By Ranjit Devraj and Damakant Jayshi
NEW DELHI/KATHMANDU, Feb 19 2011 (IPS)

With the powerful Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) relinquishing control of its fighting arm, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the Indian government, faced with its own Maoist insurgency, can breathe more easily.

The Indian embassy in Kathmandu has accused the PLA of providing military training to Indian Maoists in camps set up in Nepal – a charge the UCPN (M) has refuted, terming it as Indian propaganda.

“It is true that there were joint-training programmes in the early 1990s and the porous border between the countries enabled Maoist cadres to slip in and out easily, but the relationship never moved to a strategic level,” says Nihar Nayak, an expert on the Maoist insurgency in South Asia at the New Delhi- based Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis.

Nayak believes that with the Nepal Maoists giving up control over the PLA, the chances of building up a “Red Corridor” from Nepal to Andhra Pradesh in southern India have become truly remote.

On Jan. 22 UCPN (M) chairman, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, formally handed over control of 19,000 PLA fighters to a special committee which will decide their future – integration into the Nepal Army or rehabilitation.

Dahal’s action may put an end to the theory of Maoist revolution from “Pashupati-to-Tirupati” – a swathe of the sub-continent populated by impoverished people and home to two of the most well known symbols of feudal Hindu orthodoxy. The Pashupati temple in Kathmandu is closely connected with Nepal’s erstwhile monarchs, while Tirupati in the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh ranks among the world’s richest shrines.

But, linkages between the Maoists in Nepal, who took advantage of mass poverty and alienation to topple an already discredited monarchy, and their counterparts in India’s large democracy, have remained confined to ideology and mutual sympathy.

According to Nayak, the fact that Nepali Maoist leaders have always been free to visit India was a clear sign that they were never suspected of being seriously involved with India’s Maoists – even after a series of massacres aimed at police forces.

In March 2007 Maoist cadres massacred 55 policemen in the central Indian state of Chattisgarh in what was the first of a series of attacks in the states of Orissa, Maharashtra and West Bengal which left 212 security personnel dead by mid-2010.

“The Indian government is aware of the implications that the success of left- wing extremism can have for its own insurgency,” Nayak told IPS. “From time to time the Indian embassy in Kathmandu has alerted Nepal’s home ministry of possibility of cross-border involvement, but no concrete evidence has turned up.”

Nepal is currently focused on writing its constitution since it is a means of bringing peace and reconciliation after hostilities that claimed some 14,000 lives, says Nayak. “The Nepalese Maoist leadership is pragmatic and will do nothing to disturb this process.”

Such pragmatism, which allowed the UCPN (M) to embrace multi-party democracy, has not been seen kindly by Indian Maoists who still swear by the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist goal of smashing the “old state”.

What particularly irked the Indian Maoists was UCPN (M) chairman Dahal’s suggestion to them – when he visited India in 2008 as prime minister – to follow his party’s path. Dahal appeared to be making a point by arriving at the head of a business delegation.

Mumaram Khanal, who quit the Maoist party in 2005 following differences with Dahal, said India’s Maoists feel that their counterparts in Nepal have betrayed the cause of revolution.

Khanal, who edits the leftist monthly ‘Dishabodh’, published in the Nepali language, referred to the “open letter” which the Indian communists sent to their Nepali comrades in July 2009 chastising them for taking a wrong path, and accusing Dahal of “opportunism”.

The letter accused Nepali Maoists of deviating from the principle of proletarian internationalism and adopting a policy of appeasement of imperialism.

Khanal points to the formation of the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organisations of South Asia in 2001 as a mark of the ambitious plans that never came to fruition.

Anand Swaroop Verma, an Indian journalist who has extensively covered the Maoist movement in India and Nepal, claims that the Indians were “prompted by the advice and achievements of the Nepalese Maoists.”

In an article published in the Nov. 2009 edition of the India’s ‘Frontline’ magazine, Verma said that the Indian Maoists copied PLA tactics in their attacks in the eastern Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa.

As late as August 2010, The Nepali Maoists were reported to have trained about 50 Indian Maoists at a camp in Sainamaina in Rupandehi District which borders the Uttar Pradesh state of India.

“These allegations are baseless,” Ram Karki, a UCPN (M) politburo member told IPS. “We just have sympathy with Indian Maoists – as we have with those elsewhere.”

Another UCPN (M) leadersaid while Indian Maoists have visited camps in Nepal “there was no training involved at all”.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Feb 13 2011 (IPS)

Nepal’s fourth communist and newest Prime Minister has taken his oath of office, but his government is off to a shaky start after revelations he entered into a secret deal to share power with a key political ally and to turn Nepal into a socialist state.

Newly elected Prime Minister Jhala Nath Khanal taking the oath of office from President Ram Baran Yadav. Credit: Damakant Jayshi

But the relief and euphoria proved to be short-lived, after an agreement Khanal signed with Pushpa Kamal Dahal, chair of Nepal’s largest political party Unified CPN (Maoist), was leaked to the press.

In the seven-point agreement, initially kept secret from even top leaders of both their parties, Khanal and Dahal are to head the government on a rotation basis.

The deal also called for the creation of a “socialist” state and the formation of a separate armed force either of Maoist combatants alone, or of Maoist combatants and government security personnel combined.

Nepal’s two biggest newspapers criticised the Dahal-Khanal agreement. In an editorial, the Nagarik daily said Nepal is headed toward one-party rule as in China, Vietnam and Cuba.

The centrist Nepali Congress (NC), Nepal’s second largest party, also denounced the deal and said it went against efforts to draft a new constitution and various peace-related agreements drawn up since 2006.

But the biggest and most immediate challenge to Khanal comes from within his own party, Nepal’s third largest, and the Unified CPN (Maoist), whose support the new government depends on.

The CPN-UML and the Unified CPN (Maoist) are in disagreement over the allocation of most sought-after ministries such as Finance and Home. The UCPN (Maoist) has announced that it would not join the government unless it was given Home and CPN-UML formally owned up the agreement.

On Feb. 12, Khanal named his party colleague and recently appointed deputy prime minister Bharat Mohan Adhikari as finance minister. Meanwhile, the Khanal camp of the CPN-UL has signalled willingness to address the concerns of the Maoists.

There are also differences over which party should head the politically sensitive Ministry of Defence in post-civil war Nepal.

The message from the Khanal’s own CPN-UML is that they would not recognise the agreement. The Maoist party, on the other hand, has insisted on implementing it.

“If the prime minister forms the cabinet without our consent, we can withdraw our support,” said Narayan Kaji Shrestha, vice-chairman of the Maoist party.

Nepal’s Constituent Assembly, also serving as its interim parliament, had been trying to elect a successor to Madhav Kumar Nepal of CPN-UL, who resigned in June 2010.

After 16 rounds of voting spread over six months, Khanal was elected prime minister Feb. 3. There were four candidates in the fray but Maoist chief Dahal withdrew his candidacy in favour of Khanal, arguing he did so to prevent another series of fruitless voting.

The details of the Dahal-Khanal deal remain vague. The NC has objected to the two communist parties leading the government on rotation basis. With the Constituent Assembly’s term expiring in four months, this has raised questions about the intentions of the two parties. The assembly was elected for two years in 2008 and its term was extended for a year on May 28 last year.

“This deal smacks of totalitarianism,” Nepali Congress’ Bimalendra Nidhi told IPS. Nidhi said that the two communist parties have demonstrated their penchant to stay in power for a long time. “Their understanding won’t help the politics of consensus, peace process and constitution-writing.”

Speaking to IPS, Dina Nath Sharma, spokesperson of the Unified CPN (Maoist), disagreed. “How is this totalitarianism?” Sharma said his party and the CPN- UML want to share power with Nepali Congress. “We have asked them to join the coalition and we will welcome them if they decide to change their mind.”

The NC, which has 110 members in parliament, has rejected this outright.

This latest upheaval in Nepal’s politics has overshadowed the breakthroughs that this Himalayan country, which was ravaged by a violent, decade-long Maoist insurgency, has achieved.

On Jan. 22, the Maoist army, numbering close to 20,000 and living in 28 camps across Nepal, was brought under the Special Committee of the government through a formal ceremony in Shaktikhor cantonment in Chitwan district. This move, though delayed, was in line with the Interim Constitution of 2007 and other agreements.

The Special Committee takes over the task of the UN Mission in Nepal (UNMIN), which left the country Jan. 15. UNMIN had been mandated to monitor the management of arms and armed personnel of the Nepal Army and the Maoist army, and providing technical assistance to the Election Commission.

Based on previous agreements, the Maoist combatants are to be either integrated into government security forces, or rehabilitated into society with a livelihood package if they chose not to join security forces. The Maoist and non-Maoist parties have not been able to forge an agreement on the number and the modality of integration of Maoist soldiers.

The polarisation within and between the political parties means one of their primary tasks remains uncertain: writing the constitution.

Pradip Gyawali, a member of parliament and spokesperson of UML admitted there was risk of polarisation in Nepali politics with NC, its recent partner in government, sitting out in opposition.

The parties disagree on nearly all major issues to be incorporated in the constitution -preamble, fundamental rights, federal model, the number and nature of federal states, and distribution of natural resources. But time is running out, since the CA’s term expires in May.

Gyawali told IPS it would be hard to justify another extension of the CA. He suggested a tentative draft of the constitution with basic features.

“It is unlikely that we will write a full-fledged constitution in four months’ time,” Gyawali said. “But we can agree on some fundamentals and prepare a draft and leave the rest for the new parliament or another elected body.”

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Dec 23 2010 (IPS)

Nepal may be doing well in providing complete primary education to boys and girls, but has quite a bit of catching up to do when it comes to ensuring that their schooling does not become a casualty during disasters and emergencies.

An earthquake response drill at the Tika Vidyashram High School in Lalitpur, Nepal. Credit: Damakant Jayshi/IPS

But this can be a challenge for countries like Nepal, where disasters have often meant interruptions in classes and where such disruptions are accepted as inevitable.

A case in point is the devastating Koshi river floods in eastern Nepal in August 2008. Education for some 29,000 students was disrupted in Sunsari district, according to a report by U.N. humanitarian agency, OCHA. It took weeks before classes resumed.

Though this year’s floods were not as severe as they were in 2008, the schooling of about 165 students was disrupted in Dharan, Itahari, Inaruwa and Ghokraha in Sunsari district. Textbooks and education-related stationery were also either lost or damaged during minor floods in August this year.

This Himalayan country is vulnerable to disasters like floods and landslides. Its capital, Kathmandu, has been identified as one of the most earthquake-prone zones in the world.

To step up the country’s ability to prevent interruptions in education, at least until secondary school, the Nepali government is working with international agencies and donors to adopt the concept of education in emergency (EIE).

“We are trying to increase awareness about the concept of education in emergency among government officials, teachers associations, school teachers and parents,” said Laxman Bashyal, a Department of Education official who acts as emergency focal point for education. “During emergencies, education was not given a priority and we are trying to change the mindset that the education of students can wait.”

Bashyal represents the government in the Education Cluster in Nepal along with officials from UNICEF and Save the Children Alliance Nepal. This cluster is tasked with preparing for and responding to the education-related aspects of emergency situations.

The idea of education in emergency has yet to reach every school, though.

Baba Khadka, headmaster of Shree Tika Vidyashram Higher Secondary School in Lalitpur district, tells IPS that the district education office has yet to discuss EIE. “The priority is (still) on life-saving skills in case of emergency,” she pointed out, watching two officials from the National Society of Earthquake Technology prepare a drill for teachers and students.

“God forbid – if an earthquake hits the area (Lalitpur is an adjoining district of Kathmandu and part of the capital), people are going to seek shelter in the school compound,” she added. “However, if the number is not too big and if the schoolbuilding remains intact, we would try to conduct classes.”

Her colleague, economics and accounts teacher Rajen Raigai, asked: “Say, after lives are saved and things start turning to normalcy, how do we resume education?” he asked. “This aspect must be addressed soon.”

Awareness campaigns on emergency situations are underway to reach teachers’ unions, district education officials and school managements.

Students should be able to go back to school within two weeks of disruption during emergencies, UNICEF officials say.

If a schoolbuilding has been destroyed, safe learning spaces have to be created as alternatives. Students would be taught in tents. As they may be undergoing trauma, the regular curriculum can be mostly replaced with lessons on life-saving skills and coping with physical, mental and social problems.

It is towards adopting the EIE concept that donor agencies have been trying to persuade – in their words “encourage” – Nepali’s government to adopt the Minimum Standards for Education prepared by Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE).

INEE describes itself as a global network of NGOs, U.N. agencies, donor agencies, governments, academic institutions, schools and affected populations working to ensure the right to quality and safe education in emergencies and post-crisis recovery.

The INEE Minimum Standards Handbook contains 19 standards for enhancing the quality of educational preparedness, and response and recovery.

UNICEF and Save the Children have identified 20 districts in Nepal’s Tarai region — plains in east-west corridor – that are vulnerable to disasters like floods. They are also working to create awareness about how to respond to an eventual earthquake in the Kathmandu Valley.

They point out that incorporating EIE does send the government’s commitment to ensuring that education continues even in disaster situations.

“The government ownership of dealing with education in emergency is important because then it becomes part of regular government programme,” said Gyanendra Shrestha, education team leader at Save the Children Nepal.

Policy constraints are a hindrance as well. Though it has the Prime Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund, the government cannot anticipate an emergency and make a programme, and allocate a budget, for it, Bashyal pointed out. “We usually deal with an emergency when it occurs.”

The bureaucracy is often inflexible when it comes to quickly earmarking funds for education-related emergency situations.

UNICEF’s Joshi added, “We need to talk more and more about not only how to respond to an emergency, but also how to prevent it.” This includes moving schools that are located on riverbanks, she adds.

“There’s a close link between education as part of the second MDG target and education in emergency,” Joshi further said. “If there is disruption in education due to emergency, the goal of universal primary education is bound to be affected.”

Nepal is within reach of achieving the second MDG goal of providing 100 percent primary education (up to Grade 5) for its children by 2015.

The net annual enrollment rate in primary education of school-age children is 93.7 percent, going by education department data. This is up from 80 percent enrollment in 2000 and just 64 percent in 1990.

The MDGs are a set of eight goals that the world’s governments committed in 2000 to meet by 2015. These goals range from eradicating poverty to improving maternal and child health, to achieving universal primary education and ensuring environmental sustainability.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Dec 16 2010 (IPS)

For the last 17 years, Keshari Maharjan has been going door to door in the outskirts of the Nepali capital to tell people about the services available at health centres in their communities, as well as about how to prevent certain diseases.

A patient being checked by a nurse at Satungal Health Post, Kathmandu, Nepal. Credit: Damakant Jayshi/IPS

Yet they must have been doing something right all these years. According to Maharjan herself, she has noticed that there has been improved awareness about sanitation, diseases, and health centre services in the last several years.

That’s not all, though. Manik Ratna Shakya, head of the Satungal Health Post, says, “Along with the government’s and several donors’ incentives and initiatives, their (the volunteers) contribution – a selfless one at that – is the biggest in meeting the target of reducing maternity and child mortality rates.”

For sure, it’s not an achievement to scoff at, since it means that this impoverished Himalayan country is likely to meet the fifth Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on improving maternal health.

In fact, just this September, Nepal was selected by the MDG Awards Committee, in collaboration with the United Nations Office for Partnership, to be among 49 Least Developed Countries that posted significant achievements in relation to the MDGs. Nepal was cited for its outstanding national leadership, commitment, and progress towards improved maternity health.

The MDGs are a set of eight goals that the world’s governments committed in 2000 to meet by 2015. These goals range from eradicating poverty to improving maternal and child health, to achieving universal primary education and ensuring environmental sustainability.

Among Nepal’s MDG targets is to reduce its maternal mortality ratio (MMR) to 213 per 100,000 live births by 2015.

But the country has been doing so good in this regard that its National Safe Motherhood Plan of 2002-2017 has set a more ambitious target of further reducing its MMR to 134 per 100,000 live births. In 1990, Nepal’s maternal mortality ratio stood at 850 per 100,000 live births. At the time, skilled birth attendants attended only seven percent of births. By 2000, however, Nepal’s MMR was at 415 per 100,000 live births, which dropped further to 229 this year.

Notably, too, 30 percent of births are now attended by skilled birth attendants.

Sharad Kumar Sharma, senior demographer at the health services department of the Ministry of Health, explains the role of the community health volunteers in this success story: “They have lent invaluable support by spreading awareness, persuading women (and men) to visit health posts and hospitals and take preventive measures to reduce occurrence of diseases and complications that lead to deaths.”

Other health experts have cited simple awareness as key in life-and-death situations.

A 2009 U.N. Millennium Campaign study, for instance, highlights two cases in which awareness of health services that were nearby helped in the safe delivery of an infant, while ignorance of the medical help that was available contributed to the death of a mother of six.

As the report tells it, Kancchi Maya Tamang lived in a village close to Kathmandu in which there were several skilled health workers. Her home was also near the village health post, while the nearest hospital was just a 30-minute walk away. And yet the 38-year-old lost her life while giving birth to her sixth child at home, due to excessive bleeding.

Tamang’s aunt, who now looks after that child, now two years old, recalls, “This was her sixth time giving birth, hence no one was worried. The actual birthing process was easy. However, she started bleeding soon after and before anyone could do anything, she died.”

By comparison, Jarsikala Kami, a resident of a remote village in Jumla district – about 900 kilometres from Kathmandu – had no problems delivering her second child.

