Unit 5: Political Crimes
5.1 Concept and Characteristics of Political Crime
Political crime — the offence against the state-or-the-political-order: the acts aimed at the government, the constitution, the state’s security — and (the critical school’s extension) the state’s own crimes against persons-and-peoples. The characteristics: the political motive (the power’s aim — not the private gain); the public’s stage (the message’s theatre); the legal systems’ special treatment (the political offence’s exception in the extradition law — the classic doctrine); the contestability (the freedom-fighter-or-terrorist’s lens — the legitimacy’s debate); the state’s double face (the offender-and-victim simultaneously — the oppressive-state paradox).
5.2 Types of Political Crimes
5.2.1 Terrorism
The definition’s struggle (the UN’s-and-scholars’ debates) against the working core: the violence against civilians for the political aim — the terrorising of the population. The instruments: the sectoral conventions (the hijacking, the hostage, the bombing faces); the SC’s post-9/11 resolutions; the comprehensive convention’s long negotiation. Nepal’s instruments: the Terrorism and Disruptive Activities (Control and Punishment) Ordinance/Act’s era (the 2001-2004 experience — the human rights critiques; the expiry); the current law’s faces (the Criminal Code 2074’s terrorism provisions; the Some Public (Crime and Punishment) Act 2027’s public-order offences); the conflict era’s lessons (the terror from both sides — the truth commissions’ record).
5.2.2 Assassination
The political murder: the leader’s killing (the world’s catalogue — the archduke’s world war, the Gandhi faces); the candidate’s-and-judge’s targeting. Nepal’s wounds: the royal massacre’s 2001 night; the political leaders’ killings (the conflict era’s-and-the-madhesi movement’s losses). The law: the murder provisions with the aggravated faces (the Criminal Code 2074); the protection-of-persons statutes’ machinery.
5.2.3 Violence
The political violence’s continuum: the riots-and-communal violence (the Criminology course’s faces); the electoral violence (the campaigns’ intimidation); the insurgency (the armed challenge — the IHL’s threshold of the Humanitarian Law course, LAW5509); the state’s violence (the suppression’s excesses — the shoot-on-sight era’s debates). The legal responses: the public-order laws; the commissions of inquiry; the reconciliation’s machinery.
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