From: Michael M. Butler (butler@comp-lib.org)
Date: Wed Apr 24 2002 - 12:40:38 MDT
Forwarded from a friend. interesting times:
I had no idea that Nepal was on the brink. This could be important because of
its strategic location between India and China.
=d
April 24, 2002
As Revolt Grows, Nepal Fears for Its Democracy
By CELIA W. DUGGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/24/international/asia/24NEPA.html
SATBARIYA, Nepal — The bodies of the Maoist rebels were still scattered across
parched lentil fields and behind a stand of sissau trees, almost a week after
thousands of their comrades swarmed a police garrison here on a moonless
night.
"When one Maoist was killed, another came forward," said Deepak Hamal, a young
policeman who survived the battle in mid-April. "They were there to kill or to
die."
Almost a hundred Maoists fell before the survivors overran the garrison, when
the constables ran out of ammunition. After the battle the rebels melted back
into the countryside.
The horror of the bodies — faces contorted in grimaces of death — has seeped
into life here, merging with a stain of violence that has spread over the last
year in this tiny Hindu kingdom encircled by India and China.
A spindly boy in rags wandering across the fields said he was afraid that the
ghosts of the dead would return to haunt him. He could have been speaking for
all of Nepal. Last June the crown prince massacred his father and mother, the
king and queen, and most of the royal family in a fusillade of gunfire.
In recent months the Maoist rebellion, inspired by the Shining Path guerrillas
of Peru and led by two college-educated, upper caste Brahmins, has spiraled in
intensity in this nation of stark poverty and beauty, where the snowy
Himalayas tower majestically over pitiful scenes of hunger and want.
The rebels carried out surprise attacks in late November in many of the
country's 75 districts, bringing a shocking end to a four-month cease-fire and
three rounds of peace talks. They also went after the army for the first time,
drawing it into the conflict.
The killing has intensified ever since. The police estimate that 3,600 people
have died since the Maoists declared a "people's war" in February 1996.
Half of those deaths have been in the four and a half months since a state of
emergency was declared, suspending civil liberties in this young democracy,
just 12 years into its incarnation as a constitutional monarchy.
The 50-000-member Royal Nepal Army, a largely ceremonial force that
occasionally took part in United Nations peacekeeping missions, joined the
battle against the Maoists on Nov. 26. The widespread hope in Katmandu that
the army would quickly crush the rebellion has proved empty.
The ruthless tactics used by both the rebels and the security forces have
become more widespread, say victims and human rights researchers.
Amnesty International and Nepalese human rights groups have documented what
they call a pattern of abuses by security forces that include the execution
and torture of people suspected of being Maoists.
The rights groups accuse the Maoists of gruesome violations as well, including
executions of dozens of schoolteachers who refused to submit to extortion
demands and the torture and murder of suspected informants and political
opponents with large, curved knives.
Resham Prasad Panta, 52, a poor farmer who lives a four-hour trek from the
nearest road in the Gorka district, said Maoists dragged him from his dinner
one recent night, accused him of being an informer and shattered his shin with
a large boulder. More Maoists then brutally beat his frail, underfed wife,
Sita, 48. Both lay in a hospital here.
"We are simple people," said Mrs. Panta, tears streaming down her face. "We
have nothing for or against anyone. Both sides pressure us. The Maoists say
you must be informing the police. The police say you must be sheltering the
Maoists. We are squeezed."
The Maoist influence has spread to most areas of the country, with deaths
related to the insurgency in 60 of the 75 districts. Last year the Maoists set
up "people's government's" in 22 districts.
When the Nepalese won their long struggle for democracy in 1990, the Maoists
were in the mainstream, part of a Communist alliance with a small number of
parliamentary seats. But in 1994 the election commission barred the alliance
from taking part, an act the courts later ruled illegal. Maoist leaders were
brutally beaten by the police.
In 1995, Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Baburam Bhattarai formed the Communist Party
of Nepal (Maoist), and the next year it issued 40 demands, including abolition
of the monarchy, radical land reform and a raft of policies that it said would
liberate the people.
When the Maoists did not get their way, they went to war.
The two leaders are believed by the government to be living underground in
India. The group has financed itself by robbing banks and extorting money from
landlords, teachers and business people. Members have armed themselves by
looting automatic rifles and rocket launchers, among other weapons, from
security forces.
Estimates of the number of rebel fighters range from 2,000 to 10,000, but they
seem to be getting bolder, even as their casualties mount. They have begun
attacking the few gains that Nepal's young democracy can claim: clean drinking
water supply systems, village government offices, and small roads and bridges
that connect remote areas to larger towns.
In February and again in April they mustered thousands of guerrillas for
attacks that caught the security forces completely off guard. At 10:30 p.m. on
April 11 they simultaneously assaulted five police and security posts in the
western Dang district, striking along the country's main east-west highway.
They prevented reinforcements from reaching any of the posts by felling huge
trees to block the roads.
"We had dismissed these guys as a bunch of clowns," said a senior Western
diplomat based here. "They weren't. They're dedicated, calloused and clever."
[A general strike ordered by the rebels shut down much of Nepal on Tuesday,
even in Katmandu. Despite a heavy security presence, Katmandu residents said
they feared rebel retribution if they did not go along.]
Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba acknowledged in an interview that the rebel
attacks in Dang were a setback and sketched out a largely military strategy to
defeat them. He said that as long as the Maoists used violence, it would be
difficult to pursue programs to combat endemic poverty.
"Unless there is peace, how can you introduce social development?" he said.
But many here, including some who are close to the king and in the military,
fear that further neglect of Nepal's poor will only help the Maoists.
There is another danger facing Nepal that is rarely spoken of openly: the risk
that the new king, Gyanendra, backed by the military, will topple democracy as
King Mahendra did in 1960.
There have been some ominous signs. In March the army chief of staff, Gen.
Prajwalla Shumsher Rana, made a scathing attack on politicians, blaming them
for bringing Nepal to near ruin.
Prabhakar Rana, another member of the powerful Rana clan who is close to the
royal family and serves as a director of its holding company, has said in
interviews that there may be a coup.
"Those who practice democracy have failed," he said. "They must pull up their
socks and mend their ways." If they don't, he said, "the army could take over
and ask the king to rule, or the army could just take over."
Asked about such a possibility, the prime minister diplomatically said he
believed that the king was committed to democracy. But Mr. Deuba, who spent
more than nine years in prison during the movement for democracy, also issued
a warning of sorts. He said that if there was a coup, the king would be
risking his crown. "Everybody would be against him," Mr. Deuba said.
In Katmandu, scholars, journalists and politicians gossip endlessly about
palace intrigue and politics. But young policemen earning $40 a month are
doing most of the dying on the government's behalf, and poor people in the
countryside are living with the daily terror.
Here in Satbariya, villagers who hid their weeping children under beds as the
battle between the Maoists and the Armed Police Force raged, still fear that
the Maoists will return.
Jokhan Prasad Chaudhari, patriarch of a large family and owner of a tiny plot
of land, predicted only more hardship. "It will not end," he said. "Many more
will die."
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