The 20-year-old member of the Dalit (marginalised) community had apparently been dutifully having regular check-ups during her pregnancy. And when time came for her to give birth, she went to the birthing centre at her village’s health post where a skilled birth attendant was present.

It helps that the government has set up a 24-hour delivery service in all of Nepal’s 75 districts. Sharma also points to the five-year-old Safe Delivery Incentive Programme, under which women who deliver in a health facility receive cash to offset their travel costs – 1,500 rupees (about 21 dollars) for those living in the mountains, 1,000 rupees (14 dollars) for hill residents, and 500 rupees (seven dollars) for those in the plains.

Service in the government health centres is free. The government also provides subsidies to some private health facilities, so that these can give people free services too. And when health workers attend to deliveries at home, they are given a cash incentive of 300 rupees (four dollars).

But health worker Maharjan still worries that awareness of all these is lacking in some areas, even as complacency sets in other places. A 2010 progress report prepared by the National Planning Commission and the United Nations Development Programme also notes that efforts to improve maternal health in this country continue to face challenges.

Says the report: “The three delays – in seeking, reaching, and receiving care – are… important (causes) of poor maternal health status in Nepal.”

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KAVRE, Nepal, Nov 23 2010 (IPS)

Four years ago, Ramita Bhujel was a bit reluctant to go back her school after a year’s absence. This Grade 4 student of Shree Saraswati Secondary School here had been down with pneumonia, failed to clear her nursery exams and as a consequence stayed at home.

Grade 2 students of Shree Saraswati Secondary School praying at the start of the school day. Credit: Damakant Jayshi/IPS

Ramita remembers one senior student, Sharmila, visiting her and persuading her to go back to the school, located in Kavre in the east of this Himalayan country. “Sharmila didi (elder sister) came to my home after one of the teachers sent her to speak to me,” she recalls.

Ramita would have gone back to school anyway, since her mother was also for it.

But Bharat Kumar Yadav of Khariyani village of Dhanusha district in eastern Nepal would not have been as fortunate as Ramita had it not been for Welcome to School (WTS) initiative of the Nepal government, supported by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and other donors.

According to a study conducted by Dhanusha District Education Office for UNICEF in July 2010, Bharat had to drop out of school in 2004 because his father wanted him to work in the farm.

Although primary education in Nepal is free, Nathuni Yadav asked his son to help in farm work since there were too many mouths to feed in the family. Bharat stayed out of school for two years until he was spotted by a ‘young champion’, a volunteer who promotes girls’ education in areas where girls’ enrolment rate is relatively lower. (Subsequently, young champions started the drive to enrol out-of-school boys as well.)

The trained young volunteers, selected by school management, carry out household surveys to identify out-of-school children, enrol them as part of WTS campaign and keep track of students who drop out.

After his initial refusal to let his son go back to school, the senior Yadav relented. Now Bharat is a fifth grader at Gyanjyoti National Primary School, bent on continuing his studies at least until the higher secondary level.

In 2004, the UNICEF introduced the WTS initiative in 14 districts in two phases. The first was an enrolment drive focusing on girls and disadvantaged groups and the second was a push to improve teaching and learning environments so that children would remain in and complete primary school.

The Nepal government then took over the WTS campaign and launched it in all the country’s 75 districts in the next year.

The WTS initiative has already started showing results in students’ enrolment at the primary level. Nepal’s primary school enrolment rose from the usual two percent annually to 11.7 percent annually by 2005, or an additional 473,000 children, of whom 270,000 were girls, government data show. The increase in Grade 1 enrolment was some 21 percent.

“Net enrolment (at primary level) has shown quite a jump from 70 percent in 1996 to 93.7 percent in 2010,” Sumon Tuladhar, education specialist at the UNICEF Kathmandu office, says.

The WTS campaign’s focus follows the communities’ needs. In some places, it is the enrolment of out-of-school children; in some, it is improving the quality of education; and in others, it is creating awareness among parents, community leaders and teachers about the need for education.

But the key focus remains getting out-of-school children in school, especially girls and those from disadvantaged community like Dalits or ethnic Janajatis.

It often remains difficult to convince parents from disadvantaged communities to send their children to school, says the headmaster of Shree Saraswati Secondary School in Kavre, Ramesh Kaji Shrestha. “They are aware they need to send their kids to school, but we still have a lot of ground to cover,” he explains.

The government has introduced a financial incentive programme to get parents to send their children, including girls, to school. This scheme provides scholarship money to all school-going children from these disadvantaged communities and 50 percent of the girls at the primary level of grades one to five.

But some schools, like the one Shrestha heads, have added their own touches to this programme. It gives uniforms to all the girl students in the primary level every year. “We could not see the disappointment of the girls who did not receive anything,” Shrestha tells IPS.

Despite the headway made by WTS, curbing the dropout of children from school remains a challenge. More than 20 percent of students drop out at the primary level, that is, between Grade 1 and 5, says the Nepal government report of 2009/2010.

UNICEF’s Tuladhar points to a mix reasons for the school dropout rate — lack of child-friendly atmosphere in schools, parents who are mainly interested in the scholarship incentives and less in sending their wards to school, and traditional teaching methods that do little to keep students interested.

Teachers admit that many vary little from the old ways of instruction, which include lecturing to setting questions and giving answers to meting out corporal punishment.

“Even a few years ago, we taught as we were taught during our days as students,” says Saraswati Sharma, a Grade 3 teacher at Shree Saraswati Secondary School. “Now I prepare lesson plans in a way so as to allow students more activity and creativity. They really enjoy their class work and homework these days.”

The use of a more child-centric approach by many government-run schools as well as new training programmes for teachers have also added spice to many a class.

Shrestha says this approach includes using new seating arrangements in class: students sit face to face around a table, unlike traditional settings where all face the blackboard with their teacher in front of it. “This promotes group learning,” the headmaster says. “Now a weak student in the group is helped by his or her peers.”

(*This feature was produced by IPS Asia-Pacific under a series on the impact of the global economic crisis on children and young people, in partnership with UNICEF East Asia and the Pacific.)

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Feb 15 2010 (IPS)

Had Uttam Sanjel stayed on in the Indian city of Mumbai to pursue his dream of becoming a Bollywood director years ago, the Samata (‘equality) schools that he set up here in Nepal may not be around today.

These students at the Samata school in Kathmandu, Nepal enjoy the benefit of cheap but quality education. Credit: Damakant Jayshi/IPS

Returning to Nepal in late 2000, Sanjel got involved in ‘Bal Siksha’ (children’s education), an alphabet-introduction programme for poor children – including some orphans living off the streets of Kathmandu – in the Jorpati area where he lives. The class went on for 12 days and Sanjel was able to teach about 100 students.

“That was a turning point for me,” he recalled. The poor children’s enthusiasm to learn made him think about ways of providing a formal education.

Then the first Samata school opened in 2001 in Jorpati.

Beginning with 850 students in the first year and teaching up to Grade 3, the school now has over 3,500 students – from nursery to Standard 12. “I had no idea that it would be so popular,” he said.

The Samata schools, also called ‘bamboo schools’ because their structures are made mainly of bamboo, now make up the largest chain of non-public educational institutions with more than 18,000 students in 10 districts in Nepal.

Eight more are in the offing in eight districts in central and eastern Tarai, Nepal’s southern plains, with each school expected to have at least 3,000 students. The foundation-laying ceremonies in the eight districts are scheduled for Feb. 22-24. “My goal is to open at least one Samata school in each of the 75 districts in the country,” Sanjel added.

Samata’s growing number of students is in stark contrast with the nationwide dropout rate among students as they reach higher grades.

According to Nepal’s Central Bureau of Statistics data for 1997-2006, the number of students enrolled during the decade was 4.5 million at the primary level, 1.3 million at the lower secondary level and 679,445 at the secondary level. These figures indicate that as students move upwards in the school system, not many continue with their education.

The Samata schools do not spend much on infrastructure because they cannot afford to. The classrooms and other structures, like teachers’ rooms and hostel, are made of bamboo, with cement plaster from inside to lend strength. The floors are rough and uneven, with bricks missing from the floor in nearly all the classrooms.

Being made of bamboo is not the only unique thing about the Samata schools. The medium of instruction is English – considered a passport to success – because parents and guardians in Nepal prefer private English- medium schools over Nepali or other vernacular language schools.

The school fee is merely 100 Nepali rupees (1.35 U.S. dollars) for students in all the grades, this amount being a little less than the per-kilogramme price of garlic. There is a one-time admission fee of 150 rupees (2 dollars), which can be waived for very poor students in a country where poverty affects 31 percent of its 27 million people, going by Asian Development Bank figures.

Sixteen year-old Aakriti Lama, who is preparing for secondary-level School Leaving Certificate (SLC) finishing examination scheduled for the third week of March, told IPS that Samata is known for very good education, capable teachers and low fees.

“The teaching of all subjects except Nepali in the English language is a big draw, since we realise that without English, we will not be able to compete with students from big schools in Kathmandu and outside for college admission and jobs,” explained Lama, whose father is a painter of ‘thanka’, an embroidery or painting, usually on silk cloth, about life and stories about the Buddha.

Parents – however poor they are – do not want to send their children to public schools, which are known for the poor quality of education.

“My two children could not have studied in an English-medium school had it not been for Samata,” said Indiara Tamang, a parent. The lowest fee charged by a private school in her locality in Jorpati that teaches in English – the Centennial School – is 13 times more than Samata’s.

Tamang and her husband work in a carpet-manufacturing unit, and together they make 10,000 Nepali rupees (135 dollars) a month. “With that we have to manage our food, medicines, additional expenditure during festivals, school books and our children’s uniforms.”

Samata is supported by donations, mostly anonymous, from local businessmen, expatriates and diplomats based in Kathmandu and foreign philanthropic organisations.

One such organisation, SAGA Group, has at least two volunteers helping out in the school under its Saga Volunteer Travel Projects. The volunteers from Britain are more than 50 years of age, mostly retirees and send around 3,000 pounds (4,707 dollars) for a four-week stay. Part of the money – 150 pounds (235 dollars) – goes to the school and the rest is used for volunteers’ return airfares, accommodation and local transportation.

“This is a working holiday and I’m excited,” volunteer Joan Davis from Swansea in Britain said of their project here with Samata. ‘We saw pictures of the school in SAGA magazine and decided to apply for the working holiday.”

“We will teach small groups of children with their pronunciation of English,” added another volunteer, Audrey Nicholson.

Upendra Mahato, a non-resident Nepali billionaire from Belarus, gave 24 million Nepali rupees (more than 324,000 dollars) for the construction of six schools in Nepal’s Tarai region. The building of the two remaining schools will be looked after by Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk and philanthropist from France.

Meantime, each Samata school take pride in trying to be what its name says, a path to equality for children through education.

This year, all five Samata students who took the SLC passed with over 80 percent marks. The highest-scoring student from the school, Bhawana Tamang, aspires to become a doctor. Tamang, who graduated with a grade of 88.75 percent, had studied on half-empty stomach, said the ‘Nagarik’ national daily.

“If you keep in mind that poor families cannot send their children to English- medium schools, you realise what a level playing field Samata is creating,” said Haribamsha Acharya, a famous Nepali comedian and actor. “The students graduating from the school can compete with those from private schools in Kathmandu.”

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Feb 2 2010 (IPS)

Tired of walking, Shankar Prasad Ghimire, 87, a retired government worker, puts his walking stick aside and takes rest on a vast expanse of lush green land.

Shankar Prasad Ghimire, 87, is proud of having led his community's efforts toward forest conservation. Credit: Damakant Jayshi/IPS

“Those were the difficult times,” Ghimire tells IPS, referring to his green crusade. “Some people simply refused to be part of the mission to rebuild the forest.”

Used to collecting firewood and timber from the forest for cooking, most people in the village were in no mood to end their habit two decades back. Alarmed by the incessant felling of trees that had rendered the once dense forest into a near desert, leaving very few trees and shrubs behind, the Department of Forest decided to hand over the enhancement and management of the forest to Ghimire and a few others in 1990.

Begun in 1978, the handover of community forests intensified after the success of the pro-democracy movement in Nepal in 1990, particularly following the promulgation of the community forest policy under the revised Forest Act of 1993 and Forest Regulations of 1995.

But many people were unwilling to give up the habit of picking up firewood and timber and other forest products (like fodder for their cattle), which was easy, though illegal.

“I had to persuade my folks real hard,” Ghimire says, grinning broadly with a glint in his eyes. During the first few years of the 10 years that he was at the helm, the retiree had to personally take up plantation of broad-leaf trees and neem trees, known for their multiple uses provided their long-term benefits are not sacrificed for short-term gains. Bamboos were planted as well. The land was nearly barren due to massive deforestation and degradation, fire and landslides.

“We used to jump over shrubs when we were kids,” says Sharad Ghimire, a college student and member of the community forest group, pointing to a piece land that was rendered barren before it was transformed into a lush expanse of trees and other plants.

“What you see in front of you,” he says proudly, “is the result of efforts by the local community, government laws and I/NGOs’ (international and non- governmental organisations) expert guidance.”

Data from the Department of Forest show 1.1 million hectares (22 percent) of the total forest land has been handed over to the locals to manage and enhance in keeping with the Forest Act, which guarantees non-interference from the government forest office so long as the community forest user group (CFUG) complies with the Act (1993) and the Regulations (1995) and the Community Forestry Operational Plan.

Under this plan, the local community that agrees to manage the forest prepares a five- to ten-year master plan to protect, conserve and enhance forest products. Since timber and firewood are still so central to a local community’s day-to-day living, they would first determine the sustainable reserve of timber and firewood and then sell the surplus to the community members.

The plan also sets out which trees could be felled, which areas are permissible for cattle grazing, among others. The plan is not just about forest but also about the livelihood of the people who help conserve the forest.

Based on the community forestry concept in Nepal, control over forest resources is devolved to community-based user groups.

At present 1.6 million households are involved in the conservation and sustainable management of forests across the country. Together they make up 15,000 community forestry groups across the country, based on data from the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

ICIMOD is a regional centre committed to promoting an economically and environmentally sound mountain ecosystems and serving the countries comprising the Hindu Kush-Himalayas region, namely, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Burma, Nepal, and Pakistan. Its study further shows that community forestry prevents deforestation and forest degradation, increases forest cover and soil organic carbon, or the amount of carbon stored in the soil.

A study undertaken by ICIMOD in three community forestry sites in Manang district (in high Himalayas) and Ilam and Lamatar in Lalitpur (in mid Himalayas) between 2003 and 2007 shows an increase in carbon storage in the community forests.

Carbon storage mitigates the contribution of fossil fuel emissions to global warming by capturing carbon dioxide.

The mean annual increment of carbon in these forests covered by the study is 7.04 tonnes of cabon dioxide per hectare. Put simply, it means cuts in emissions (with fewer trees cut) and more carbon sinks (with more forest cover due to plantation).

Carbon sinks are natural or manmade reservoirs that absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

“The community forestry is really gaining momentum to revert the deforested and degraded forests to greenery,” says Eak Rana, project coordinator of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) programme under ICIMOD.

REDD is designed to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

Rana cites a 1994 National Forest Inventory – a field survey of Nepal’s forests by the government with the help of its Finnish counterpart – which showed that from 1978 to 1994, the forest area of the Himalayan country had decreased at an annual rate of 1.66 percent. The conduct of a new survey, again as a collaboration between the governments of Nepal and Finland, is slated to begin July this year.

“The importance of community forestry, thus, cannot be overstated,” Rana says. Community forests, he stressed, play a vital role in regaining old- growth forest conditions, based on studies, including that of ICIMOD.

Tree biomass normally stores half the weight of carbon. Thus, a tree saved (not burnt and decomposed) prevents the release and sequestration capacity of carbon, which is chief among the greenhouse gases contributing to global warming.

Biomass essentially consists of forestry and agricultural waste.

Experts who conducted the ICIMOD study argued that deliberations at the international policy level on climate change must ensure that the REDD policy awards credits not just for reduced deforestation and forest degradation but also for sustainable management of forests and forest enhancement efforts.

Bhola Bhattarai, general secretary of the Federation of Community Forestry Users in Nepal – a network of more than 12,000 community forest user groups in the country – says it is time the developed nations recognised the efforts of countries like Nepal and award them credits.

The United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen last December, which failed to produce a legally binding climate change treaty, came up with a consensus on REDD Plus, or reducing emissions from forest degradation and deforestation in developing countries.

Under the scheme, financial rewards are given to countries for keeping their forests intact. The rewards will come in the form of carbon credits or financial payment by carbon emitters.

“We are currently undertaking carbon accounting and a capacity-building programme in three districts in mid-hills,” Bhattarai says. Once the study is completed, he adds, governance and payment system of Nepal’s forest users can be achieved.

After all, there has to be a reward scheme for community forests that result in carbon enhancements, not just efforts to reduce deforestation and forest degradation, says Rana.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Jan 4 2010 (IPS)

Nepal’s walk to peace from a decade-long, Maoist-led bloody insurgency that ended four years ago could take longer than expected.

That is, if the peace process, negotiated between the seven opposition parties and the formerly outlawed Maoist party, does not fail before reaching its logical conclusion – the completion of the new constitution by an elected assembly and the general elections soon thereafter.

