THE KAILALI
INCIDENT
Disillusionment, lawlessness and violence continue to shackle Western Nepal, particularly in the Madhes, the southern swath of Nepali plains that constitutes 33% of the country’s population. In the past week, two events in particular illustrate the regions’ tinderbox-like conditions. And the Maoists have played a major role in the unrest.
On Friday, December
4, near Lamki township, in the Dudhejhari forest, in the Far-Western district
of Kailali, police were deployed to remove thousands of homeless families, who
had suddenly moved in at the end of November after being displaced by floods
and landslides. An estimated 15,000 people were living in approximately 4,000
shanties. The squatters were from the Dalit caste.
But the squatters
fought back with bricks, lathis, khukuris and axes. Security forces responded
with firearms. At least six people were killed and an additional fifty people
were injured, some critically, including at least one police personnel.
Nevertheless, the
demolition was completed -- shacks
razed and torched.
The government
blamed the Maoists for the incident, asserting that the Maoist-affiliated All
Nepal Squatters’ Association (ANSA) orchestrated the encroachment of settlers
in the forest in the first place. Specifically, it was alleged that Maoist
cadres, led by PLA combatants from nearby UNMIN-monitored cantonments,
instructed the squatters how to retaliate, once the police entered the forest.
On Sunday, December
6, Hari Gyawali, the Maoist in charge of Kailali district – who had previously
signed a document proclaiming the encroachment illegal, thereby approving of
security force intervention – not only retracted his position, but demanded
that the dead be declared martyrs and that the squatters be allowed to remain
in the forest.
The Maoists then
ramped up their moral outrage by calling a general strike.
Over twenty vehicles
were torched or vandalized by Maoists along the roads of Indian border towns,
as well as medical shops that dared to remain open. The party office of Matrika
Prasad Yadav was also attacked. Yadav was once the senior-most Maoist leader in
Madhes, but had since left the Maoist party to form his own group in the south.
(To read my interview with Matrika Yadav CLICK HERE).
On December 8, the
Maoists turned up the heat yet again when the All Nepal Trade Union
Federation-Revolutionary – the powerful trade union affiliated with the Maoists
– said it would enforce a shutdown of Nepal’s media organizations. Leaders of
various media networks who constitute the Media Society were outraged and
called the Maoists hypocrites, claming the Maoists were attempting a kind of
censorship that imperiled the very civilian supremacy the Maoists claimed to be
fighting for.
To complicate the
issue, Raj Kumar Lekhi, leader of the Tharu Kalyankarini Sabha, an organization
comprised of ethnic Tharus, blamed the Kailali incident on the encroachment of
Indians and settlers from the hilly people of Nepal. The Tharus claim to be the
first settlers of southern Nepal and the direct descendants of the historical
Buddha, who was born in the Nepali border town of Lumbini. The organization is
resisting the government’s move to issue citizenship to people who have lived
in the plains for only several generations, fearing that the Tharus will become
a minority in their own ancestral territory.
But the government
in Kathmandu kept its sights on the Maoists. The leader of the anti-Maoist
block in the Communist Party Nepal (United Marxist Leninist – CPM-UML), K P
Oli, dared the Maoists to go back to underground warfare:
“If you think that
your rebellion was Great and Glorious, why don’t you re-enter the jungles and,
if you do so, then the country will not lose anything. What a double standard! The Maoists
teach their cadres to make sacrifices, yet the leaders live a luxurious life.”
Even the US
embassy, which kept its cards close to its chest during the ambassadorship of
Nancy Powell and is now transitioning under the auspices of charge de affaires
Randy Berry, voiced criticism of recent Maoist activities. According to South
Asia Press, Mr. Berry expressed concern that “the continuing seizure of crops
and land throughout Nepal is inconsistent with the stated Maoist commitment to
the peace process, the rule of law, and democratic practices.”
THE ATTEMPTED MURDER
OF JOURNALIST TIKA BISTA
On December 7, in
the western hilly district of Rukum, Tika Bista, a young female journalist was
brutally attacked and left for dead, in reprisal for her anti-Maoist reporting.
The Committee to
Protect Journalists (CPJ), an independent, nonprofit organization based in New
York, filed this excerpted report:
Bista reported
receiving death threats from Maoist groups on November 29 after publishing a
commentary in the local Jantidhara weekly that criticized local members of the
Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) for using intimidation and threats,
the federation said. The Kathmandu-based human rights group Freedom Forum said
Bista had called a colleague before the assault to say three men were following
her.
“The media
environment for journalists has not improved since Nepal’s transition to democratic
rule in 2008,” said Bob Dietz, CPJ Asia program coordinator. “Police must
investigate the death threats Bista received and bring the perpetrators of this
vicious attack to justice.”
CPJ research shows
that acts of violence against Nepali journalists historically have occurred
frequently and without official investigations. The attack against Bista is the
most serious journalist assault reported in Nepal since the shocking January
murder of Uma Singh.
[Journalist Uma
Singh was murdered in January 2009 in Nepal’s southern district of Dhanusha.
Singh was stabbed repeatedly by a group of approximately 15 unidentified men
who broke into her rented room in Janakpur. Maoist involvement was not ruled
out, but no one, to date, has been arrested. Uma was well known for her reports
on women’s rights and political issues and was vocal in condemning the ongoing
violence in the southern Terai region.]
Nepal has the
dubious distinction of being rated eighth place on the Committee to Protect
Journalists’ 2009 Impunity Index, which ranks the 14 worst countries in the
world for solving journalist murders, recorded by CPJ since 1998.
In the meantime,
Tika Bista is in stable but serious condition. She has a blood clot in her
brain, injuries to her cervical spine, left shoulder, right hand and left foot.
She is lucky to be alive.
According to
Republica, three masked persons blindfolded her and “gradually cut her right
fingers -- the hand she uses for writing -- and the sole of her left foot even
as she ran away to save her life. They also bashed her head. [ ]… she had
phoned her colleague and told she was being chased by three persons. They then
pushed her over a cliff -- estimated to be around 80 feet -- in the forest and
left her to die. She was found in an unconscious state in the forest Tuesday
evening.
***
So what is the
master plan of the Maoists these days? Perhaps we should look to Ganesh Man
Pun’s explanation, as told to a Calcutta Telegraph interviewer (Sankarshan
Thakur) last week. Pun is the chief of the Young Communist League (YCL), the
Maoists’ much-feared paramilitary wing:
“The revolution is
not over,” Pun says as an explanation of current tactics and future objectives,
“but we realize that in the 21st century, we must employ a mix of the bullet
and the ballot, political action and military action have to be fused. The
guerrilla war phase of our struggle is over and we are in the mainstream. We
think we can achieve our aims with mass mobilization but if the forces of
feudalism and imperialism resist the kind of state we want, we shall have to
use force.”
“We would not have
come this far if we had not used violence as a means, you know how powerful the
interests of status quo can be, and nobody talks about the violence they have
unleashed on the people over centuries. This is a struggle for revolutionary
changes, violence will happen. Having said that, we function under the
disciplines of ideology and line, what we do is for our political and social
objectives.”
A simpler of way of
saying this is: “Plant anarchy and reap the political rewards.” It's textbook Marxist methodology.
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