rates will increase 25 percent in the country, Professor Ian Hickie of the university said in early May. Suicide rates could increase 50 percent over the next five years if the national economy continues to deteriorate for more than a year. This would add 750 to 1,500 suicides to the annual Australian average of 3,000, the study predicts.

Nepal has not evaluated the impending economic and mental consequences of the Covid-19 crisis. The focus has been on continuing the lockdown, without a plan for addressing the psycho-social issues that will later emerge. Reports from our southern border paint a grim picture of the quarantine facilities. People spending time there, who are already facing social stigma, could also go on to develop debilitating psycho-social problems, warns Dr Thapa.

There have been sporadic reports of people suffering from loneliness, desperation due to loss of jobs and businesses, and domestic violence amid the pandemic lockdown. They are yet to be fully assessed and reported. Waiting for the pandemic to be over and lockdowns to be fully lifted might be fatal. As Dr Thapa suggests, it is wiser to take preventive measures now than allow the problem to grow and later burst—with potentially unimaginable consequences.

Doing the busting is Sushil Koirala, a Bangkok-based public health expert and one of the authors of the popular change.org petition urging the Nepali government to massively expand Covid-19 testing.

Myth 1: There’s no virus in Nepal. The government is making up the positive cases to extend the lockdown and get donations from international agencies.

Fact: As viruses are very small, they are difficult to see. The only way to know for sure is to find an infected person and test them for a virus. Our government may certainly be faking many things, but it’s unlikely that a virus that has infected over six million people around the world and taken the life of almost half a million can be faked.

Nepal has plenty of reasons to seek foreign aid but rest assured, we have neither the skill nor the manpower to create such a massive hoax.

Myth 2: Nepalis are immune to the virus because of what they eat: ginger, garlic, turmeric, you name it.

Fact: Nepal happens to be among only a handful of countries that has seen a few deaths among young adults and children—even with a small number of its positive cases. Garlic, ginger and turmeric are good for health (they taste good too) and may boost your immunity, too, but the ‘garlic immunity’ is not known to protect anyone from the Covid-19 virus. If that were the case, no one in China would have gotten the virus. They love garlic and ginger there.

No one knows why the virus makes someone very sick while nothing happens to someone else it infects, and overall health does not seem to make a difference on the severity of symptoms. Nepal is at a higher risk of severe Covid-19 cases as people’s overall health here is poorer compared to the health of the people of more developed countries.

Myth 3: As the Covid-19 death rate in Nepal is low, not many Nepalis will from it.

Fact: People don’t die as soon as they get the infection; it generally takes time for someone to acquire the virus and then die from it. Up to now, most infections in Nepal have been seen in labor migrants, who tend to be young males. As you probably know, young people are at lesser risk of dying from Covid-19. So we don’t see high death numbers. Globally, the virus seems to infect younger people (as they move around a lot more) and then slowly moves to the elderly, who are most affected by it. I think we are just not there yet. The young-to-old is a natural progression of this pandemic in other countries.

Myth 4: The climate of Nepal is unsuitable for the virus.

 Fact: This virus is now circulating in five continents and has affected 182 countries. Some are spreading faster than others but it is now clear that it can spreads in all kinds of climates.

Myth 5: The virus strain we have is weak.

Fact: As the virus spreads, it mutates. As viruses replicate rather than reproduce, these imperfections are natural too. There are 15 known strains of the Covid-19 virus circulating in the world. Certain differences have been observed in different parts of the world but there is no evidence that the strain in Nepal is weak. As even young adults and children are dying, it could well be more potent. It’s too early to say. Plus, there has been no virus culture in Nepal, so this is just an untested assumption.

Last word: In my view, the only fact that we all need to believe in is that the virus is real, and is infecting millions. Hundreds of thousands are dying. And there is as yet no medication to cure it and no vaccine to ward it off. No one knows if one population has more immunity than others.

Eating garlic can definitely help you get stronger but it won’t protect you from the virus. The only proven prevention is maintaining at least 6-ft distance from people you don’t live with, washing hands regularly, wearing masks, and seeking test and help if you have fever, difficult breathing, persistent cough, and sudden loss of sense of taste and smell.