The two-year deadline by which the constitution should be written and promulgated is May 2010. But the Constitution Assembly (CA) – tasked to draft the Constitution – has had to revise its calendar, a detailed date-specific progress toward completion of the new Constitution, for the eighth time since it was convened in may 2008.

The growing animosity between and among the political parties has only dismayed the general public. Broadcast media reports, particularly on two local television channels – Kantipur TV and Avenues – have shown people from various walks of life expressing their anger and frustration.

To compound the problem, the parties disagree on all major issues to be incorporated in the Constitution – preamble, fundamental rights, federal model, the number and nature of federal states and distribution of natural resources, to say the least.

Still another challenge is to find an amicable solution to the future of more than 19,000 Maoist combatants living in 28 United Nations-monitored cantonments throughout the Himalayan country.

Their integration into the security forces, especially in the Nepal Army, is turning out to be a major hurdle. The Nepali Congress (NC) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist or UML), two of the largest ruling parties, have demanded that integration and rehabilitation take place before the promulgation of the Constitution on May 28 this year.

Most of the non-Maoist parties (leftist, centrist and rightist) have united for the time being against the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (UCPN-Maoist), which they accuse of trying to create anarchy to “capture the state”. What has not helped is the aggressive statements and remarks by top leaders of the main opposition party, threatening a revolt if their demands are not met.

The two top leaders – party chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ and Dr Baburam Bhattarai have issued threats. ‘Prachanda’ (translated as the ‘fierce one’) said the “older parties” (NC and the UML) were preparing for war, and so the Maoists needed to prepare for one as well. More than 13,000 people were killed during the Maoist insurgency.

Similarly, Dr Bhattarai, who is the in charge of the Maoist protest actions, keeps talking about launching another revolt against the state. He has been making remarks about “capturing the state” in Kathmandu as well as in the districts on numerous occasions.

The heart of the problem is power sharing. The UCPN (Maoist), the single largest party in the Constitution Assembly, which also doubles as parliament, is insisting on a national unity government under its leadership.

The dominant sections in the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) or the CPN-UML, which are leading an 18-party coalition, are in no mood to concede. They have instead challenged the Maoists to cobble a majority in the 601-member House and lead the government again, which they had quit in early May 2009. The UCPN (Maoist) has 240 members.

“The Maoists, who have no one to blame but themselves for being out of the government, are unable to state their real demand in a straightforward manner,” Professor Krishna Khanal, a respected political analyst, tells IPS. “So they are focusing on correcting the President’s move and civilian supremacy.”

On May 3 last year, the Maoist-led coalition government decided to dismiss Nepalese Chief of Army Staff General Rookmangud Katawal, charging him of insubordination. Despite threats of withdrawal of support from all the coalition partners, the UCPN (Maoist) went ahead unilaterally.

Twenty-two political parties represented in the assembly, including erstwhile coalition partners, asked President Ram Baran Yadav to block the dismissal, which he did. The Maoists quit in protest. Since then they have launched a nationwide campaign to reestablish “civilian supremacy.” Later, they added the demand for a national unity government under their leadership.

“Let the Maoists first prove that they are a civilian party before talking about civilian supremacy,” Jhala Nath Khanal, chairman of the CPN-UML, says, referring to reports of violence by Maoist cadres against other party members and renewed seizure of private and government land and properties.

To step up pressure after staging three rounds of protests that culminated in a three-day nationwide shutdown late last month, the Maoists have threatened to launch an indefinite strike beginning on Jan. 24 if their demands are not met.

Dina Nath Sharma, CA member and spokesperson of the Maoist party, says leading the government is one of their goals but he insists it is not the only goal. “We want to establish civilian government’s control over the national army and finish the writing of the Constitution in time.” Of course, he adds, it is only natural that this happens under a government led by his party.

He dismisses the contention that his party lacks a majority in the parliament. “This is the drawback of the parliamentary system, and that’s why we have suggested discarding it.”

The party has been at pains to persuade its rivals that it is all for democracy but wants to do away with the Westminster model of parliamentary system so it can be replaced with a system that will allow the people to directly elect the executive president.

The Westminster model is patterned after the British system, from where the group of Cabinet ministers is drawn. The ministers are in turn answerable to the parliament. Other countries’ systems grant limited power to the parliament.

“Isn’t it undemocratic that the largest party is in opposition?” Sharma asks.

Prof Khanal agrees. “It is an unnatural since the third largest party in the assembly is leading the government and the largest is in opposition.” He suggests a deal, with Constitution-drafting at its core.

“The three big parties should agree on working together to finish the writing of the constitution in time and take the peace process to its logical end.” This would mean restructuring the government, he says. “A real power-sharing deal that satisfies the Maoists could be the way out and it does not have to be only a Maoist-led government.”

The CA, which has to finish writing the Constitution by May 28, is way behind the schedule. With four months remaining, there are calls to extend the term of the Constituent Assembly, a suggestion opposed by some constitutional experts.

There have been various interpretations of the Interim Constitution as to what would happen if the new constitution was not written within its stipulated time. Aware that is time is slipping away, the three parties, on their part, have been holding rounds of dialogue but have not been able to resolve the political deadlock.

On Friday, Dec. 31, they agreed on a six-point agenda for discussion to find a way out of the crisis. The agenda – ending growing mistrust, power sharing, constitution drafting, the President’s move to reinstate the army chief, integration and rehabilitation of Maoist combatants, and reviewing all past agreements related to the peace process – has kindled some hope among the people, but chances remain slim.

The parties agree there is no alternative to consensus but are unable to reach it.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Apr 14 2008 (IPS)

Proving the political pundits wrong, the people of Nepal have voted overwhelmingly for former rebels, the Communist Party of Nepal- Maoist (CPN-M), in the just concluded constituent assembly elections in this Himalayan nation.

Of the 196 seats already allocated, the CPN-M has won 108, according to the latest results released by the Election Commission on Monday, thus establishing a comfortable lead that gives it a fair chance to gain a simple majority.

Postponed twice the historic election finally took place on Apr. 10 with 240 of the 601 seats up for grabs under the first-past-the-post (people electing candidates directly) and 335 under proportional representation electoral systems. Another 26 seats are to be made through appointments by the interim government to be formed after the polls.

The new assembly is expected to draw up a new constitution for a republic that will replace rule by a 240-year-old monarchy. The CPN-M signed a peace accord in November 2006 to end a decade-long insurgency and join a seven-party coalition government to prepare for the first general election in the country since 1991.

If the CPN-M does gain a simple majority in the assembly, it can be expected to make towards abolishing the unpopular monarchy as its first order of business.

Although the CPN-M has always claimed an undercurrent support among the Nepali public, the results caught them by surprise as much as its rivals.

Except in the central tarai (plains) where regional Madhesi (plainsmen) parties have done well, and eastern hills, the former underground party has swept the elections across the country in which 60 percent of the 17.6 million eligible voters cast their votes. Of these, 4.1 million are newly-registered voters.

The elections were given a clean chit by international observer missions, including the United Nations, the European Union and the Carter Centre. All these bodies praised Nepal’s Election Commission – assisted by the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) – for smoothly executing the elections across the country.

Not only have the Maoists won the elections handsomely, all their top leaders have either won or are enjoying unsurpassable lead. On the other hand, bigwigs of the Nepali Congress (NC) and the CPN (UML) have lost to relatively unknown opponents.

“We expected this kind of support for us,” Baburam Bhattarai, the second top leader of the CPN-M, told IPS on Sunday. “It is only the mainstream media and so-called experts that refused to see the writing on the wall.”

But others disagree, pointing out the violence and disruptions by the Maoist cadre across the country in the run-up to the elections that were widely reported by national and international media.

“No one expected this kind of results, not even the Maoists,” said Nilambar Acharya, a well-respected political analyst.

No one, however, disputes that the people were very disenchanted with the two largest parties – the NC and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) – that have ruled the country for 15 years since 1990 when the first popular movement toppled the monarchy-supported party-less ‘Panchayati’ system of government.

“More than a positive vote for the Maoists, this is a negative reaction against both the NC’s and the CPN (UML)’s lacklustre performance,” Acharya said.

According to Acharya people were appreciative of the Maoists joining the peace process after running a bloody insurgency for ten years and did not want to see the Maoists moving away.

Prakash Sharan Mahat, senior leader and spokesman of the NC – the country’s largest and oldest party – acknowledged that people vented their anger and frustration against the two major parties.

“But that is not the only reason for our unexpected loss and the unprecedented win for the Maoists,” Mahat told IPS. “Fear factor played a very big role in the election with the Maoist candidates and cadre threatening to goback to the jungle and wage another ‘people’s war’ if not voted for.”

Various media reports and national election observer missions like the Nepal Election Monitoring Alliance (NEMA) and the Nepal Election Observation Committee (NEOC), who deployed thousands of observers throughout the country, said the Maoists resorted to threats, intimidation, and violence to terrorise voters and political rivals.

Bhattarai’s rival candidates from the NC and the CPN (UML) in the Gorkha constituency asked for postponement of the election, accusing the Maoists of not letting their cadres distribute election-related material and campaign freely. Even on election day, the two parties accused the Maoists not allowing their candidates’ polling agents to be present at the voting booths. Bhattarai has refuted these allegations.

“In rural areas, the Maoists told the people that if they lost, they would resume the people’s war (Maoist insurgency),” said Kamal Thapa, chairman Rastriya Prajatantra Party (Nepal), that openly campaigned for votes on the two main planks – retaining constitutional monarchy and keeping Nepal a Hindu rastra (nation).

So far, the RPP (Nepal) has failed to lead in any seat and Thapa lost his poll deposit in one of the two constituencies he was contesting, for failing to even garner 10 percent of the votes.

Bhattarai denied that the Maoists intimidated voters. “This allegation is being repeated by parties that have been rejected by the people and are finding it difficult accepting the will of the people,” he said.

With the Maoists now set to at least lead a coalition government, the question uppermost is what the victory of the Maoists means for other parties and the country.

Acharya said that the NC will have to go for drastic changes, with new and young leaders allowed to give direction. “Rethinking, rebuilding and remoulding should be the NC’s mantra and to a lesser extent that of the UML as well,” he suggested.

With consensus a key factor in writing the new constitution, failing which a two-thirds majority is required on contentious issues, the Maoists will still have to take along its coalition partners.

“It is a mandate for restructuring the state and society and the people have given us the mantle to execute it,” Bhattarai said. “The people have expressed their desire for overwhelming change.”

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Apr 1 2008 (IPS)

When King Gyanendra staged his military-backed coup in February 2005, Nepal’s political parties – including the then outlawed Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) – formed an alliance that successfully opposed the monarch&#39s assault on civil liberties.

But the coalition government formed by the same political parties, known as the seven-party alliance (SPA), is beginning to resemble the king’s autocratic regime by denying the Tibetans – some Nepali citizens, others refugees – the right to protest against oppressive Chinese rule in their homeland.

To show support for Beijing’s &#39one China&#39 policy that recognises Tibet and Taiwan as integral parts of China, the Nepal government has issued a statement reiterating its "principled stand". It has also expressed support for the Chinese government in organising the Beijing Summer Olympics in August.

Neither the government nor Nepal’s political parties have cared to comment on the crackdown against protestors in Kathmandu – or in Lhasa or New Delhi.

Appeasement of its powerful northern neighbour by a Nepali government is not new. Gyanendra sought Beijing’s support for his February 2005 coup by ordering the closure of the Office of the Representative of the Dalai Lama in Kathmandu.

Tibetan residents in Kathmandu have been agitating since Mar. 10 when, accompanied by monks, they tried to march towards the Chinese Embassy to hand over a memorandum.

On Saturday, police arrested 84 Tibetans close to Chinese news agency Xinhua&#39s Kathmandu office. This time the police did not just beat and detain the Tibetans but also threatened them with deportation to China.

Amnesty International-Nepal, following Nepali procedure, notified Kathmandu authorities of intention to hold a peaceful protest on March 24. But the rights watchdog was denied permission on the grounds that allowing such a protest would "adversely affect relations between (the) two countries&#39&#39.

When the protest went ahead, 148 individuals were arrested, including 13 Nepali human rights defenders. Police have restricted freedom of movement for individuals from three major Tibetan neighborhoods in Kathmandu, particularly monks and nuns.

According to Amnesty, police have arbitrarily arrested and detained over 1,500 people both during and since the demonstrations. No legal justification for the arrests and detentions has been offered and the home ministry has explicitly stated that no "anti-China activities" will be allowed in Nepal.

Amnesty and the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) have documented unnecessary and excessive use of force during arrests as well as ill treatment during arrests and detention. ‘’We are particularly concerned by increasing evidence of police use of sexual and other forms of assault, including of minors, during arrests, violating the right to physical integrity,’’ a joint statement by the two lobbies said on Tuesday.

The threat of deportation constituted ‘’a serious violation of Nepal’s international human rights obligations,’’ the statement said. ‘’China has been cited by the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment for its abuses of political dissidents in China, and those who have been protesting Chinese rule in Tibet will almost certainly be treated as dissidents.’’

‘’Should the Nepal police continue to engage in conduct that was condemned by all of the current governing parties, Nepali human rights defenders, and the international community, during the People’s Movement of 2005-2006, it will betray its own record of restoring in April 2006 fundamental civil and political rights,’’ the statement said.

Speaking with IPS on Wednesday foreign ministry spokesman, Hira Bahadur Thapa, denied that human rights violations were perpetrated on the Tibetans. "We cannot allow the use of Nepali land to activities detrimental to the interests of China," Thapa said. He declined to say whether the Chinese government was pressurising its Nepali counterpart to tackle the protests firmly.

Thapa added that the government was firm in preventing the Tibetan protestors to march towards the Chinese Embassy, fearing a repeat of what happened in New Delhi recently. Some Tibetans had scaled the wall of its embassy in the Indian capital.

Modraj Dotel, home ministry spokesman (responsible for maintaining law and order), denied there were any brutalities. He admitted that the police has been asked to thwart anti-China protests, and in doing so, the police did snatch placards carried by protestors. "If there is any formal report of massive violations by police, the government will order a probe," he told IPS. Dotel denied the HRW report&#39s allegation of torture in police custody.

Tibetans refugees started flocking to Nepal after the failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule and the Dalai Lama fled over the Himalayas into exile in India.

The government of Nepal does not grant refugee status to Tibetans who flee Tibet, but usually allows them unhindered passage to India. On a few occasions, the government – under pressure from the Chinese government -has deported Tibetan exiles and asylum seekers to China.

On average 2,500 Tibetans flee to India via Nepal each year. Officially, there are about 14,000 Tibetans living in Nepal, but according to Tibetan statistics the number may be closer to 20,000.

"We are firm on one China policy and cannot allow these demonstrations to affect it," Prof. Lok Raj Baral, diplomat and former Nepali ambassador to India, told IPS. "But at the same time, refugees&#39 peaceful protests cannot be disallowed as that would constitute violation of human rights."

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Jan 26 2008 (IPS)

While Apr. 10 has been set as the day on which Nepalis will elect a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution, violent protests by plains people demanding regional autonomy threaten the thrice-postponed polls.

The biggest challenge the constituent assembly (CA) elections – which originally were to have been held soon after the end of the Rana (nobility) oligarchy in Nepal in 1950 – are from parties based in the tarai (southern plains of Himalayan Nepal bordering India) and various armed groups active there.

Anti-election campaigns by minor pro-palace parties add to the challenges faced by the seven-party alliance (SPA) that includes the country&#39s largest parties – the Nepali Congress, the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified-Marxist Leninist) and the armed Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

The elections were postponed in June for logistical reasons as the Election Commission said it did not have the required laws and enough time – at least 90 days after the announcement of polls date – to conduct elections, and again in November after the Maoists briefly quit the government following differences over a future role for Nepal’s discredited 239-year-old Shah monarchy.

While the Maoists have returned to the SPA, the plainsmen, led by the Tarai Madhesh Democratic Party (TMDP), continue to hold out against the polls until their demands for regional autonomy are first addressed.

The TMDP is headed by Mahantha Thakur who was among the senior leaders of the Nepali Congress party before he quit it (as well as the parliament and government) to lend weight to struggle for "Madhesi (plains people) freedom and autonomy" and has refused the government’s offer of talks.

Thakur said on Friday that the TMDP would not participate in "meaningless" talks. "We will fight for a separate Madhesi state if our 11-point charter of demands – submitted on Jan. 3 – is not met," Thakur said.

Last Sunday, the TMDP and the United Madhesi Front (a combine of Madhesi People&#39s Rights Forum and Sadbhawana Party) announced that they would jointly fight for their demands and have called for nationwide protests beginning Feb. 4.

TMDP demands include declaration of the tarai as a single autonomous federal state, change in election laws, constitutional guarantee of autonomy with the right of self determination, proportional representation of plainsmen in all state organs, rightful share in the state budget and talks between the government and armed groups in the tarai.

A sticking point is the TMDP&#39s demand for change in a provision in electoral law that requires political parties contesting 20 percent or more seats under proportional representation system (335 in all) to field candidates in proportion to the population distribution of women, indigenous people (janajatis), plains people madhesi), low caste (dalit) and other disadvantaged communities.

This would seriously challenge the power of the brahmins, chhetris and newars (priestly, warrior and trading upper caste groups) that have long dominated all organs of the feudal Nepali state.

There are 240 seats up for grabs under first-past-the-post electoral system after the Election Commission increased the number of electoral constituencies from 205, reflecting changes in population figures as per the 2001 Census. But the bulk of the new seats have gone to tarai.

