Nepal's Maoists under Fire

Source: Agence France-Presse (AFP)
Date: 21 Sep 2007

Nepal's Maoists under fire from key donors
by Sam Taylor
KATHMANDU, Sept 21, 2007 (AFP) - Nepal's key international donors have hit out at the country's former Maoist rebels for jeopardising a 10-month-old peace process by storming out of government and launching a strike campaign.
The ultra-leftists quit the government earlier this week and have threatened mass street protests and work stoppages to push for the immediate abolition of the Himalayan nation's monarchy.
Under the terms of last November's peace deal, that issue was supposed to be decided after a popular vote now scheduled for November 22 -- which the Maoists have also vowed to disrupt.
"Until now, the Maoists have been a full part of the political game," a senior Western diplomat in Kathmandu told AFP.
"If the situation changes and they do not take part in the elections, we will have to reconsider this conception."
When the Maoists signed up for peace, they were promptly greeted and engaged by most major donors -- with the exception of the United States which continues to list them as a "terrorist" organisation.
And nearly a year down the road, most donors have invested heavily in ensuring the elections will go ahead as planned.
"We've informed our capitals that we need bigger budgets" to help Nepal with the November polls, said another Western diplomat, who also asked not to be named.
"If they don't have elections then that extra budget could be lost and there is also a loss of credibility," the diplomat added.
On Thursday, top US State Department official Richard Boucher hammered the Maoists for attempting to "trash" the effort to close the book on a decade of civil war and revive democracy in one of the world's poorest countries.
"Trying to trash this election is trying to trash the whole process," he said in Washington. "Declaring yourselves an opponent to the democratic voting process, we can't abide that. So I hope they won't go that far."
Boucher said the US government would continue to treat the Maoists as extremist outcasts until the movement becomes a normal political party.
So far the Maoists have not threatened to renounce the ceasefire that ended their decade-long insurgency, and their soldiers remain confined to UN-monitored camps -- but Boucher said it was not enough.
"They need to give up the gun. They need to give up extortion. They need to give up the militant youth groups that have sort of extended their power and tried to intimidate people in the countryside," Boucher said.
On Thursday, the European Union also fumed that it would be a "betrayal" of the Nepalese people if the elections cannot go ahead on time, while Japan, another leading donor, also voiced concern for the polls.
Analysts and diplomats have said the Maoists' withdrawal from government is in part designed to appease hardliners within their party who are frustrated with the pace of the peace process, and also to pile pressure on the other parties in government to accede to their demands.
In addition, the Maoists fear they will do badly in any polls because their popularity has plummeted due to continued charges that they use violence and intimidation.
Diplomats in Kathmandu said they fear an election boycott by the Maoists could signal the ex-rebels are simply incapable of leaving their jungle insurgency behind to join the world of mainstream politics.
"If they do not take part in the elections it shows that they are not ready to face the voters. This is a negative sign," said one diplomat.
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/LRON-779CVV?OpenDocumentCopyright (c) 2007 Agence France-PresseReceived by NewsEdge Insight: 09/21/2007 04:47:40

Violence 'escalating' in southern Nepal

Violence 'escalating' in southern Nepal

KATHMANDU (AFP) — Communal unrest in southern Nepal is worsening and authorities need to act quickly to prevent all-out violence in the ethnically tense region, police and rights activists said Friday.

The unrest in the Indian border district of Kapilvastu erupted after the murder this week of local Muslim politician Mohid Khan, who headed an anti-Maoist vigilante group during Nepal's civil war.

Police said the clashes in the impoverished Terai lowlands had left at least 22 people dead, while Maoists accused the country's embattled monarchy -- which they are trying to oust -- of stirring up the unrest.

"People are being terrorised. The attacks are taking the shape of communal violence," district police deputy superintendent Kuber Kadayat told AFP from the area, around 230 kilometres (145 miles) southwest of Kathmandu.

"The death toll could rise still further as police are yet to reach remote villages where there have been reports of violent clashes in the past few days," said another local official, Narendra Dahal.
News reports said the warring parties in the area had divided along political, religious and ethnic lines.

"There was a tussle between Khan's supporters and Maoists because of past antagonism," the Nepali Times wrote Friday.

