NEPAL: 13,000 Dead, Plus One

By Marty Logan Reprint | | Print |

Marty Logan

KATHMANDU, Feb 14 2006 (IPS) - Thirteen thousand – plus Asmina Chapagain. The former is the estimated number of Nepalis killed since Maoist rebels hurled their first homemade bombs at the state, 10 years ago, this week. Chapagain was one of the latest innocents caught in the crossfire.

Thirteen thousand – plus Asmina Chapagain. The former is the estimated number of Nepalis killed since Maoist rebels hurled their first homemade bombs at the state, 10 years ago, this week. Chapagain was one of the latest innocents caught in the crossfire.

She and four of her friends were cycling home along the two-lane highway that leads to their village, Khaireni, in south-central Nepal when a passing vehicle carrying soldiers hit a landmine at exactly the same time. Riding second in the line of bicycles, the 21-year-old’s body was blown apart, the back of her head destroyed by flying rock and the nose blown off her face.

“She was a studious girl, she worked very hard,” says her mother Kulkumari Chapagain, close to tears sitting on the bare earth outside their home not far from the famous Royal Chitwan National Park. Dozens of friends and relatives sit near her to see visiting journalists.

“This village will never see a beauty like her again,” adds a grey-haired man, offering a photo of a smiling young woman in a leather jacket.

Across the dirt lane that is the village’s only road, the voice of Ganga Tripathi’s mother breaks as she describes how her daughter, riding behind Chapagain on the straight highway flanked by fields of yellow mustard and green paddy, was so seriously injured by the explosion that the army flew her to the capital Kathmandu in a jet, along with their wounded.

Fifteen soldiers and policemen were killed when Maoists attacked them, last Thursday afternoon, along a one-kilometre stretch of the highway. Four rebels were reported dead.

“We haven’t heard anything since then, we don’t know how she is,” said Tara Poudel, while her daughter’s two small children clamber over their other grandmother, sitting on a wooden bench in the small porch covered by a sheet-metal roof.

Most of the victims of the insurgency that is slowly strangling this already desperately poor country are villagers, like the five young women here, caught in the crossfire, according to the Nepal Red Cross Society.

One year ago, King Gyanendra pushed aside his handpicked prime minister, arguing that his government showed no sign of ending the rebellion. Today, such signs still have not emerged.

Ten days after ending their four-month unilateral ceasefire in January, which the king dismissed as a ploy, the Maoists rattled the nerves of Kathmandu residents with simultaneous evening attacks on police posts around the capital. A dozen policemen were killed.

The rebels, who number up to 7,000 full-time fighters and 25,000 militia, also imposed a nation-wide general strike prior to last week’s municipal election that, in part, resulted in voter turnout of just 20 percent, 800 contenders withdrawing their nominations and others living under armed guard.

A boycott by the major opposition political parties was the other main reason for the ‘partial’ election. On Saturday, leaders of these parties condemned recent Maoist killings, a rare rebuke since the two sides signed a loose political pact in November. It is supposed to lead to elections for a constituent assembly that would draft a new constitution and decide the fate of the country’s now ruling monarchy.

Many of the elites living in Kathmandu praise the Maoists for having raised issues of inequality in this Hindu kingdom where caste (a person’s class, by birth) still largely determines social and economic opportunities. “Ten years ago you couldn’t discuss issues of caste openly but today people do it all the time because of the Maoists,” they say.

In Nepal’s villages, where 80 percent of the population lives – half on less than one dollar a day – thousands opted for the Maoists’ promise to deliver a society in which women, indigenous people and other ”disadvantaged” groups would have equal rights and opportunities, and joined the “people’s army”; those who remain behind are given no choice when the rebels knock on their doors for food, money or their sons and daughters to become new recruits.

Locals here criticized the Maoists after the attack. “They detonated the bomb when the girls were cycling past. They also told unarmed police and soldiers to run away and then shot them in the back,” they told journalists.

Authorities closed the highway in and out of this area following the battle. Today it is again a thoroughfare for honking, swerving buses where passengers ride on the roof, brightly painted transport trucks, motorcycles and cycle rickshaws. But it seems that bicycles outnumber them all at least 1,000:1. Children and adults ride slowly along the roadside, sitting upright. Young friends pedal side by side, the boys’ shirts billowing, the girls in bright, pink, red, yellow and purple ‘salwar kameez’ pyjamas with long, dark ponytails falling down the centre of their backs and thin scarves flying in the wind.

Blocking the highway between here and the nearest large town westward – Butwal, three hours drive – are more than two dozen piles of rocks or fallen trees placed in the road by rebels. They were partially cleared by security personnel so vehicles could pass but still block more than half the road.

A handful of locals sit at one such felled tree. They have been hired to remove the trees. Two men wait for a third to finish filing the teeth of a two-man saw. “Are you scared,” they are asked. “Yes, we’re scared,” they answer. But in a country where such blockades, general strikes and battles have crippled the normal economy, it is hard to reject any work.

In interviews to mark the 10th anniversary, Maoist leader Prachanda said the rebel leadership has decided Nepal is not yet ripe for a people’s revolution – a republican democracy must come first. But if Nepalis prefer to retain the monarchy, they can, he added. “Whatever decision the people should give, we will be ready to accept this.” Here, on the highways of Nepal, the people say they have already made their choice: “peace”.