Looking for Nepal's 'disappeared'
Thursday, July 19, 2007
| By Mark Dummett BBC News, Kathmandu |
Ram Prasad Acharya disappeared four years ago.
The last time his wife, Ruku, saw him he was being dragged out of their house by soldiers, wrapped in a blanket.
It was 3.45 in the morning and he was not given time to dress.
He is one of 937 Nepalese civilians who the International Committee of the Red Cross has listed as missing; their whereabouts still unknown, a year after the decade-long conflict ended.
Most of the "disappeared", about 800, were allegedly abducted, like Ram, by the security forces, after the government declared a state of emergency in 2001, and ordered the army to crush the Maoist insurgents.
Ruku believes Ram is still alive, probably still a prisoner, but perhaps wandering the country, having lost his mind.
She is well aware that human rights organisations, and released prisoners, accuse the army of having tortured and killed detainees, and that most people think the bodies of the missing are buried in unmarked graves.
"My heart feels very heavy. Sometimes I feel like I'm going to faint, I'm absolutely terrified."
Caught in the middle
Ruku says Ram was suspected of supporting the rebels, who then had a strong presence in their home district, Dhading, about a one-and-a-half-hour drive from Kathmandu.
Eighteen other people from the area were seized around the same time, suggesting that this was a deliberate tactic employed by local commanders.
As the owner of a small roadside restaurant, Ram would sometimes be asked by the Maoists for food.
He was not a supporter of their "People's War", but an innocent caught between the two sides, his wife says.
"They [the Maoists] didn't come here very often, and there was nothing we could do to stop them."
After he was seized, Ruku tracked him to an army barracks in the capital.
Other suspects, who were later released, told her they had met Ram there.
"We didn't know where they had taken him at first, but then we heard he was taken to Jagadal barracks in Chhauni.
"When we went there some of the guards denied he was there. Others guards said he was, but they wouldn't let us visit him, and they wouldn't give us permission to talk to their officers," Ruku said.
'No evidence'
According to Colonel Dharma Baniya of the Nepal Army's Human Rights Directorate, there is no record that Ram Prasad Acharya was ever a prisoner of the military.
He challenged the accuracy of the Red Cross figures, and said the victims' relatives, like Ruku, might have confused army personnel for members of different security forces, such as the Armed Police Force.
"If we get some clues that we had done these violations we will punish the people and make these things public. But for those 800 cases there is no confirmed evidence we were involved.
"Unless some organisation or some individual comes to us with some evidence, with some proof, with some witness, we don't believe those cases."
Col Baniya says the army investigates all allegations made against it, and has punished 162 soldiers for committing abuses during the war.
"Maybe in South Asia we are the only country whose army is so serious about the protection and promotion of human rights," he said.
But the families of the missing do not see it that way, and feel let down by the government alliance, which is made up of the Maoists and seven mainstream political parties.
When they signed their peace agreement eight months ago, they promised to reveal the truth about the disappearances within six weeks.
More recently the Supreme Court ordered a commission to be set up to investigate and pay out compensation.
"We've been deceived so many times," Ruku says.
"Last year we went to the interior minister. He promised to reveal the whereabouts of all the missing within one week, but we still haven't heard from him."
The problem, the relatives say, is that some current government leaders supported the decision to deploy the army against the Maoists in 2001, so they do not want the truth about their brutal tactics to come out.
'Covering up'
According to the Maoist's leader, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, commonly known by his nom de guerre Prachanda, forces linked to King Gyanendra, the then head of state, are blocking investigations.
"There are some people, mainly the royalist people, who are responsible for these crimes against humanity, and they want to block, to derail this process," he told me at a rally organised by the Maoists to put pressure on the government.
Their involvement in the campaign has led some families to accuse them of politicising what for them is a personal matter.
Critics also point out that the Maoists are accused of covering up their own "disappearances".
According to the Red Cross, they have not accounted for more than 100 of their own prisoners, something Prachanda completely refutes: "In our assessment this is a lie. All the Maoist prisoners have been released. They have not been disappeared. This is wrong, a fake charge," he told me.