It said violence had also broken out between Pahadis, or hill people who have settled in the Terai, and ethnic Mahadhesi natives of the lowlands. The paper said there was also "potential this would turn into a Hindu-Muslim riot."

The leader of Nepal's former rebel Maoists blamed "regressive elements" -- a term used to describe supporters of the embattled monarchy -- for provoking the bloodshed.

"Our party strongly condemns the deliberate conspiracy of regressive and reactionary forces," Prachanda said in a statement calling on "all people including Hindus, Muslims, Mahadhesi (natives) and Pahadis to unite together."

The ultra-leftists quit the government earlier this week and have threatened mass street protests and work stoppages to push for the immediate abolition of the Himalayan nation's monarchy.

Under the terms of last November's peace deal, that issue was supposed to be decided after a popular vote scheduled for November 22 -- which the Maoists have also vowed to disrupt.
"There is a danger that regressive forces are conspiring to mobilise the army by using the communal riots as as excuse," Prachanda claimed.

At least 100 people have been killed in the Terai region this year, clouding a peace deal reached late last year between the government and the Maoists.

Around a dozen armed ethnic groups have emerged who say they are fighting for greater autonomy for the Terai, home to around half of Nepal's 27 million people. They have long been sidelined by Nepal's Pahadi-dominated elite.

The head of a leading local rights group said the situation was a "serious human tragedy."
"The government has not been able to maintain law and order," said Kundan Aryal, general secretary of the Informal Sector Service Centre (INSEC).

"Both Muslim and Hindu community people have been affected and we think some criminal elements are taking advantage of the situation. There is a danger that communal disturbances could spread in other areas if the government doesn't take prompt action," said Aryal, who visited the area Thursday.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5giqQ5yM16x5AMoPKT5OZBHQFF3oQ

Nepal riots spread, five more killed

Five days after violence erupted in south Nepal following the murder of a local politician, sectarian clashes spread to two more districts, killing five more and taking the toll to at least 28.
A former municipal chairman and two others were killed on Thursday as a rally of protesters demanding security in Jagdishpur village in Kapilavastu district was attacked by a mob.

Two more people died on the way to hospital while the condition of nine was critical, media reports said on Friday.

The violence, smouldering for five days, was triggered Sunday after unidentified gunmen shot dead Abdul Moit Khan, an influential politician with strong links to the palace, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala's Nepali Congress party and armed groups across the border in India.

In 2005, soon after King Gyanendra seized total power with the help of the army, Khan had led a vigilante group that was responsible for the death of at least 12 Maoists.

Khan's murder sent his supporters on a rampage and they began indiscriminate looting, arson and attacks, stoking retaliation.

The violence also spread to neighbouring Rupandehi and Dang districts, assuming sectarian colour with mobs attacking mosques.

On Thursday, two more mosques were vandalised in Lamhi while shops were set on fire in Tulsipur. The district administration clamped curfew and prohibited the assembly of more than five people.

Parts of Kapilavastu and neighbouring Rupandehi district have been under curfew since Sunday.
After a group of Muslim leaders led a delegation to Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala Thursday and sought security and the formation of a high-level commission to punish the perpetrators of the violence, the government finally named a probe panel.

An emergency meeting of the cabinet named a three-member commission, headed by an appellate court judge, Lokendra Mallik, to look into the sectarian violence.

However, going by the Koirala government's poor track record, with the reports of all earlier commissions being either swept away under the carpet; it is unlikely that the Mallik Commission would be more than a face-saving device.

Villagers in Kapilavastu have been flaying the government, saying it made neither any move to beef up security after the clashes started nor reached relief to the survivors.

Over 400 houses have been torched, displacing thousands. Many villagers belonging to the Muslim community are said to have fled to India for safety.

This is probably the gravest sectarian flare-up in secular Nepal that had lived in religious harmony when it was a Hindu state.

The incessant violence in the Terai casts serious doubts on the government's ability to hold elections that are just 61 days away. The ruling alliance has to also grapple with another crisis as the Maoist guerrillas have quit the government and begun a campaign to disrupt the polls.

At least two more armed groups of former Maoists, who are active in the Terai, have also warned they would not allow the polls to be held.