The TMDP, that has demanded that the ceiling of 20 percent be raised to 50 percent, says that if it abides by the provision then a proper representation of the madhesis will not be realised.

While formally inviting TMDP for talks, minister for peace and reconstruction Ram Chandra Poudel said the government has fulfilled most demands of madhesis and "was willing to address the rest." Speaking with IPS, Poudel said the government was confident of convincing the TMDP to contest the CA polls under the existing electoral law. He declined to elaborate.

The Election Commission has already enforced the election code of conduct and has requested political parties not to stage any further demonstration or bandhs (strikes) that would adversely affect the election schedule which it has already unveiled.

However, it is not just the demands of madhesi-dominated parties that the government has to contend with in order to ensure that the CA election is held, but also armed groups in tarai which have vowed to disrupt the polls. They have targeted government employees and killed a number of them in recent times as a warning and have also called for establishing a separate country of Madhesis.

The most prominent among these are the two factions of the ‘Janatantrik Tarai Mukti Morcha&#39 led by Jai Krishna Goit and Jwala Singh, respectively. Of the two, the Singh-led JTMM has owned up to killing a number of secretaries of village development committees who are government representatives at the village level. They too have rejected the government&#39s offer for talks, saying they would do so only under United Nations supervision.

In New York, on Wednesday, the chief of the U.N. mission in Nepal, Ian Martin, told a press meet that security in central and eastern tarai was not conducive for the holding of elections.

Meanwhile, the government has unveiled a three-phase special security plan for the election on Thursday. According to the plan to be enforced from Jan. 29, the government will deploy some 132,000 security personnel, of which 70,000 will be temporary recruits and the others drawn from the police, home minister Krishna Prasad Sitaula told a press conference in Kathmandu on Thursday. The districts in the tarai will have more security than those in the hills and mountains.

The coalition government hopes that the Thakur-led TMDP, Madhesi People&#39s Rights Forum, and Sadbhawana Party will agree to the government&#39s proposition to address some demands after the constituent assembly is formed, thereby clearing the decks for the election.

As for the armed groups, the government is prepared to use force if necessary.

"Those trying to foil the election will be defeated, including those declining the government&#39s talks offer," Sitauala said, while briefing a parliamentary special committee on monitoring constituent assembly election on Thursday.

But Sitaula ruled out the use of the army. "The army will stay in their barracks and the Maoists’ People’s Liberation Army will stay in their cantonments. The army can be deployed only when the seven ruling parties take a joint decision to that effect."

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Dec 26 2007 (IPS)

Having negotiated an agreement for the formal abolition of the 240-year-old monarchy, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) is now set to rejoin the government.

”We will return to the government in a day or two,” CPN (M) leader Puspa Kamal Dahal told reporters on Monday.

On Sunday, after a seven-hour discussion ended months of bickering over the monarchy issue between the two major constituents of the seven-party alliance – the centrist Nepali Congress party and the CPN (M) – the death knell for the beleaguered monarchy, led by the hugely unpopular king Gyanendra Shah, was sounded.

The CPN(M), which led a decade-long armed struggle against the monarchy, before laying down arms under a November 2006 peace accord and joining an interim government, had threatened to disrupt elections to constituent assembly if the country was not declared a republic first.

For the Maoists, who as part of the peace accord had agreed to confine some 30,000 of their fighters in United Nations supervised camps, the main concern was that pro-monarchy forces could still undermine the elections and move to reverse the hard fought gains of the armed struggle.

But the Maoists relented after other parties – chief among them the Nepali Congress – refused to declare the country a republic before an elected assembly convened. As per the 23-point deal agreed to by the parties, Nepal will become a federal democratic republic after the first meeting of the constituent assembly, elections to which are to be held in mid-April. The parties have agreed to announce a date soon.

Until the first meeting of the assembly convenes, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala will perform all the functions of the head of state, thus effectively denying any role for the king.

The parties have also agreed to hold the assembly polls under a parallel electoral system where 335 members of the 601-member assembly will be elected through proportional system, while 240 members will be elected through first-past-the-post system from parliamentary seat constituencies that were redrawn and increased from the existing 205. The rest will be nominated by the prime minister.

“A Nepal republic is inevitable,” Prof. Krishna Khanal, a well-known political analyst, told IPS. “It is a welcome development.”

Khanal, however, was critical that the political parties were “wasting” a lot of time debating the fate of the monarchy. “The country already had entered republican mode right since the massive popular movement against Gyanendra in April 2006. So why this fuss over declaration?”

There was immediate opposition to Sunday’s decision from the monarchist camp.

Former prime minister and chairman of the Rastriya Janashakti Party (RJP) Surya Bahadur Thapa blasted the deal, terming it unacceptable and lacking any mandate from the people of the country.

“This is an infringement on the rights of the people,” said the five-time prime minister, considered close to the royal palace, while speaking in the interim parliament on Monday. “This also is an attack on the fundamental norms of democracy.” He was speaking during the debate on the government-tabled proposal reflecting the new agreement to amend the interim constitution.

Thapa has been insisting on implementing an earlier pact between the parties and the Maoists in which they had agreed that the very first meeting of the constituent assembly would decide the fate of the monarchy by a simple majority.

Another pro-monarchy party which has been playing the role of opposition in the interim parliament was also critical of the decision to abolish the monarchy. “The people should be allowed to take such a decision,” said Pashupati Shumsher Rana, leader of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP). The RPP, which had all along been pro-palace, had, however, decided to withdraw all references to the monarchy from its party’s statute.

The latest move against the Shah Dynasty, established by Prithvi Narayan Shah in 1768, was expected, once the country’s largest party, the Nepali Congress, decided to go for a federal republic state. Right after the success of the ‘April movement’ that was largely aimed at Gyanendra, his unpopular son Paras – and by extension the institution they represent – the debate was more about when and not if the monarchy should be abolished.

Only two years ago, with the army behind him, Gyanendra and Nepal’s monarchy seemed invincible.

Nepal’s monarchy has not recovered from a tragic massacre in the royal palace in June 2001. A majority of people do not believe the verdict of a government-appointed probe that the then heir to the throne, Gyanendra’s nephew, killed nine members of his family before shooting himself.

Gyanendra, who succeeded to the throne after the massacre, dismissed the elected government in February 2005 after charging it with failure to end the Maoist insurgency and ruled as an autocratic monarch for 14 months.

But faced with mass demonstrations, Gyanendra was compelled to restore parliament in April 2006. Once his title as head of the army was removed his authority was severely crippled.

With even the top officers of the Nepal army now saying, both in private as well as public, that they would accept the verdict of the elected constituent assembly, it is truly the end of the road for the ‘world’s last Hindu kingdom’.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Aug 13 2007 (IPS)

After languishing for 17 years in temporary camps, some 108,000 ethnic Nepalis, expelled from their homeland in Bhutan, have a real chance to get out of the wilderness.

But while the promised land, the United States – as well as several first world countries that form a ‘core group’ – will accommodate the ‘Lhotsampa’ refugees, many of them continue to harbour hopes of repatriation to Bhutan.

“If the Nepal government, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the core group countries merely say, ‘get up and board the plane’ it will not work,” Yadu Prasad Subedi, 27, told IPS. “A detailed dissemination of information is needed to allay the fears of refugees who want to opt for resettlement in third countries but are apprehensive about details,’’ the refugee said.

Although the prospect of resettlement in the U.S. is attractive, suspicion is rife in the camps that this is a ploy to break the determination of the refugees to return to Bhutan. The community stands divided between resettlement in third countries and repatriation to Bhutan – even though this could mean facing the persecution from which they fled in the early 1990s.

While some are concerned that resettlement in the U.S. will quickly dissipate the movement to compel Bhutan to take the refugees back, others believe that the campaign could be continued and even intensified while based in a first world country.

Just how contentious the issue is became apparent late May when a mob of those advocating repatriation to Bhutan attacked supporters of resettlement in third countries. Two persons were shot to death when Nepali police opened fire to quell the violence.

Subedi says he is tired of ‘’waiting for so many years’’. ‘’I want to take the plane sooner rather than later.”

At the beginning of this year, the U.S., Canada, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand – known as the ‘core group’ – announced that they were ready to resettle the refugees. The U.S. alone has offered to take on 60,000 and has set no cap. According to UNHCR and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) other interested countries are Ireland, Argentina, Brazil and Chile.

But instead of celebrating the refugees in the UNHCR-run camps have, since the resettlement offers were announced, been living in a state of tension with pro- and anti-resettlement refugee groups trading charges and counter-charges.

Many of the younger refugees are impatient. Those in their 20s are eager to avail of the chances offered in the first world countries. Data provided by UNHCR shows that of the 108,000 odd refugees 63,000 are in the 18-59 category.

“I am willing to go to the U.S., my first choice, or to any of the core group countries to study and work,” says a 28-year old chemistry graduate who requested anonymity because he is teaching in an institute in the Nepalese capital. Refugees cannot legally work in Nepal.

He and others who have managed to get higher education outside the camp schools – where education is limited to the secondary level – are frustrated when they see their chances of making it in the developed world delayed.

Pingala Dhital, 34, who established an organisation called Voice for Change a couple of years ago to press for a durable solution to refugee crisis, says many refugees are tired of seeing no progress in talks between Nepal and Bhutan to settle the issue. “Except for a few older ones who might prefer Bhutan, many would be willing to go just anywhere as long as it means leading a life outside the camps,” Dhital told IPS in her rented apartment in the Nepalese capital.

The refugees started arriving in eastern Nepal via India (Nepal and Bhutan do not share a border) in the early 1990s, alleging forced eviction by the Bhutanese government, under an ‘ethnic cleansing’ drive – a charge that the ‘Dragon Kingdom’ denies.

Fifteen rounds of talks between the foreign ministers of Nepal and Bhutan, aimed at securing the refugees’ safe repatriation and dating back to 1993, have yielded little progress.

Most Bhutanese refugees say their first choice is to go back home, and their leaders speak of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other international treaties that oblige Thimphu to take them back. But not one refugee has been able to return in all these years.

This year the Nepal government, following a request from the UNHCR and donor countries, decided to open up to resettlement on humanitarian grounds. There are indications that India, where some 20,000 already live, may follow suit.

The chief of the UNHCR here, Abraham Abraham, says the organisation is ready to begin resettlement but wants the government to bolster security in the camps first.

‘’What we need is a chance to make a free choice between resettlement and staying on to continue the movement to pressure Bhutan into granting us our rights,’’ said one refugee asking not to be named. ‘’Right now we live in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.’’

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Jul 25 2007 (IPS)

A republican wave that swept King Gyanendra out of power last year continues to blow strongly through Nepal.

Three times in the past two weeks, the king was put to great embarrassment. His highly publicised three-day, diamond jubilee birthday celebrations on Jul. 7 turned out to be a damp squib, with the government, top bureaucrats, even the once loyal Nepal Army, and diplomatic corps, staying away.

Some 700 well-wishers turned up, most of them loyalists, unlike in the past when thousands of people queued up outside the palace gates to salute their king.

The very next day, nearly everyone who had been invited were present at the traditional ‘bhoto jatra’ function for the Rato Machhindranath deity presided over by Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala as head of state. Until this year it had always been the privilege of Nepali king.

Last week, outgoing U.S. ambassador to Nepal, James F. Moriarty, appealed to Gyanendra to abdicate if he wished to save the monarchy. During the pro-democracy struggle, the U.S. ambassador was openly pro-king. He had put pressure on Nepal’s political parties to work with Gyanendra although the king had usurped absolute power in February 2005.

Addressing his last press conference in Kathmandu on Jul. 13, Moriarty said: “If he wants to save the institution of monarchy, he has to take a dramatic step.”

This was within days of Koirala’s call that the king should abdicate in favour of his grandson, who turns five years on Jul. 30. In this, the prime minister has found welcome support from Nepal’s influential military. Gyanendra’s son, Nepal’s unpopular crown prince Paras, has a reputation of drunken and irascible behaviour.

Only two years ago, with the army behind him, King Gyanendra and Nepal’s monarchy seemed invincible.

Now hardly a day passes without media reports calling for an end to monarchy. Not all of them are from Maoist supporters. According to a recent survey, those who want monarchy in some form – constitutional, ceremonial, or ‘reformed’ – are currently outnumbered.

Nepal’s 240-year-old monarchy has not recovered from a tragic massacre in the royal palace in June 2001. A majority of people do not believe the verdict of a government-appointed probe team that the then heir to the throne, Gyanendra’s nephew, killed nine members of his family before shooting himself.

Krishna Khanal, professor of political science at Tribhuvan University, said the reasons are very obvious: “Monarchy and democracy can never go together in Nepal and our history, post-1950, is proof of that.”

Krishna Pahadi, respected human rights defender, minces no words when it comes to expressing his views on monarchy. The king and monarchy have no place at all in new Nepal, he insisted.

Pahadi, who was named prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International during the king’s absolute rule, was of the opinion that “the parliament, which has been reinstated on the strength of the popular movement against monarchy, should set up a tribunal to try King Gyanendra for his crimes against the people as head of the government.”

Pahadi argued that this would result in the king (along with his family) either fleeing or being convicted, giving parliament an opportunity to abolish the institution he represents.

The Nepal Army, which privately spoke of holding a referendum on the monarchy, has now grudgingly accepted the fact that a constituent assembly, constituted after a free and fair election (without intimidation by Maoists) would decide the fate of the institution.

But right-wing Hindu groups and parties close to the royal palace insist that only a referendum, if required, can decide the future of Nepal’s monarchy. “Since there is so much concerted and calculated hate campaign against monarchy, let us go for a referendum,” said Kamal Thapa, leader of the pro-palace Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP-Nepal).

However, Pahadi who is against the idea of a referendum, calling it a meaningless exercise, feels that as long as the king remains unpunished, there cannot be a constituent assembly election, “let alone a free and fair one”.

“The mood of the nation is for a democratic republic and unless the king is punished for his obvious crimes against people, this will not be possible. Moreover, he will try to prevent the constituent assembly election,” he warned.

Like Pahadi, Thapa too does not believe that an election to the constituent assembly could be impartial because of threats from Nepal’s powerful Maoists.

The RPP (Nepal) leader has put his weight behind a “reformed” monarchy – an inevitable outcome of the agitation last year. That would serve as a cushion for democracy against the ultra left, and for unity and stability of the country. Significantly, the Nepal Army, still suspicious of Maoists’ intentions, would be happy to have monarchy in some form, according to most political commentators.

While the debate on monarchy rages on, all eyes are now on the constituent assembly election. That is, if they are held as scheduled on Nov. 22. Or held at all. (ENDS/IPS/AP/IP HD CS NP/DJ/AN-LD/07)

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Jul 22 2007 (IPS)

A senior journalist recently likened Nepal&#39s fragile peace process to an overcrowded bus lurching uncertainly on this country’s mountainous roads, yet moving forward to its destination.

Few doubt that the road ahead is tricky and slippery and that there is a need to move forward collectively. But, of late, the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) (Maoist) – erstwhile rebels and now partners in the eight-party interim coalition government – appears more and more demanding.

In their latest move the Maoists have blocked the second phase of an internationally supervised process by which their fighters, now confined to camps, would be screened for child soldiers or those recruited after the peace process began last year.

As per previous agreement, those assessed as aged below 18 on May 25, 2006, and those recruited into the Maoist People’s Liberation Army (PLA) after May 25, 2006 would be disqualified and deemed ineligible to remain in the camps.

At stake is the timely conduct of postponed constituent assembly elections (newly set for Nov. 22) to elect members who will draw a new, inclusive constitution as well as decide the fate of 240-year-old monarchy in this impoverished country of 26 million. Many fear that another postponement could invite anarchy and lead to an uncontrollable situation.

From letting their highly criticised youth wing – Young Communist League – run amok across the country, intimidating and harassing common people and businessmen and picking up fights with various armed and unarmed groups in terai (Nepal&#39s plains), the Maoists have sorely tested their partners in the government, ordinary people and the international community.

While the Maoists&#39 actions have so far been ignored or mildly censured in the larger interest of the peace process, their latest act of blocking international monitors from carrying out the verification process has drawn serious criticism from the political parties, the media and the Nepal army.

The Maoists have now set a pre-condition that the government first come up with a plan to reintegrate their fighters under Security Sector Reform (SSR). The latest demand comes after the registration and verification of Maoist army personnel at the main cantonment site in Ilam (eastern Nepal) from Jun. 19 to 26 was followed by a significant number disqualifications.

During the first phase of registration in the seven main and 21 satellite cantonments, the number of Maoist combatants was 30,892 and the weapons 3,428. Almost all the political parties, the civil society and the Nepal army expressed disbelief at the large number of combatants and the disproportionately low number of weapons.

Although United Nations officials are tight-lipped as to how many of the 3,221 combatants from Ilam and neighbouring cantonments were registered and then disqualified, government-controlled media – headed by a Maoist minister – put the figure at 400. Party chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal a.k.a. Prachanda, publicly accused the U.N. Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) of moving towards a premeditated target of disqualifying 40 percent of the People&#39s Liberation Army (PLA). He also accused UNMIN of a &#39conspiracy&#39 to destroy the PLA by trying to apply DDR (disarm, demobilise and reintegrate) model to it.

‘&#39Their (Maoists&#39) stubbornness has taken us all by surprise,&#39’ confided a senior officer of the Nepal army to IPS, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. ‘&#39The verification, which is going on as per previously agreed parameters, cannot be stalled.’’