Back in Dhading, Ruku says she "hopes against hope" that she will soon discover what happened to her husband.
A spokesman for Prime Minister GP Koirala says Ruku just needs to be patient; that the truth will come out now that the war is over.
But, ominously, Nepal is not yet at peace.
Journalists are often intimidated; there has been a wave of abductions of businessmen in the capital, and political violence is on the increase in the southern Terai region.
The thuggish Maoist youth wing The Young Communist League regularly beats up and detains opponents, while their own leaders have been the victims of armed militants, who recently launched a campaign for greater regional autonomy.
BBCLabels: Nepal
posted by Resistance 7/19/2007 10:13:00 PM,
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Anti-Maoist Nepali group trains suicide bombers
Thursday, June 21, 2007
kathmandu • A band of former soldiers, ex-police personnel and victims of Maoist guerrillas have united in Nepal to form a Hindu army with suicide bombers to fight Islamic and Christian zealots as well as communists.
Called the Nepal Defence Army, the group is headed by a former policeman who says he joined the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist as a schoolboy but has now begun waging war on his former comrades.
The ex-cop, who today calls himself 'Parivartan' (change), claims his band has nearly 1,200 trained soldiers who possess arms and have the expertise to manufacture explosives.
Earlier this year, the Nepal Defence Army made its debut with a couple of blasts, including at the well-guarded office of the Maoists in Kathmandu.
Yesterday, a Nepali tabloid carried an extensive interview with the shadowy leader, saying he had walked into the tabloid's city office to talk about his organisation.
"Nepal Defence Army has been founded to fight for Hinduism," Parivartan told Nepali weekly Ghanata R. Bichar. "Hindus worldwide support us, including the families of top Maoist leaders. Our soldiers are being trained across the border in India and we get the ingredients for manufacturing explosives from India."
However, the new revolutionary said his group had no links with King Gyanendra.
"We are not funded by the palace," he said. "If the palace had tried to promote Hinduism and Nepal as a Hindu state, we wouldn't have to wage our war. We don't dabble in politics. Our sole aim is to form a Hindu state."
Parivartan told the weekly that his party didn't want bloodshed. "The bombs we threw at the Maoist office were intended as a warning and not to kill," he said. "I stopped plans to assassinate Maoist chief Prachanda and Maoist minister Dev Gurung.
"But if the warning is not taken seriously, the eight-party ruling alliance can suffer serious losses."
The shadowy leader held Maoists as their main enemy. "During their 10-year war, the Maoists destroyed and desecrated temples and attacked priests," he said. "But they never destroyed any church or mosque."
Parivartan ended with a dire warning. "We have trained five suicide bombers who can go anywhere, including Singh Durbar (the seat of administration)."Peninsula
posted by Resistance 6/21/2007 06:59:00 PM,
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'We can't influence Naxalites': C P Gajurel
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Despite India's wish that the Nepali Maoists could influence their Indian counterparts (or "Naxalites"), who are still waging guerilla warfare against the state (something done by the Nepali Maoists until last year), to bring them to the political mainstream, CP Gajurel said his party can't help India in this regard.
"We also want them (the Naxalites) to enter the parliamentary mainstream, but it may not be possible," said Gajurel. "We don't want to influence them. Though we share common ideologies, all parties are independent to go about their actions." He said each party has its own "strategies and tactics".
Though he said the strained relationship between his party and the Naxalites has improved, the CPN(M) is still holding a "wait and see" policy. Both the parties, according to Gajurel, are neither in physical contact nor plan to meet. However, speaking at a program organized at Goldsmiths College in London on March 12, he mentioned about "link between the CPI(M) and the Nepali revolution".
He also said his party is in constant touch with the governments in India, China, the UK, Germany, Switzerland, and other liberal European countries.
posted by Resistance 4/22/2007 09:49:00 AM,
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‘India doesn’t want Maoists to come to power in Nepal’ CP Gajurel
Monday, February 19, 2007
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| CP Gajurel Photo by Sankarshan Thakur |
| The pace of the development of the Maoist revolution in India is very slow |
posted by Resistance 2/19/2007 09:34:00 AM,
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