RIGHTS-NEPAL: Peace Talks Offer Little Comfort to ‘Half Widows’

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Rita Manchanda

KATHMANDU, Aug 6 2003 (IPS) - Seemingly, it was yet another tale of ‘half widows’ of two journalists, victims of the Maoist civil war in Nepal in which hundreds of media workers have been abducted, arrested and eight killed.

Seemingly, it was yet another tale of ‘half widows’ of two journalists, victims of the Maoist civil war in Nepal in which hundreds of media workers have been abducted, arrested and eight killed.

Thakma K C, 40, was the widow of the well-known Kathmandu journalist and poet Krishna Sen, editor of the ‘Janadesh Weekly’ who is missing but presumed dead, killed in army custody.

Rita Sharma is the 35-year-old widow of Navraj Sharma, editor of ‘Kadam Saptahik’ who was abducted and killed by the Maoist rebels who have been fighting for seven years to turn this constitutional monarchy into a republican state.

Neither have seen the bodies of their husbands, neither had been able to perform funeral rites and achieve emotional or legal closure, stuck in a cultural limbo between ‘suhagan’ (being married) and widowhood.

But in June, Nepal’s National Union of Journalists (NUJ), backed by the International Federation of Journalists, gave 5,000 U.S. dollars as cash relief to the two widows – and shame an insensitive administration into recognising their plight.

Neither of the two women have been able to get their husbands’ death certificates. The June giving of the grant was planned as a ceremony with the two widows side by side – one of a ‘martyr’ and the other of a ‘traitor’, depending on your side of the conflict divide. But could victimhood be neutral?

At the Jun. 26 ceremony, six months after the ceasefire between the Maoists and the state authority, only Rita Sharma came forward.

Suman Dahal of the organising committee of the ‘safety fund’ for journalists and their families explained that Thakma KC had been detained at another ceremony in honour of Krishna Sen’s writings as a poet.

The Maoists had put up notices announcing the death of Navraj Sharma, but the chief district officer of Kalikot district in mid-western Nepal refused to officially acknowledge his death and accused him of being a Maoist.

"I know nothing of Krishna Sen or his widow. He was a Maoist, my husband was not a Maoist," Rita Sharma said in an interview. In Kathmandu, Ram Karki of the media cell of the Communist Party Nepal (Maoist) claimed that Thakma KC did not participate in the June ceremony because she feared jeopardising her government job as a senior lecturer in nursing college in Pokhra.

However, Thakma KC told IPS that union rules make it difficult to arbitrarily sack anyone in her position, so she had no such fears. Moreover, she had already suffered abduction by ”plainclothes army men” who last year had held her for three days and kept her head in a shroud.

As for being reluctant to share a platform with Rita Sharma, she replied, "How can I refuse to accept the NUJ initiative when the journalist community has been in the forefront of campaigning against Krishna Sen’s disappearance?" she said.

Thakma was wearing a version of a ‘mangalsutra’, the married women’s ritually solemnised necklace, and a couple of glass bangles.

Thakma said she was not a great believer in the rituals that defined a Hindu woman’s identity, and had never worn the vermilion mark. But then, she added,"I never saw his body. I have no proof. I haven’t observed any of the funeral rites, so how can I be a ritual widow?"

Thakma has not given up all hope that her husband might one way day come back. "Several people who were declared dead, including a Central Committee member, have come back,” she pointed out.

Krishna Sen is reported to have been a Central Committee member of the Maoist rebels. But "I knew him as a writer and a journalist only,” Thakma said. The Royal Nepal Army denies that Krishna Sen was ever in their custody. Amnesty International refers to the evidence given by a doctor who reportedly did the post-mortem, though the report was never made public.

Sen was reportedly killed on Jun. 26, 2002. Thakma learnt that he might have been killed from an item in a local newspaper. "I couldn’t believe it. Earlier, he had been imprisoned for 22 months and an international media solidarity campaign had secured his release. Last year when he was ‘abducted’ on 20 May, I was sure he’d be okay,” Thakma recalled.

‘The ‘major’, just before releasing me on May 27 after holding me for three days, had called him a ‘nationalist’ and reassured me he’d be okay. I telephoned him when I heard the news, and he denied everything,” she added. ”If they can kill him, it is nothing for them to tell a lie that they don’t have him."

Thakma is waiting for the government to disclose the whereabouts of 326 other people reported to be missing in Nepal’s conflict, in which 8,000 people have died. As a confidence-building measure for the peace process – the third round will be held this month – the government has revealed the fate of 35 missing. Krishna Sen’s name is not on that list.

Rita Sharma, too, believed that her husband would not be killed. Just days before he was killed on May 26, 2002, he had sent her a message not to worry. She knew he was being held a bare two hours’ walk away. She had tried to go there four times and been stopped.

"A year and half before when he was still living in the village, the Maoists had abducted him for 15 days and then released him. I was persuaded that they would not kill him. He was the district head of the teachers’ cell of the dominant parliamentary left party and his Maoist friends wanted him to join them,” she said.

Intimidated after repeated physical violence, he moved to the district headquarters under the security forces’ control and began editing ‘Kadam Saptahik’, blamed for being at times pro-Maoist and other times pro-government.

Navraj Sharma had been back in the village barely four days when two ‘Maoists’ came and took him away. Forty days later, notices of his death were put up along with 12 charges.

The state of emergency was still in force and in the villages the Maoists were the sole authority. Rita Sharma lived with her four small children in terror of the local Maoists who kept her under house surveillance for six months.

Villagers were threatened that their hands would be chopped off if they helped the wife of a ‘CID’ (informer) till her small plot of land.

After the Jan. 29 ceasefire this year, the situation eased up sufficiently for her to flee to the district headquarters in Mamo. But the chief district officer turned a deaf ear to her pleas for a death certificate so she can get compensation for victims of Maoist violence.

He mocked her – she was not attired as a widow, how could he be expected to believe her husband was dead. She only wore white after coming to Kathmandu.

After media reports of the NUJ event, the chief district officer has become more cooperative and she is hopeful of compensation and even her husband’s pension. Rights groups have helped place her two youngest children, five and three years old, in a children’s home in Kathmandu. "No, I am not going back to the village. The ceasefire accord could break any time", Rita Sharma said.

According to the Federation of Nepal Journalists, 176 press workers have been abducted in the Maoist ‘Peoples’ War’. The intimidation of journalists prompted the Committee for the Protection of Journalists to call Nepal in 2002 the largest prison for journalists.

Many hope that ceasefire will hold but for Thakma KC and Rita Sharma, there will be no peace without justice for their disappeared husbands.