UNMIN chief Ian Martin agrees. At a recent press conference in Kathmandu, he said the Maoists&#39 demands went ‘&#39beyond the issue of verification itself&#39’. He pointed out that a special committee of the interim government established in accordance with Article 146 of the interim constitution has been mandated to look into supervision, integration, and rehabilitation of the combatants of the Maoist army.

‘&#39However the important issue of security sector reform is primarily relevant to the future of those who remain in the cantonments after verification: it should not be a pre-condition to verification itself,&#39’ Martin told journalists at the press conference. &#39’I remind everyone that the Agreement on Monitoring the Management of Arms and Armies was negotiated between the Maoists and the then seven-party alliance (SPA) government: it was they who agreed upon the criteria which UNMIN has been asked to apply and it is their responsibility now to enable us to do so in a spirit of cooperation.&#39’

UNMIN was established in January this year after the Security Council cleared it. The SPA and the Maoists had urged the U.N. Secretary General late last year to send a mission here with two-pronged mandate: the monitoring of arms and armed personnel, and electoral support towards conducting free and fair constituent assembly election.

Several rounds of meetings, since the Maoists first asked for suspension of verification in the cantonment in Sindhuli district, have taken place between and among the ruling parties, CPN (Maoist) and the UNMIN to resume the process. On Wednesday, second-ranking Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai indicated willingness to resume the verification.

Kanak Mani Dixit, veteran journalist and respected political analyst, reasons that the Maoist leadership is embarrassed that their last minute recruitment drive has been exposed and all their recent statements in public are a face-saving exercise. ‘’Nobody believes that the actual number of combatants is more than half the number the Maoists have said they had in their army,’’ Dixit said. ‘’Now the worry for the Maoist leadership is what to do with the actual expectations of the people they recruited to inflate their army&#39s numbers.’’

Dixit says he is not surprised by irritants in the verification process. ‘’The U.N. is employing international standards, so there will be hiccups.’’

Sections of political and civil society as well as the international community (mainly the United States) have expressed concerns about the adverse impact of the Maoists’ breach of previous agreements.

In his last press conference here, former U.S. ambassador James F. Moriarty (who left on Jul. 13) accused the Maoists of being insincere and termed them – and the armed groups in the terai – as the biggest threat to peace and holding of constituent assembly election.

Ram Chandra Poudel, who heads the new ministry of peace and reconstruction, told IPS that the Maoists&#39 actions have taken the peace process to the brink. ‘’I do hope they realise that their current actions and behaviour would harm the peace process,’’ he said.

Poudel said the government is willing to provide &#39parting&#39 money to those found ineligible to stay in the camps besides providing a monthly salary plus living allowance of Rs 4,800 (approximately 74 US dollars) to combatants in the camps.

Dixit sees a positive side to what he calls Maoist leadership&#39s public posturing. ‘’That a former outlawed rebel force is worried about losing face in public is actually a positive sign,’’ he said. ‘’It shows the Maoists are trying to evolve into a political party.’’

The once outlawed CPN (Maoist) entered the political spectrum last year after the seven-party alliance and the rebels forced King Gyanendra to relinquish his absolute power after a successful people&#39s movement for democracy and peace. The &#39people&#39s war&#39 launched in February 1996 claimed more than 13,000 lives, many of whom are believed to be innocent civilians.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Nov 28 2005 (IPS)

An alliance between Nepal’s mainstream political parties and Maoist rebels brings hope of resolution to a crisis, brought on by King Gyanendra’s Feb. 1 assumption of direct rule, citing the failure of democratically-elected governments to deal with a bloody, decade-old communist uprising.

The agreement between a seven-party coalition and the outlawed Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), to push for an interim constituent assembly-termed a “meeting point” for the former adversaries-carries the danger of a violent backlash by the palace that has the backing of the kingdom’s armed forces.

Under the agreement, announced last week, the two sides agreed to end the armed conflict between the Maoists and the army by doing away with “autocratic” monarchy and establishing absolute democracy.

The rebels have committed to move ahead in a peaceful, new political current through this process. The agreement also speaks of the Maoists’ commitment to institutionalising values of competitive, multi-party democracy, civil and fundamental rights, human rights and the rule of law.

“The party-rebel understanding is a historic and long-needed one, for the establishment of peace,” Narayan Wagle, editor of Nepal’s largest-selling daily ‘Kantipur’ and noted political analyst, told IPS.

“Ironically, it was King Gyanendra’s coup (of Feb. 1) which made this possible,” Wagle observed.

Devendra Raj Panday, a former minister who has served as chief of Transparency International’s Nepal chapter, and is one of the stalwarts of the citizens’ movement for restoration of democracy, said the agreement has instilled new hope for peace in the country.

Addressing a mass meet in Kathmandu, on Friday, Panday said a new constitution, formed through the planned constituent assembly, would address infirmities in the 1990 constitution which was drawn up when Nepal moved from absolute monarchy to a democratic polity.

Many crucial issues have, however, been glossed over by the new alliance, such as the future role of the monarchy, decommissioning of weapons by the rebels and the extension of the Maoist-declared unilateral ceasefire that expires on Dec. 2.

In an interview to pro-Maoist news portal, ‘krishnasenonline’ on Nov. 24, the CPN-Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, better known as Prachanda (Mighty One), said breaking the ceasefire would not affect the “preliminary working unity” with the seven-party coalition.

Despite such thorny issues, editorials in the independent press hailed the understanding as a “breakthrough” and a “historic pact” for establishing peace.

India and the United States, countries which wield enormous clout in Nepal, have cautiously welcomed the pact which was made public on Nov. 22.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who is “studying” the agreement, has urged the Maoists to extend the ceasefire and the government to reciprocate it. He also reiterated his offer of help in resolving the crisis.

After initially protesting against the foreign-sponsored (India) “unholy” and “unnatural” deal on foreign soil (India), the government spokesperson and Minister for Information and Communications, Tanka Dhakal, issued a short press release on Nov. 24, saying that the government was “conscious towards any activity meant for establishing peace”.

Dhakal’s statement spoke of the government’s belief that representative system could be practiced under the present constitution alone and reiterated the government’s “strong determination” to conduct the elections (municipal and parliamentary).

Both these possibilities have been given a toss by the understanding reached between the mainstream parties and the outlawed rebels.

While the parties allege that the king has blatantly violated the constitution- a product of the popular ‘Jana Andolan’ (People’s Movement of 1990)- and maintain that no elections can be free and fair under the king’s rule, the Maoists have always wanted to scrap it.

Even as the parties and the Maoists were drawing up their pact in New Delhi, earlier this month, the government stepped up efforts to foil political rallies and demonstrations by the opposition throughout the kingdom- from immobilising the party cadre-carrying vehicles to baton-charging the demonstrators.

Major political parties blame an “over ambitious” king for pushing the country back several decades and being an obstacle to peace, democracy and development and have vowed to cut down his powers.

Already, about 13,000 people have lost their lives since 1996 when the Maoists started their armed insurgency to overthrow monarchy in this landlocked kingdom sandwiched between two Asian giants- China and India.

Much will now depend on how the king responds. With his near total isolation, the freezing of weapons supply by India, the U.S. and Britain and the people’s desire for peace, the monarch will find it difficult to pursue his own ‘war on terror’ and perpetuate his direct rule.

“Obviously, the ball is in the king’s court,” said Wagle, who believes the king has no choice but to respond positively. “Confrontation or acceptance is up to the king but this is a golden opportunity for him to retract since the Maoists appear to accept some role for monarchy. If the king fails to respond positively, he will not only risk his own rule but the institution of monarchy itself,’’ Wagle warned.

If the king retracts his “unconstitutional moves of Oct. 4, 2002 (dismissing an elected prime minister) and Feb. 1, 2005 (assuming absolute powers after dismissing an all-party government), he could still remain a constitutional monarch,’’ said communist leader Madhav Kumar Nepal.

There is also disagreement on the procedure to set up a constituent assembly. While the parties want to reinstate the dissolved parliament first, form an all-party government, hold talks with the Maoists and then go for the constitution-making body, the Maoists have still not accepted the demand for the restoration of the dissolved parliament.

The rebels prefer holding a national political convention, followed by an interim government which would conduct elections to the proposed constituent assembly. But the two sides have decided to hold further discussions to sort this out.

Although the Maoists have not made any commitment to surrendering their weapons, the parties and the Maoists have agreed to keep the rebel armed forces and the Royal Nepalese Army under the supervision of the U.N. or any other dependable international body during the elections for the constituent assembly.

In addition to these differences, the parties also wanted the Maoists to renounce violence completely but the 12-point agreement is silent on this.

All eyes are now on Gyanendra, who is returning to Nepal on Dec. 2 after his three-week foreign tour that covered a regional summit in Dhaka, the World Summit on Information Society in Tunis and a much-criticised African safari at tax-payers’ expense.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU , Nov 24 2005 (IPS)

King Gyanendra’s military-backed ‘royal coup’, on Feb. 1, has proven a major setback for the Lhotsampas (Bhutanese nationals of Nepali origin) fleeing the autocratic regime of the world’s other Himalayan kingdom.

No one seems to have noticed the effect that Gyanendra’s assumption of direct rule and restriction of civil liberties have had on the fate of the more than 105,000 Bhutanese refugees, languishing in seven camps run by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR),in eastern Nepal.

Their plight simply vanished from the political and diplomatic radar of Kathmandu, which has since been occupied with second-guessing the absolute monarch’s next move.

Nepal’s vibrant press, sympathetic to the cause of the refugees, has been reduced to struggling for its own survival in the face of a relentless onslaught on freedoms by the royal regime, in the name of fighting a bloody Maoist insurgency.

Fearing total eclipse of their cause, a group of 27 women refugee women from the UNHCR camps arrived in Kathmandu on Nov. 11 and began a four-hour daily sit-in before UN House-that accommodates most U.N. offices and agencies-demanding that Secretary-General Kofi Annan intervene for their safe and early return to Bhutan.

The women, drawn from all the seven camps, who timed their protest to coincide with the 50th birthday celebrations of Bhutanese monarch, Jigme Singye Wangchuk, called off the sit-ins on Nov. 15 only after receiving assurances from U.N. officials.

As a further attempt to put pressure on Thimphu, the refugees also made an appeal at the summit of the seven-nation South Asian Assocaition for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) regional bloc in Dhaka on Nov. 12-13. SAARC includes Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh.

“The refugees of Bhutan seek to draw the attention of the leaders of the South Asian countries and the member states of the United Nations towards their plight and request them to take immediate steps to effectively raise the issue in appropriate fora,” they pleaded.

The refugee women were supported by the Human Rights Council of Bhutan, headed by exiled refugee leader Teknath Rizal and the Bhutanese Refugee Repatriation Representative Committee, an eastern Nepal-based refugee organisation.

Refugee organisations as well as political parties are banned in the Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan but function in Nepal and India.

“The political turmoil in Nepal has had a very negative effect on our goal of returning home with safety and in dignity,” Rizal told IPS. “We are tired of waiting and want the international community to take steps to ensure smooth and early repatriation.”

Rizal, who languished for over a decade in a Bhutanese prison, said that given Thimphu’s reluctance to take back its own citizens, the international community must exert “required pressure” on it to do the needful.

In their letter addressed to Annan, the refugees said: “Of late, there has been curtailment of basic necessities in the refugee camps. Not to mention education, the health condition is deteriorating. The people are dying for lack of proper treatment for their illnesses.”

Indeed, the office of the UNHCR says it is facing a funds crunch and cannot sustain the refugee camps. Supplies of vegetables and fruits have had to be severely cut and other staples reduced.

Kerosene rations, vital for cooking as well as lighting lamps (there is no electricity in the camps), have also been reduced. Rizal fears that continued indifference to the refugee plight may invite disastrous consequences for the entire region.

The Bhutanese, mainly Nepali-speaking Hindus, started arriving in eastern Nepal via India (Nepal and Bhutan do not share a border) in the early 1990s, alleging forced eviction by the Bhutanese government, under an ‘ethnic cleansing’ drive- a charge that the ‘Dragon Kingdom’ denies.

Fifteen rounds of talks between the foreign ministers of Nepal and Bhutan, aimed at securing the refugees’ safe repatriation and dating back to 1993, have yielded little progress.

More than 75 percent of the over 8,000 refugees from the Khudunabari camp were deemed eligible to return to Bhutan and their repatriation was to have begun on Feb. 15, 2004. But the process stalled even before it began.

Scuffles broke out Dec. 22, 2003, when officials were sent to brief the refugees, and the two governments have since locked horns over finding and punishing those responsible for the incident. Two Bhutanese officials and a Nepalese police officer were injured when refugees pelted them with stones.

Underlying the outbreak was refugees’ fear that they would face persecution anew upon return to Bhutan.

Stoking that fear, Bhutanese officials have warned refugees that on return they would have to live in ‘quarantine’ in camps for another two years, during which time they would have to prove their loyalty to the monarch, history, and culture, before being finally accepted as citizens.

Desperation in the camps drove about 300 refugees, mainly the elderly, women and children, to cross into India on Aug. 3 this year in an attempt to reach Bhutan but Indian police, thwarted their move at the Kakarbhitta-Pani Tanki international border.

The refugees squatted for several hours on the Mechi Bridge, which joins Nepal and India, before being forced into vans and buses by Nepal Police, to be dropped back at their camps.

While the monarchists and the political parties fight for control of a country already under seige by Maoist rebels, the plight of the refugees has clearly been ignored. One of the banners carried by the women refugees during their sit-in poignantly read: ‘’Have you forgotten us?”

The refugees strongly believe that their plight could end quickly if India, which has great influence over Bhutan and a significant sway over Nepalese government, intervenes to resolve the long-festering problem.

India’s official position has been that it is a bilateral issue between Bhutan and Nepal and one that these two countries can settle amicably.

For their part, the two kingdoms have also been maintaining that it was a bilateral issue, though Kathmandu has, in the past, warned of “internalising the issue if Bhutan continued to deliberately drag its feet over finding a solution.”

What has irked the Nepalese government is the international community’s suggestion that it accept the UNHCR’s standard, three-tier formula in such cases: repatriation to country of origin; re-settlement in third countries; local integration.

The Nepalese government has no problem with the first two options but the last one is seen as a red herring and described by officials as “putting the cart before the horse”.

While the two governments continue to talk about when to hold the next round of talks, the refugees’ patience is running out. “How long shall we wait for justice?’’ a Lhotsampa woman asked.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Jun 11 2005 (IPS)

Dipak Budhamagar wants to be a farmer like his father, who was killed by Maoist insurgents during the Tihar festival last November for fleeing a rebel work camp after a month’s forced labour.

Dipak Budhamagar wants to be a farmer like his father, who was killed by Maoist insurgents during the Tihar festival last November for fleeing a rebel work camp after a month’s forced labour.

But this barely 14-year-old, diminutive boy from a village in Rolpa district, a Maoist stronghold, instead ended up a ‘khalasi’ (helper) in Kathmandu, shouting at the top of his lungs to attract would-be passengers into a three-wheeler ‘tempo’.

During his three-month stint on the tempo (a job he did previously when he came to Kathmandu to search for his mother, who left their family to marry another man), Dipak received one meal and 70 rupees (less than one U.S. dollar) as daily wages for nearly 15 hours of hard labour.

Then the boy was taken in by Child Workers in Nepal Concerned Centre (CWIN), the largest non-governmental organisation (NGO) for children in Nepal. Now he stays in one of their shelters and also attends school, where he studies in Grade 4. At his age, most children in cities are in at least Grade 8, just a year away from completing secondary-level education.

"I want to go to my village and till our land," Dipak told IPS. "We have a big piece of farmland." But he cannot go back to his village for he is a hunted boy.

After seeing his father stabbed and killed by cadres of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), Dipak hurled a stone during a Maoist meeting a few weeks later, injuring one rebel. He then fled from.

But the rebels soon caught him, struck him on the head with a sickle (the injury mark is still visible) and took him to a hospital in neighbouring Dang district. Dipak escaped two days later and Royal Nepalese Army personnel took him to the capital Kathmandu and gave him 200 rupees to fend for himself.

That was when he started his second stint on the tempo.

Dipak is far from alone as a child who fled his home and is now forced to work to survive.

Girls fare worse than boys, and are more prone to sexual exploitation, according to experts. Some girls shared their experiences at an interaction programme-cum-group birthday celebration on Friday organised by the Underprivileged Children’s Education Programme.

Many said they were forced to leave their villages due to threats from Maoists. Today they work in restaurants and carpet factories, among others, facing hardships that range from low wages to sexual abuse.

Most of the children who flee home (or are sent away by their parents to prevent their forced recruitment by the Maoists) end up in Nepal’s urban areas, either as domestic help, ‘khalasi’ like Dipak or child labourers in carpet factories, stone quarries or brick kilns.

An Apr. 30 CWIN report (based on data collated from its own surveys and others by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), among others, shows that around 40,000 children have been displaced by conflict since 1996, when the now-outlawed Maoist party launched its armed uprising.

More than 12,000 people have already been killed, among them 361 children.

"The situation has turned from bad to worse," says CWIN President Gauri Pradhan. "The child labour problem has increased due to the armed conflict."

Frequent school closures caused by the Maoists’ general and educational strikes, forced indoctrination and clashes between security forces and insurgents have compelled many children to leave their village and seek refuge in urban areas, he added in an interview.