One of them, the Janatantrik Terai Mukti Morcha led by former Maoist leader Jay Krishna Goit, has also called a two-day shutdown in the Terai from Saturday to condemn Khan's murder.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print.aspx?Id=3eb17d8e-3f9e-425a-93c0-e40d93c70ff0
© Copyright 2007 Hindustan Times

सन्युक्त राजिनामा चढायेको ।

श्रीनेपाली जनताहरू
नेपाल अधिराज्य,

मार्फत्,

नेपल सरकार, सिङ्दरबार,
काठ्मान्डौ, नेपाल

बिषय: सन्युक्त राजिनामा चढायेको ।

राजा को प्रत्यछ शासन बाट देशलाइ मुक्त गरी हामी आठैदलका नेताहरु ले सत्ता तथा सन्सद पुर्ण सम्हाल्दै आयेको कुरा यहाहरु लाई बिधितै छ । हाम्रा सरकारले देशमा राजनितिक स्थिरता बहाल गारी सम्पुर्ण रास्ट्रभरी शान्ती सुरक्छा प्रदानगर्ने प्रयासरत रहदा पनि नसकेको ले आफ्नो कार्यशैली तथा छम्ता प्रती नत्मस्तक हुदै हामी आठैदला का तर्फ्बाट छमा माग्न चाहन्छौ।

हामी ले आ-अफना गल्ती महसुस गरेका छौ र हामी अब उप्रान्त देश लाई नेतृत्व प्रदान गर्न सक्छम छैन भने कुरा अहिले को देशको परिस्थितिले पनि देखायेको छ र हामीले पनि अनुभब गरेकै बिसय हो तर केही बधयताले गर्दा हामी अहिले सम्म सरकार र देश को बाग्डोर सम्हलिरहे क छौ ।

यहाहरु सम्छ हामिले स्विकार्नु पर्ने कुरा के छ भने देश मा साम्प्रदायिक दङा फसाद्,राजनितिक गतिबिधी को नाम मा उदन्डता र ज्यादति,आतन्कबादी कृयाकलाप,लगातका सम्पुर्ण कुरा नियन्त्रन गर्न खोज्दा पनि सकेनौ,बिकृतिहरु पनि बढदै गयो ।यतिसम्म कि हामिले देश का नगरिकहरु लाई कतिपयठाउ र परिस्थितिमा राज्याको उप्स्थिती पनि देखाउन चाह्दा-चह्दै पनि नसकेको यहाहरुलाई बिधिबतै छ । अझ हाम्रो नेतृत्वमा देश झन अशान्तितिर गयेको मह्सुस बढन थालेको छ ।

यसर्थ, उप्रोक्त सबै कारन र परिस्थिती का साथसाथ हामी यो आठदलका सिरस्थनेताहरु शारिरिक र मानसिक रुपमा पनि कामजोर भयेको महुसुसगरि, देश को बिद्यमान सम्पुर्ण बिध्वन्सात्मक अबस्थाको नैतिक जिम्मेबारी लिदै, आज का मिती बाट आजिबन समपुर्ण राजनितिकपदहरु बाट यहाहरु सम्छ यो सन्युक्त राजिनामा चढायेका छौ । आशा छ, यहाहरु ले हाम्रो सम्पुर्ण त्रुटी र काम्जोरिहरु को छमागर्नु हुनेछ र आगमी नेतृत्वको लागी नया पुस्ता का आ-आफ्ना राज्नितिक निकाय को प्रतिनिधी छनौटगारी देश को शासन बेबस्था जिम्मा लगाउनेहुनेछ ।
धन्यबाद ।

तपाईहरुका एतिहासिक आज्ञाकारी राजनितिक सेवकहरु,,

गिरिजा प्रसद कोइरल, नेपाली काङ्रेस
माधव कुमार नेपाल , ने क पा(ए मा ले)
प्रचन्ड, ने क पा (माओबादि)
शेर बहादुर देउवा, नेपली काङ्रेस्, प्रजातान्त्रीक
अ्इक शेरचन, जनमोर्चा
आनन्दिदेवि सिङ्ह , सदभावना, आनन्दिदेवि
नारायन मान बिजुक्छे,मजदुर किसान पार्ट्री
सि पि मैनालि, बाममोर्चा
असोज ३ गते २०६४ साल