Some children are fleeing the Maoists ranks, and so are hunted by both the security forces and the insurgents.

Many go to neighbouring India as well. A study conducted by Save the Children Alliance at four transit points near the western city of Nepalgunj, from June to August 2004, found some 17,000 children crossing over to India seeking jobs and shelter.

"Based on trend analysis and observation and appeals for help received by the CWIN Helpline, we know that the problem has worsened in the past three years," Pradhan says.

The increasingly deadly conflict has claimed more than 4,000 lives in the last three years alone. With the monarchy, political parties and the Maoists locked in a three-way fierce struggle for supremacy, the violence could easily get worse and with it, the problem of child labour.

The desperate children who are forced to leave their homes and schools take up any job, however hazardous, giving rise not only to exploitation but also risking their lives.

About 32,000 Nepali children are currently working in 1,600 stone quarries, with only 30 percent of those registered with the government, found a study conducted by another NGO, Concern for Children and Environment-Nepal (CONCERN).

The ILO, however, says more than 10,000 children work in stone quarries, coal, sand, and red soil mines in Nepal, the majority of them aged 11 to 13. Most are young girls.

According to the ILO’s International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), 127,000 children in Nepal are working in mining and other hazardous situations it calls "the worst form of labour."

Sunday Jun. 12 is the ILO’s World Day Against Child Labour.

The conflict has led to an increase in child domestic workers, said Pracha Vasuprast, deputy project manager at the ILO-IPEC Nepal office, speaking at a programme on child domestic workers in Kathmandu on Friday.

"In my country Thailand, you have to be very rich to have a child domestic help." In the Hindu kingdom’s urban areas, children work in homes for as little as 400 rupees a month (plus meals) and toil from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. in some households.

"Lack of awareness is contributing to the increase," Vasuprast says.

The result of all these factors is that the number of child labourers in Nepal, ages 5-14 now stands at 2.6 million, according to CWIN.

Another problem is that the armed conflict has severely affected the outreach programmes of ILO-IPEC and its partners, resulting in the rise of internally displaced persons (IDPs), says Yadav Amatya, a senior advisor with IPEC.

"Inaccessibility is yet another problem and we face difficulties in locating families of child labourers," he told IPS.

CWIN’s Pradhan warns that with child traffickers on the prowl for vulnerable children, the situation could go out of hand. Sexual exploitation is increasing, CWIN data shows.

As a first step to minimise such problems, Amatya suggests the government must take move to protect vulnerable children. All sides to the conflict must also recognise schools as zones of peace, and donors should provide programmes and other support. "We need generous foreign aid to address the problem," he added.

In the meantime, children in Nepal will continue to slog it out day after day to provide a living for themselves and their families.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Jun 11 2005 (IPS)

Dipak Budhamagar wants to be a farmer like his father, who was killed by Maoist insurgents during the Tihar festival last November for fleeing a rebel work camp after a month’s forced labour.

But this barely 14-year-old, diminutive boy from a village in Rolpa district, a Maoist stronghold, instead ended up a ‘khalasi’ (helper) in Kathmandu, shouting at the top of his lungs to attract would-be passengers into a three-wheeler ‘tempo’.

During his three-month stint on the tempo (a job he did previously when he came to Kathmandu to search for his mother, who left their family to marry another man), Dipak received one meal and 70 rupees (less than one U.S. dollar) as daily wages for nearly 15 hours of hard labour.

Then the boy was taken in by Child Workers in Nepal Concerned Centre (CWIN), the largest non-governmental organisation (NGO) for children in Nepal. Now he stays in one of their shelters and also attends school, where he studies in Grade 4. At his age, most children in cities are in at least Grade 8, just a year away from completing secondary-level education.

“I want to go to my village and till our land,” Dipak told IPS. “We have a big piece of farmland.” But he cannot go back to his village for he is a hunted boy.

After seeing his father stabbed and killed by cadres of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), Dipak hurled a stone during a Maoist meeting a few weeks later, injuring one rebel. He then fled from.

But the rebels soon caught him, struck him on the head with a sickle (the injury mark is still visible) and took him to a hospital in neighbouring Dang district. Dipak escaped two days later and Royal Nepalese Army personnel took him to the capital Kathmandu and gave him 200 rupees to fend for himself.

That was when he started his second stint on the tempo.

Dipak is far from alone as a child who fled his home and is now forced to work to survive.

Girls fare worse than boys, and are more prone to sexual exploitation, according to experts. Some girls shared their experiences at an interaction programme-cum-group birthday celebration on Friday organised by the Underprivileged Children’s Education Programme.

Many said they were forced to leave their villages due to threats from Maoists. Today they work in restaurants and carpet factories, among others, facing hardships that range from low wages to sexual abuse.

Most of the children who flee home (or are sent away by their parents to prevent their forced recruitment by the Maoists) end up in Nepal’s urban areas, either as domestic help, ‘khalasi’ like Dipak or child labourers in carpet factories, stone quarries or brick kilns.

An Apr. 30 CWIN report (based on data collated from its own surveys and others by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), among others, shows that around 40,000 children have been displaced by conflict since 1996, when the now-outlawed Maoist party launched its armed uprising.

More than 12,000 people have already been killed, among them 361 children.

“The situation has turned from bad to worse,” says CWIN President Gauri Pradhan. “The child labour problem has increased due to the armed conflict.”

Frequent school closures caused by the Maoists’ general and educational strikes, forced indoctrination and clashes between security forces and insurgents have compelled many children to leave their village and seek refuge in urban areas, he added in an interview.

Some children are fleeing the Maoists ranks, and so are hunted by both the security forces and the insurgents.

Many go to neighbouring India as well. A study conducted by Save the Children Alliance at four transit points near the western city of Nepalgunj, from June to August 2004, found some 17,000 children crossing over to India seeking jobs and shelter.

“Based on trend analysis and observation and appeals for help received by the CWIN Helpline, we know that the problem has worsened in the past three years,” Pradhan says.

The increasingly deadly conflict has claimed more than 4,000 lives in the last three years alone. With the monarchy, political parties and the Maoists locked in a three-way fierce struggle for supremacy, the violence could easily get worse and with it, the problem of child labour.

The desperate children who are forced to leave their homes and schools take up any job, however hazardous, giving rise not only to exploitation but also risking their lives.

About 32,000 Nepali children are currently working in 1,600 stone quarries, with only 30 percent of those registered with the government, found a study conducted by another NGO, Concern for Children and Environment-Nepal (CONCERN).

The ILO, however, says more than 10,000 children work in stone quarries, coal, sand, and red soil mines in Nepal, the majority of them aged 11 to 13. Most are young girls.

According to the ILO’s International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), 127,000 children in Nepal are working in mining and other hazardous situations it calls “the worst form of labour.”

Sunday Jun. 12 is the ILO’s World Day Against Child Labour.

The conflict has led to an increase in child domestic workers, said Pracha Vasuprast, deputy project manager at the ILO-IPEC Nepal office, speaking at a programme on child domestic workers in Kathmandu on Friday.

“In my country Thailand, you have to be very rich to have a child domestic help.” In the Hindu kingdom’s urban areas, children work in homes for as little as 400 rupees a month (plus meals) and toil from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. in some households.

“Lack of awareness is contributing to the increase,” Vasuprast says.

The result of all these factors is that the number of child labourers in Nepal, ages 5-14 now stands at 2.6 million, according to CWIN.

Another problem is that the armed conflict has severely affected the outreach programmes of ILO-IPEC and its partners, resulting in the rise of internally displaced persons (IDPs), says Yadav Amatya, a senior advisor with IPEC.

“Inaccessibility is yet another problem and we face difficulties in locating families of child labourers,” he told IPS.

CWIN’s Pradhan warns that with child traffickers on the prowl for vulnerable children, the situation could go out of hand. Sexual exploitation is increasing, CWIN data shows.

As a first step to minimise such problems, Amatya suggests the government must take move to protect vulnerable children. All sides to the conflict must also recognise schools as zones of peace, and donors should provide programmes and other support. “We need generous foreign aid to address the problem,” he added.

In the meantime, children in Nepal will continue to slog it out day after day to provide a living for themselves and their families.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, May 25 2005 (IPS)

After months of sermonising on the need for a “nationalistic” and “responsible” media, the government of Nepal – directly controlled by King Gyanendra – passed an ordinance aimed at taming it.

It was not unexpected, but the new law enacted last week to curb press freedom in Nepal nevertheless has stunned the media community which lost no time in denouncing the ”draconian law”, warning that the worse is yet to come.

”We knew some regulatory measures were in the offing but what has come has really taken us by surprise,” Prateek Pradhan, editor of the largest-circulated English daily, ‘The Kathmandu Post’, told IPS.

The ordinance carrying amendments to various existing laws, relating to the media, was carried by a section of the press last Saturday. These contain some of the harshest measures aimed to muzzle the media since the monarch usurped power by dismissing the cabinet on Feb. 1 and declared a state of emergency, citing the inability of political parties to rein in a nine-year Maoist insurgency that has claimed over 11,000 lives.

On Apr. 30, however, the state of emergency was removed but many civil liberties still remain restricted.

The amendments widen the ambit of defamation with more people included under the term “His Majesty and royal family”, thus barring any criticism of them. Also words like ”insult” have been incorporated in the Defamation Act and the penalty for defamation ranges from 50,000 rupees (about 700 U.S. dollars) and one year imprisonment to a fine of up to 500,000 rupees (7,000 U.S. dollars) and/or two years jail.

The new law also bans any reporting on the Maoist rebels that might ”promote terrorism and destructive activities”. The defiance of this ban attracts fines ranging from 50,000 rupees to 100,000 rupees and/or one year imprisonment.

Reporting deemed to portray the government (with the word ”elected” deleted) in bad light is also covered in the new provisions with the penalties coming under the defamation clauses.

The ordinance affecting both the print and broadcast mediums comes at a time when the independent Nepalese media has been trying to break free from the yoke of self- censorship after the Feb.1 royal coup.

Also, the latest law comes after army’s censorship of the press in the initial days and the government’s decision to withhold its advertisements (about 25 per cent of the market share) to the private media.

But the free press is yet to face its biggest test.

”This draconian law is the biggest jolt since the independent media came into existence after the restoration of democracy in 1990 and we need to defy it,” said Pradhan, questioning the right of the ”unelected government” to pass such a sweeping law in the absence of Parliament.

Calling for defiance of the new measures, Pradhan warned that failure in forcing the government to withdraw the measures would mark the beginning of the end of independent media in the world’s only Hindu kingdom.

The biggest blow, yet again, since the royal coup, has been dealt to the once-successful FM community radio stations. Once the law comes into effect (it awaits the royal seal), community radio stations will be barred from broadcasting any news. They would only be able to air “informative” programmes on health, education, sports, population, weather, road and transport conditions and similar development topics.

”Effectively, the FM stations can only air government capsules and notices on health, agriculture, etc,” explained Shiva Gaunle, chief reporter of the fortnightly ‘Himal Khabarpatrika’ and vice-president, central region of the Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ).

The new law may take the wind out of the writ filed by a lawyer challenging the government ban on news broadcasts by FM community radio stations. A similar ban imposed about four years ago was annulled by a Supreme Court verdict, terming the ban illegal. More significantly, the apex court then had then ruled that the electronic media enjoys similar rights as newspapers, as guaranteed under the press freedom clause in the constitution.

”The entire FM community will be paralysed if these provisions are implemented,” said Gopal Guragain, the managing director of Communications Corner, the largest network of community radio stations in Nepal. The network covers at least 70 per cent of the grassroots population in rural areas of Nepal.

Moreover, under the new provisions, the radio stations cannot broadcast a programme simultaneously from different centres and stations without seeking prior approval from the government for up-linking facilities.

Two months before the heavily armed soldiers walked into the studio of the Communications Corner on Feb. 1 to shut down its transmission, the private FM radio network had started its own 6 am to 11 pm hourly news channel, called ‘Kaya Kairan’ (‘Head to Toe’). It was modelled after the ‘BBC’ news, every hour, on the hour.

Silence is all that marks the station now. ”It is end of the road for FM stations if the law comes into effect,” said Guragain.

The legal advisor of the government, Attorney-General Pawan Kumar Jha, however, rubbished the talk of muzzling press freedom.

”These amendments are for regulating the media, not for curbing it,” he clarified at a talk programme on the new law in Kathmandu on Saturday. ”No one can have unbridled freedom.”

But the media community sees more restrictions in the days ahead.

”This is an experiment,” warned Taranath Dahal, the ex-president of the Federation of Nepalese Journalists, the umbrella organization of journalists in Nepal. “We will be seeing more repressive measures against the press.”

Dahal added the latest restrictive provisions would only worsen the existing self- censorship.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
NEPALGUNJ, Nepal, Apr 19 2005 (IPS)

Before King Gyananedra’s Feb.1 declaration of emergency- rule, journalist Rameshwor Bohora was a frequent traveller to the Himalayan kingdom’s rural areas – where large swathes of Nepal are under Maoist rebel-control.

From the rugged terrain there he filed stories for the Kathmandu-based ‘Rajdhani’ newspaper on how the daily life of ordinary Nepali villagers had been affected by the 11-year Maoist insurgency, which has seen over 11,000 lives lost in fighting between the rebels and government forces.

But now Bohora is cooling his heels in his office in Nepalgunj – in Banke district – the largest city in mid-west Nepal.

”There are bigger risks in travelling outside the city at present,” he told IPS. ”We might be followed by security personnel and may even be summoned or detained by the CDO (chief district officer).”

One big risk in being tailed by security forces is that the Maoist rebels might mistake the scribes as spies. The rebels have been known to be ruthless to anyone they deem a government spy, even going to the extent of killing the suspects.

While Bohora and his district reporter colleagues are ”jobless in their jobs”, the fate of ‘Kantipur’ daily correspondent Suraj Kunwar in the remote far-west Achham district is worse. He had to flee his duty station in Mangalsen, the district headquarters, after he started receiving direct and indirect threats.

”I was being followed too,” he said. After speaking to his editor, he left Mangalsen and is now in Kathmandu, the capital.

His previous reportage included writing about corruption in the local administration, the army and police’s refusal to pay rent for the buildings and school premises they occupy during their hot pursuit of Maoists in remote areas, and the rape of a woman allegedly by soldiers.

At an estimated 10 killings a day, Nepal is currently the deadliest conflict in Asia.

The London-based rights group Amnesty International accuses the 10,000 strong Mosists of kidnapping, torture and murder – including a penchant for clubbing victims to death and beheading truck drivers who defy its blockades. Meanwhile, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group says King Gyanendra runs ”a non-party state that has decimated democracy and kills people at will.”

Gyanendra dismissed the government and imposed emergency rule on Feb. 1 in what he said was a move to tackle the Maoists who are battling to set up a kingless republic in the desperately poor country.

According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, over 600 rights activists, journalists, lawyers, students and political activists remain detained since Feb. 1.

Besides the heightened intimidation, journalists’ tasks have been made difficult by directives or codes of conduct from several district administrations that the media has to follow. This is in addition to the code of conduct issued by the Nepal Press Council, which governs the work ethics of journalists and publications.

In Banke, the local administration issued a 12-point code of conduct for the press within two days after the king’s emergency declaration.

While the local media opposes the entire directive in general, they have particular objection over two points: not covering any political rally or meeting opposed to King Gyanendra’s move and not writing any news about the clash between the security forces and Maoists. Journalists are forbidden to report on casualty figures including those of civilians unless it comes from the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA).

”We did this so as to help the local press resume operations,” explained Dilli Raj Joshi, the chief district officer, who also doubles up as head of civil administration in Banke district. Ensconced in his office in Nepalgunj, the CDO reasons that was the only way to help the resumption of the local press that was ordered closed for a week since Feb. 1. ”If we had not come up with such directives, the press might have remained closed.”

Local district reporters, however, do not buy this argument.

”The objective is to cripple the press so that the truth about the situation on the ground does not get out,” said the editor of a local Nepali daily who did not wish to be named for security reasons.

Media defiance began soon after they resumed publishing newspapers. And calls from the army have continued unabated.

”Some editors got calls from the army officer from the RNA’s mid-western division headquarters after they reported that two civilians were also killed in the cross-fire between the army and the rebels in Bardiya district in February this year,” said the editor. ”The army maintained that no civilians were killed.”

According to New York-based Committee to Protect Journalist (CPJ) that came to Nepal recently on a fact-finding mission, a journalist from outside the capital was issued threats by an army sergeant. ”We can do anything to you now as we are back to old days (referring to the days of absolute monarchy) again,” the journalist was told.

It is evident that district journalists, being in the direct line of fire, are under greater pressure and subject to more threats than their brethren in the capital.

”The confidence level of journalists working outside Kathmandu is low,” said ‘Kantipur’s’ editor Narayan Wagle. ”Even the level of checks and balances are low in the districts.”

Wagle who himself was summoned by the crime branch of the Kathmandu district police last month for the prominent display of news about country-wide demonstrations against the king’s move and the subsequent arrests of hundreds of political cadres and leaders, mentions the presence of the Supreme Court, international press, foreign embassies and other international organisations as check and balance factors that have kept the authorities on their toes in the capital.

But there is no such presence in the districts, he said.

”Psychologically the journalists working outside (Kathmandu) are down, so it is difficult to work without fear,” Wagle, arguably the most-travelled journalist in rural Nepal, pointed out.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Jan 30 2005 (IPS)

Most people passing through the Lazimpat area in Nepal’s capital hardly know that a very low profile organisation, close to the French Embassy, shelters hundreds of Tibetan refugees in its premises at any given time.

Most of them are runaways, coming all the way from Tibet, trying to escape not only the Chinese army and police but also their Nepalese counterparts. The mountainous terrain and bitter cold are unable to prevent those daring to escape the communist China-controlled homeland of the Lama sect Buddhists that borders the world’s only Hindu Kingdom.

Last week, however, the low profile place in Lazimpat became the cynosure of all eyes, more so of the national and international media, thanks to Jan. 21 order of the Nepalese government to close the Office of the Representative the Dalai Lama – Tibet’s spiritual leader -and the Tibetan Refugee Welfare Office (TRWO).

The Kathmandu district administration, upon instruction by Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ordered the closure of the two offices, saying they would not be allowed to carry out any ”political activities”.

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Prakash Sharan Mahat admits the difficulty of the Tibetans to register their offices, insisting at the same time that Nepal’s policy regarding Tibetan refugees remains unchanged despite the closure notice.

”We are not against any socio-cultural and welfare activities of and for the refugees but we cannot allow any political activities,” emphasised Mahat.

Wangchuk Tsering, the Dalai Lama’s Representative in Nepal, firmly denies that the two offices he heads indulge in political campaign of any sort. But the Home (Interior) Minstry told Tsering that the Dalai Lama’s name could not be used anymore.

It runs contrary to the Nepalese government’s ”one-China” policy, the media-shy Tibetan was told in an official statement from the Home Ministry. Nepal supports the Chinese government’s claim that both Tibet (and Taiwan) are part of mainland China.

This blow came after 45 years of the offices functioning in Kathmandu smoothly, despite the Chinese government’s displeasure and pressure on the Nepalese government to close them down. The immediate cause of this sudden action is not known although many Tibetans feel that the decision was taken at the behest of the Chinese government.

Nepal is home to more than 20,000 Tibetan refugees who left the Himalayan region after the Dalai Lama fled in 1959 following a failed uprising against Chinese rule. The Dalai Lama, who lives in India, has long ceased visiting Nepal.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said that as many as 3,000 Tibetans risk their lives annually, coming over the Himalayas into Nepal. Tibetans who arrive at the TRWO centre often suffer from frostbite and other life-threatening medical conditions.

”The Refugee Welfare Office has been a critical safety net for tens of thousands of persecuted Tibetans,” said Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch in a statement. ”Closing the office leaves thousands of Tibetan refugees without crucial support.”

The Chinese leadership continues to limit Tibetan religious and cultural expression and seeks to curtail the Dalai Lama’s political and religious influence in all Tibetan areas. Severely repressive measures limit any display of support for an independent Tibet.

On Jan. 26, the Chinese government commuted the death sentence of Tenzin Delek, a highly respected Tibetan monk renowned for his efforts to protect Tibetan culture and lifestyle. Tenzin Delek was imprisoned in 2002 for allegedly ”causing explosions and inciting the separation of the state.”

His alleged co-conspirator, Lobsang Dondrup, was executed two years ago, immediately following a high court review of the case.

Tsering, who is also chairman of the TRWO requested not to try to meet the refugees taking shelter, fearing the Nepalese government’s ire. Most of the refugees speak no language other than Tibetan or Chinese.

He reveals to IPS that the Home Secretary and the other officials told him to register the two offices ”in some other way so as not to hurt Nepal’s sensitive foreign policy stance” over Tibet.

”But we cannot register the offices unless the Nepalese government makes changes in its laws, allowing us to proceed with the registration,” said Tsering, while expressing his helplessness.

Now their hope is counter-pressure from the international community to allow them to re- open. Tsering has already sounded out the U.S. and European Union embassies in the capital as well as the offices of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR).

Constance C. Jones, spokesperson of U.S. Embassy told IPS that the closure of the offices had been brought to the notice of the U.S. State Department.

”We are working with the Nepalese government to ensure that the well-being of the Tibetan refugees in Nepal is not adversely affected,” she said.

She firmly ruled out asking the Nepalese government to change its laws so as to allow the refugees open their offices. ”The changing of laws is an internal matter of the government of Nepal. We are not going to demand that.”

David Johnson, senior human rights advisor in Nepal from the Geneva-based United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, declined to comment as to whether his office would request the Nepalese government to reconsider its decision.

”I am aware of the problem but I cannot comment on it right now,” added Johnson.

A UNHCR official, however, told IPS that the closure of the Tibetan Refugee Welfare Office ” will not affect the protection and assistance by the UNHCR to the Tibetan new arrivals.”

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, May 23 2004 (IPS)

For years, people in the world’s only Hindu kingdom have enjoyed a forced day off from work whenever a ‘bandh’ or general strike is called by mainstream political parties or by the Maoist rebels.

Students gleefully welcomed these total or partial work shutdowns, thankful for the unexpected ‘holidays’ that the hundreds of strikes over the last 14 years have brought.

But these days, the signs of defiance against ‘bandh’ that claim to be for the citizens’ benefit are growing as the shutdowns continue to deal blows to the nation’s economy and psyche.

”How long can I stay indoors? Bhairab Giri, who was carrying a sofa on his head, told IPS. ”I did my work on Thursday (the last of three-day Maoist strike that ended May 20)) as well since my ‘sahu’ (the furniture shop owner) asked me to carry a cupboard.”

”Moreover, I wanted it too, for not doing it would have meant another day without money,” he said.

For people like Giri who depend on daily wages, the strikes are a curse, no matter who calls them and whatever the reason for them.

”I really do not know what these strikes are all about. For me, a one-day strike means a loss of about 300 to 400 rupees (4.1 to 5.47 U.S. dollars). I have a question to ask all those who profess to fight on our behalf: Who are they hurting the most with their frequent strikes?”

Many Nepalis defied the latest bandh despite the bomb blasts caused by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) on May 19, the second day of the three-day strike.

The rebels blew up a parked passenger bus near the city’s biggest bus station. At another place, a bomb they left in the back seat of a taxi went off, damaging the vehicle. But instead of being cowed, operators of public transport vehicles had them plying the streets the following day, though the number was nowhere near those running on normal days. Still, the defiance was for all to see.

During the strike, long-distance travel came to a complete halt for fear of running into mines laid by Maoist rebels determined to deter any travel.

Their three-day strike was just the latest of the shutdowns, since it was preceded by a two-day ‘bandh’ by the five political parties that have been fighting to restore democracy in the kingdom for the past year.

In April too, there was a one-day ‘bandh’ called by the parties, followed by a three-day closure by the Maoists.

But during these strikes, people in the capital and other major cities, by and large, walked to their work. The streets were not crowded like on a normal day, but were not deserted either. Government-run buses were packed.

The Royal Nepalese Army and the police personnel patrolled the streets more frequently than usual, and the home ministry issued a stern warning against any disruption of normal movement.

”We are just fed up with this strike business. It’s time for the ‘bandh’ callers to have some kind of introspection on whether they are employing the right means to achieve their end,” said Hari Pandey, an executive in a travel agency. ”I am not at all surprised at the turnout on the streets despite the threats.”

Worried by the rising number of strikes, the business community, especially the tourism sector, wants the Supreme Court to intervene just as it has in neighbouring India.

”Some of my colleagues have petitioned the court, seeking a ban on strikes,” says Binod Bahadur Shrestha, president of the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI).

However, he realised even if the Supreme Court issued a ban, it would not be effective so long as outlawed Maoist rebels refuse to abide by it. Still, Shrestha said, ”If we are all united on this, I am confident it can be done.”

The economic losses caused by the strikes to this already impoverished nation are staggering. In just one day of total closure, the economy suffers losses to the tune of over 16 million U.S. dollars, according to Kathmandu Research Centre.

Since the restoration of democracy in 1990, there have been 85 general strikes in both the whole country and in Kathmandu Valley, according to Home Ministry.

Besides these, there have been hundreds of regional strikes, both 24-hour and dawn-to-dusk ones, educational institutions’ shutdown as well as blockades that bring the movement of people and goods to a grinding halt.

One visible consequence of the ‘bandh’ has been that the tourists have been coming here for shorter durations and avoiding the ‘risk’ areas for trekking and sightseeing. Those living in the far-flung areas and depending on the tourists’ adventure trekking are the worst hit.

”Although the air passengers show a surge by 40 percent in arrival figures (January 2004 Immigration Department), it means little to those who earn livelihood in and around the trekking areas,” pointed out B P Acharya, owner of a travel agency and Hotel Impala in Thamel, the tourist hub in the capital.

”We can only hope the bandh callers, both on the streets and in the jungle, realise the adverse impact of the now regular strikes,” he added. His hotel’s best room is going for a mere 850 Nepali rupees per night (11.6 dollars), 50 percent less than even four years back.

Schools have also been affected by the schedule disruptions, not to mention the risk of violence, brought by strikes.

Agya Poudyal, a first-year development studies student of the National College here, says she has to attend classes even on Saturdays and other holidays to compensate for the loss of school days due to the strikes.

”It becomes difficult to complete our syllabus in time,” she said. These frequent disruptions are also the factor behind the mushrooming of private tuition centres, she adds.

Suprabhat Bhandari, president of the Guardians Association of Nepal, the country’s largest group of parents and guardians, said: ”It is high time that the schools and other educational institutions be left untouched. We urge all concerned to sign a document declaring schools as zones of peace.”

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Mar 18 2004 (IPS)

The casualties from among soldiers, civilians and rebels in the Nepal’s Maoist rebellion have drawn a lot of attention, but just as serious is the toll that the conflict is taking on the space available for free media, say journalists and rights campaigners here.

Their concerns have been rising this month, in the wake of warnings by officials to watch what they report about the rebellion and be careful about giving space to Maoist rebels and also given incidents where journalists have been killed or threatened by the rebels.

A list compiled by Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ) shows that nearly 300 journalists and columnists have been either detained for questioning or arrested or tortured and in some cases killed by either state security agencies or the Maoists since a national emergency was declared in November 2003.

In a Mar. 15 Cabinet meeting, Home and Information and Communications Minister Kamal Thapa followed up on his Mar. 10 strictures against the press by proposing to "control press", ‘Rajdhani’, a mainstream Nepalese daily, said, quoting anonymous government sources.

Subsequent reports said that the prime minister rejected the move, suggesting instead to "caution" the press.

But that is of little comfort to journalists, given Thapa’s recent accusations that some media give undue importance to the activities of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), the formal name of the Maoist rebels seeking to turn this constitutional monarchy into a republican state. "This will only increase the morale of the terrorists and dent the same of the security forces,” he said.

Thapa singled out the FM radio stations operating from outside the capital for "blowing the incidents out of proportion, thus helping the Maoists spread terror".

He reminded the journalists that the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Control and Punishment) Act 2002 was still alive. "This Act has provisions to prohibit the dissemination of news that promote terror and those defying it will be liable to face punishment."

In an interview with IPS, the spokesman at the Ministry of Information and Communications Mukunda Acharya said: ”As of now there is no move to introduce any law to control press".

Journalists say they have cause to be worried when the government says some journalists’ work could be against the government’s interest.

For instance, three days after the minister’s statement, police in the far western town of Nepalgunj arrested seven journalists with the Tharu-language FM radio programme, ‘Hamar Saidan’ on Mar. 20.

They were released after widespread criticism by local and national press and media organisations the following day.

The minister was angry since the press reported the truth about the Maoists’ fierce attack on the district headquarters of Bhojpur in eastern Nepal on Mar. 3, said Gopal Budhathoki, editor of the Nepalese weekly ‘Sanghu’, published from Sanghu in the Kathmandu Valley. The attack left at least 30 government security forces dead.

The government claims that more than 60 Maoists were killed, but some newspapers relied instead on their district correspondents who reported that only 12 bodies of rebels were found, a toll later went up to around 30 a few days later.

Budhathoki, who was picked up and held for 23 days in March 2002, has his own story to tell. At the time, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba announced that the army had detained Budhathoki for publishing reports that "encouraged and raised morale of the Maoists".

Budhathoki said a group of plainclothes army officers interrogated him repeatedly about publishing an article that criticised the army’s commander-in-chief for failing to pay proper tribute to soldiers killed in a battle with Maoist rebels.

He has since joined some 13 journalists who have filed lawsuits against the government claiming compensation for being illegally detained.

But the government, worried about security, is not the only headache of Nepal’s media in today’s charged environment.

On Sep. 3 last year, cadres of Maoist rebels shot dead Ghanashyam Khadka, correspondent of the state-run news national news agency, Rastriya Samachar Samiti, for writing news inimical to Maoists. The rebels owned up the killing later through a statement.

Meantime, the English-language daily ‘The Kathmandu Post’ reported that the government has prepared a stricter version of terrorist control law, TADA 2002, which allows detention of a suspect accused of terrorism for a year without trial. The existing act expires on Apr. 9, 2004.

"It is very unfortunate that the government that the government is even thinking of curbing press freedom," said Prateek Pradhan, editor of the ‘Post’. "Even if the government attempts to do, the press will not obey the government’s directives."

"The problem is not with the press but with the government which is not responsive to public opinion and is not transparent,” he added.

"Minister Thapa’s statement against the independent press is an attempt to terrorise the press into submission," charged Budhathoki, also vice president of the Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ). "But we will not be cowed down by the government’s bullying."

Soon after the emergency was imposed after the breakdown of the first ceasefire with the Maoists in November 2001, the government had come up with a list of "do’s and don’ts".

On Nov. 28, 2003, the information ministry’s guidelines to the press included refraining from writing news that incited hatred and animosity against the monarchy and harmed national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Among the do’s were "exposing the criminal activities of the Maoist terrorists" and reporting the "brave deeds of the Royal Nepalese Army, the police and the nation’s servants".

Some journalists who have picked up by the authorities have been interrogated about their alleged links with the Maoists or about their sources.

Currently, at least 10 journalists are still under ‘enforced disappearance’ by the security forces, according to the press freedom and monitoring desk of the FNJ. This information is based on the complaints by the family members and colleagues of the detainees.

"We have not been able to find out the whereabouts of these missing journalists despite several reminders and delegations to the government," Pradeep Ghimire of the monitoring desk told IPS.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
DAMAK, Nepal, Feb 25 2004 (IPS)

More than 100,000 refugees from neighbouring Bhutan confront dimmed prospects amid an impasse over repatriation and cutbacks in aid.

The Lhotsampas, Bhutanese nationals of Nepalese origin who fled cultural persecution in southern Bhutan, have settled in refugee camps here since the late 1980s.

Many of the Lhotsampas, who are Hindu, left Bhutan because the kingdom had launched a cultural and religious drive advancing Bhutan’s Buddhist identity.

Fifteen rounds of talks between the foreign ministers of Nepal and Bhutan, aimed at securing the refugees’ safe repatriation and dating back to 1993, have yielded little tangible progress.

Some of the refugees were deemed eligible to return to Bhutan and their repatriation was to have begun on Feb. 15. But the process stalled even before it began. Scuffles broke out Dec. 22, 2003, when officials were sent to brief the refugees, and the two governments have since locked horns over finding and punishing those responsible for the melee. Two Bhutanese officials and a Nepalese police officer were injured when refugees pelted them with stones.

Underlying the outbreak was refugees’ fear that they would face persecution anew upon their return to Bhutan. Stoking that fear, the Bhutanese officials had told refugees that after leaving here, the refugees would have to live as aliens in camps within Bhutan for another two years, during which time they would have to prove their loyalty to Bhutan’s monarch, history, and culture.

”Do you really think we should go back under the prevailing circumstances? Has the situation that forced us to flee in the first place improved? We do not think so,” Bhawani Prasad Adhikari, a 62-year-old refugee, told IPS.

Since the Dec. 22 melee, the Nepalese government has decided to seek guarantees from Bhutan that it will treat the returning Lhotsampas with dignity and grant them full rights as citizens. Previously, Nepal had shunned the issue as an internal Bhutanese matter.

"We will seek written assurances from the Bhutanese government," Madhu Raman Acharya, the Nepalese foreign secretary, told IPS.

If Bhutan does not accept the refugees, Nepalese officials said they would approach the United States, European Union and India, thought to have significant influence over Bhutan, for help in resolving the impasse.

Meanwhile, the refugees’ troubles have been compounded by implementation of an Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) plan to reduce aid to the camps. Since Jan. 1, the agency has stopped supplying certain spices and has reduced its rations of kerosene fuel. More such cuts are expected.

While UNHCR has said it supports the bilateral refugee talks, it also has said it was weighing shutting down the camps.

In addition, the Nepalese government has warned camp-dwellers that those deemed eligible to return to Bhutan would lose their refugee status if they refuse to go back.

Consequently in limbo are the futures of refugees like Laxmi Prasad Kharel, who came to the camp as a four-year old child. Now 16 years old, he is an eighth grader at the Panchavati English School, in the Beldangi-II refugee camp.

Kharel said that since the Dec. 22 scuffles, he had lost hope of going back.

”We are leading a very miserable life in the camps as we are stuck here since legally we cannot go out of the camp,” he said. ”We had hoped for the repatriation of the Khudunabari camp-dwellers.” Since that has not happened, Kharel added, he now hoped to get Nepalese citizenship.

But Shankar Dhital, a 25-year-old refugee, said there was little hope of that because Nepal’s citizenship laws were too tough. ”We have been reduced to stateless people and if we cannot go back, we are doomed to stay like this forever,” he said.

Bhekh Bahadur Thapa, Nepal’s de facto foreign minister, has said that although provisions have been made for refugees to apply for citizenship here under certain circumstances, few are likely to succeed.

Bhutan and Nepal had agreed to allow the refugees to apply for citizenship of either country. But Bhutan has since suspended the repatriation process and demanded that Nepal punish those responsible for the Dec. 22 scuffles.

”The Bhutanese government’s stance is most unfortunate,” said Acharya, the Nepalese foreign secretary. ”We are trying to bring the derailed process back on track.” He declined to elaborate.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Nov 25 2003 (IPS)

The deterioration of the human rights situation in Nepal is underscored not just by increasing reports of abuses by government forces in trying to quell the Maoist rebellion, but most recently by calls to invite U.N. experts in to probe rights abuses.

First it was the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of Nepal and the following day, Amnesty International, that made this call for U.N. intervention to look into violations by government security forces and Maoist rebels.

On Monday, seven international human rights organisations as well as some European embassies and a few donor governments too have expressed concerns on deteriorating human rights situation in the beleaguered kingdom.

These include Human Rights Watch and International Commission of Jurists, the French, German and the Canadian embassies – the last one from New Delhi, India – the Swiss Development Cooperation and the German Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ).

Since 1996, Maoist rebels have been waging a violent campaign to overthrow the constitutional monarchy in the world’s only Hindu kingdom and turn it into a republican state.

The rights situation has become even more precarious after the Aug. 27 breakdown of the ceasefire between the government and Maoist rebels, whose attacks in various parts of the country have become worse since.

More than 8,000 people have died in the conflict, of which 1,100 alone were killed since August.

The situation of insecurity, worsened by political conflicts between Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa and the politicians and lack of an elected government, is such that Thakur Dhakal from Kupondole in Kathmandu said: ”We are really worried about the deteriorating situation.”

As the ‘Nepali Times’ weekly said, ”They (Nepalis) want to be left alone by the Maoists, and increasingly, they want to be left alone by the force that was supposed to protect them from the Maoists.”

More than 100 complaints on illegal detention by government forces have been filed with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). The army, however, has been ignoring the NHRC’s calls to cooperate with it. Bhogendra Sharma, chairman of the Centre for Victims of Torture (CVICT) told IPS: "There is a feeling of absolute impunity in the Royal Nepalese Army which is very serious." He added that the army top brass must be aware that this cannot last long. "Someday, they army will have to be accountable for their actions.”

On Nov. 20, Amnesty International added its voice to a call made the previous day by the NHRC, which asked the government to invite the U.N. Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture to probe rights violations in Nepal.

Sharma said he hopes that the arrival of these groups would have a constructive effect on the army as well. "They won’t just denounce the abuses, but the U.N. officials will have sobering effect on the army."

"We are deeply concerned by the rampant and systematic torture and enforced disappearances perpetrated by the security forces,” Sushil Pyakurel, a human rights commissioner, said earlier.

"Despite our repeated reminders to the government over human rights abuses by the security forces, it has done nothing to address the issue," Pyakurel was quoted as saying. "So we decided to ask the government to bring in the U.N. experts."

Kamal Thapa, minister for information and communications and government spokesman, told IPS that the government was studying the latest developments. "We still don’t know why such a call was made," said Thapa, but disputed the interpretation that it was a severe indictment of both the government and the army.

"The government is committed to protecting human rights. If there has been any deliberate violations, then we will take action against errant security personnel,” he said.

He was, however, non-committal as to what the government would do should the U.N. Human Rights Commission communicate with it to visit Nepal. "We will not shy away from any probe,” Thapa said. The NHRC’s call this month for U.N. intervention followed a statement in Geneva on Nov. 12 by the U.N. rights experts, who asked the Nepalese government to act on the reports of abuses by the security forces.

The Special Rapporteur on Torture, the Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression and the Chairperson of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention expressed "profound concern over reports that dozens of individuals are being detained secretly in Nepal and are therefore at risk of suffering torture and other forms of ill-treatment".

The experts also called on Maoists to respect international rules governing conflicts and to desist from killing and abducting civilians.

In recent months, the army has had to face accusations of rights violations ranging from enforced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial killings.

It has dubbed the NHRC reports on army excesses as motivated and launched its own investigations into recent killings.

It has not only denied any incommunicado detention of persons suspected of being Maoists, but denied keeping journalists and other members of civil society or being responsible for involuntary disappearances.

In the few cases that it has admitted resorting to shootouts, the army said that those have been during encounters where its troops gave retaliatory fire.

Critics flatly refute the army’s claims. As of Nov. 16, the list of journalists targeted by the ongoing conflict has reached 74, according to the independent Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ).

The FNJ list shows that out of the 74 affected journalists since the breakdown of the ceasefire, 59 have been either arrested or held in custody for several hours for investigations relating to news about the Maoists.

Apart from these, almost 60 others are reportedly being held by the security forces but do not face clear charges.

Thus far, the army, with backing from the government, has questioned the field reports of the rights commission that has squarely blamed it for the deaths of civilians in two incidents, one of which led to the deaths of 18 people.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Sep 10 2003 (IPS)

A statement by top Maoist rebel leader Baburam Bhattarai – ”a victory of the progressive forces is a foregone conclusion, although the cost may be too high” – has acquired ominous tones in the wake of bomb blasts in the Nepalese capital following the collapse of peace talks last month.

Through these violent incidents, Nepal has already begun paying this high cost and is bracing for more, irrespective of who prevails in the seven-year-old conflict by Maoist rebels seeking to overthrow the constitutional monarchy and replace it with

On Monday, 12-year old Deepak Gurung, a Grade Five student, succumbed to his injuries sustained in a bomb blast inside a toilet in a government office adjacent to his school.

The toilet in the school where Gurung studied was under construction, so the students had been using the government one.

Ten other persons were injured, some seriously, in serial bomb blasts in the Kathmandu Valley, all allegedly perpetrated by the Maoists. Between 8:45 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. that day, the Maoists exploded six bombs, officials said.

This has sent shock waves in the capital, where people fear that more blasts taking innocent people’s lives are likely.

”God, we do not know when will these killings end,” Chandra Maharjan, real estate agent and owner of a tea-cum-bakery shop here, said in an interview. ”More such blasts are going to occur and it is so risky to visit any government offices now.”

One notable and scary change from the past bomb blasts in the capital caused by the Maoist guerrillas is the timing of the blasts, at least in two incidents.

The one that took Gurung’s life, near the prime minister’s official residence, went off at 9:31 a.m. The one that shook the building of the Land Revenue Office in neighbouring Bhaktapur was a pressure-cooker bomb that exploded almost 15 minutes later.

In the other four incidents, the bombs were kept in bags and left behind after warning the employees.

All, like in the past, were targetted at government-related offices.

Previously, Maoists ensured that blasts occurred in toilets or deserted building floors before 9 a.m., the time when government offices and business establishments open for the day.

Police believe the recent change in tactics is symptomatic of urban guerrilla warfare launched by the rebels.

”They have been targeting vital installations, public offices and VIPs,” said superintendent of police Kuber Singh Rana of the Kathmandu district police office. ”All this indicates a full-fledged urban guerrilla warfare.”

Already, the Maoists have tried to kill ex-prime minister Sher Deuba – on Aug. 25 near a jungle in Kailai in far west Nepal. On Aug. 28, they shot dead a colonel of the Royal Nepalese Army in his house in Kathmandu – they blame him for the killing of their 17 unarmed comrades in cold blood in Doramba in East Nepal on Aug. 17.

That was the day the third round of peace talks resumed between the government and the Maoists in west Nepal. The colonel, Kiran Bahadur Basnet, was the chief of the eastern division headquarters of the Nepal army.

Clashes have been reported from many parts of the Himalayan kingdom since the Maoists ”temporarily” suspended the seven-month-old ceasefire and the peace talks with the government from Aug. 27.

More than 8,000 people have been killed since the Maoist conflict began in 1996.

Arjun Bhandari, political analyst and a keen Maoist watcher said, ”I fear more bloodbath during a short period. The Maoists know that if they create terror in the capital, the government will be more under pressure.”

He also said that the rebels have stepped up their violence to force the government – and King Gyanendra, who appointed it – to concede their demands to new constitution drafted by a constituent assembly. The Maoists want this process to lead to the replacement of Nepal’s constitutional monarchy with a republican state.

The government had previously rejected this demand, a key factor in the collapse of the peace talks.

The government, led by Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa, has been under pressure to quit from the time the talks collapsed.

The capital is rife with rumour that either Madhav Kumar Nepal, general secretary of Communist Party of Nepal-United Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) or ex-premier Deuba might be appointed the new prime minister after King Gyanendra returns from London on Wednesday.

However, a senior government minister dismissed the speculation as ”baseless rumour”.

But the five political parties, in their seventh phase of ”decisive movement” against the king, whose removal of the elected government of Deuba in October they are angry about, think otherwise.

Nepali Congress party president Girija Prasad Koirala believes that King Gyanendra will ”correct” his mistake this time round and reconcile with the parties, which have been demanding the revival of the parliament the king dismissed.

He said this a few days ago, addressing his partymates in the capital. Even CPN-UML’s Nepal has asked his cadres to tone down their rhetoric against the monarch.

Bhattarai too hinted at a change at the helm of affairs of the government in ”coming weeks”.

But even if another prime minister, the 14th change in 13 years, takes over, things are unlikely to improve.

No solution is in sight for the stalemate in the peace process. The Maoists are not willing to consider anything less than elections for a constituent assembly, one that would make a new constitution.

Neither the political parties nor the king’s handpicked government are willing to consider the demand either.

”I doubt if there is going to be any easy solution soon. This will linger for years. At least the stalemate is going to suit the palace’s purpose, so I do not see any possibility of king truly reconciling with the parties,” Bhandari said. ”Until then, more will die.”

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
DHAKA, Aug 19 2003 (IPS)

Dibya Thapa (not her real name), 20, was instrumental in rescuing about 300 unsuspecting girls in 1997 and 2000 from the Kakarbhitta checkpoint on the Nepal-India border in the eastern part of the Himalayan kingdom.

Dibya is HIV-positive, having got the virus sometime between and 1994 and 1996 in a brothel in Mumbai, India, where she was forced to sell sex before being rescued at the age of 13.

There is no exact data on the number of poor women and girls who are trafficked to India, chiefly to Mumbai, Kolkata and New Delhi, but activists say there is no lack of information about the severity of the problem.

Most of the girls know what they are heading for but some do not and are duped into it, just like Dibya and the girls she helped rescue with timely police intervention.

Today, Dibya, who told her story at the South Asia Court of Women on the Violence of Trafficking and HIV/AIDS here last week, runs a grocery shop in Kathmandu.

But this girl from Butwal, a small town in western Nepal, is also very active in counselling and rehabilitation of similar girls through Nepal Plus, an organisation of about 20 persons, all of who are HIV-positive, that was formed two years ago.

"Dibya is a towering example overcoming such suffering," says Sonam Yangchen Rana of U.N.Development Programme (UNDP) REACH Beyond Borders, or the UNDP Special Initiative on HIV/AIDS Regional Programme for South and North East Asia.

But Dibya herself says, ”I haven’t done much. I wish there was someone at the border to stop me and my trafficker.”

She was also very frank at the conference. "I doubt whether these conferences and similar gatherings can have the desired impact. Honestly speaking, they are ineffective,” she says.

She suggested that U.N. and similar agencies focus more on actual rehabilitation measures and less on seminars and conferences. "The most important point is whether we get justice," Dibya explains.

"Some Bangladeshi girls I spoke to yesterday told me that they are still being harassed by the police. Why is not anyone paying attention to this?" she asks.

Dibya was one of the 40-odd testifiers from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka who spoke in the presence of a jury that also included Winnie Mandela, president of the Women’s League of the African National Congress in South Africa.

All these survivors of trafficking and the resultant violence and discrimination stood courageously in front of the conference audience of about 3,000, mostly comprising women, and narrated their tales of suffering.

Jorgen Lissner, UNDP resident representative for Bangladesh, quoted a U.N. figure according to which about 200,000 women and children are trafficked from the region annually.

Most women and girls from Bangladesh and Nepal end up in brothels in India and Pakistan.

Najma, a 10-year-old from Pakistan, told her ordeal through video testimony. She was made to slog for hours at a carpet factory for a measly 15 Pakistani rupees (26 U.S. cents) a day before being rescued. She demanded punishment for child traffickers.

Sojib, 15-year old from Bangladesh, was forced into camel jockeying in Pakistan and Valli, 26, from India was exploited as a domestic worker.

All the tales had a common thread: poverty. Police brutality and indifferent judicial systems made up the other common elements in almost all the tales.

Bimala (only first name used) criticised the judiciary in Nepal. "When I was being asked all sorts of uncomfortable and embarrassing questions by the lawyers of persons who had tried to traffic me, the judge did not intervene,” she recalls.

The testimonies focused on the judicial system and the law, and the governments’ reaction to anti-trafficking efforts.

Mandela called for more empathy from the legal guardians and governments. "Why do governments turn a blind eye to the sufferings of women? This is baffling." She adds that the trafficking of women was nothing short of "modern slavery".

The symbolic court, the 17th of its kind since the first one that started in Pakistan in 1991, aimed to draw the attention to the plight of women and girls, especially from poor countries, to the perils of trafficking and its link to HIV/AIDS.

UNDP officials point out that since most clients of sex workers are still loathe to use condoms, the women and girls are prone to contracting the virus.

Once that happens, especially in South Asia where AIDS is still poorly understood, another and more horrific nightmare for them starts. Isolation, discrimination and stigma follow soon after. The end begins just then, for most of them.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Aug 11 2003 (IPS)

Picture these statistics: More than 68 percent of the 170,389 students who took this year’s secondary-level leaving examinations in Nepal failed them. Likewise, there are some 40,000 vacancies in the public schools across this Himalayan kingdom.

But these do not complete the picture of the dismal state of public education in the country.

In one of the world’s poorest countries, it has taken the government eight years to publish the results of the teachers’ appointment examinations, aimed at filling the more than 14,000 vacancies that were recorded as existing at that time. Half of them are slots for primary-level teachers.

Now that the results have been coming out, it will take another four to five months for all the results – secondary, lower secondary and primary levels – to be published, the government announced.

Until Thursday last week, the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) published a list of 604 teachers of the far-western region who are now deemed eligible to teach in secondary and lower secondary schools. There are more than 75,000 teachers in Nepal, up to the secondary level.

"It is an open secret that the politicians and ministers push for their own men as teachers," says Lokesh Saha, a primary school teacher of English in Baitadi, one of the remotest districts in Nepal. "Why should we be surprised then that so many students failed to clear the exams?"

Saha, who came to the capital nearly three weeks ago for a educational training course, had come to check the list of successful candidates that were put up by the TSC.

During the wait for the results of the teachers’ examination results, the vacancies have been filled by ‘temporary’ teachers, which does not help morale or the quality of teaching. Since temporary teachers man the vacancies, they cannot receive additional training.

"Teachers’ motivation level due to politicking and lack of training is very low and this reflects in the products (school graduates) they churn out every year,” Saha adds.

Overall, many Nepalis’ complaints about the public education drive those who can afford it to go to some 8,000 private schools in the country.

Politicking – screening, appointments, promotions and transfers are coloured by interference by politicians – is particularly intense in the countryside, where the need for more quality teachers is greatest.

The root of the current problem goes back to the mid-nineties, which critics say highlight a classic case of political interference whose consequences are still being felt today.

A former education minister in the 1995 Nepali Congress government, Govind Raj Joshi, had flouted the Public Service Commission guidelines, which provided that only 20 percent of additional applicants above the advertised figure can be called for interviews for teaching posts.

At the time, the ministry declared a huge number of candidates – 83,000 – all securing the passing mark it set of only 35 or above.

Many had alleged then and the anti-corruption body was petitioned too, that the low passing rate was set so that Joshi could accommodate more men from his home district of Tanahun in west Nepal.

For these actions, Joshi has been facing a probe by the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA).

Apart from politicking in the teachers’ appointment, there is rampant interference in their transfer as well. "Those with political clout stay in the district headquarters and those lacking it languish it in the rural areas for years," says Saha.

These structural weaknesses are exacerbated by the lack of preparedness of the teachers applying for jobs in public schools.

Some experts say that around 50 percent of teachers are underqualified. "Only about 15 percent of total primary teachers have completed ten months of training," Dr Bidynath Koirala, an education expert here, has said.

Even the TSC, which was formed in 1999 to replace teachers’ selection committees at the regional and district levels, has become a political tool. It has seen four chairpersons in the last four years.

Even its current chair, Uday Raj Soti, admits that there is political interference in the functioning of the commission. "The delay in publishing the results was (of teachers’ selection) caused by frequent changes in government, court cases and the CIAA’s directives," he points out.

Today, while the stipulated teacher-to-student ratio is 45:1, some classes in the heart of the capital Kathmandu, like Saraswati Secondary School, have more than 100, 80 or 90 students in Grades 7, 9 and 8 because of the shortage of teachers.

This year’s low rate of students passing the examinations for the secondary-level School Leaving Certificate (SLC) is thus not surprising – the annual pass rate has in fact been hovering a little over 30 percent for years now.

Soti concedes that even from the viewpoint of the teachers as job applicants, many of them have already lost opportunities after waiting for eight years to see if they get a slot at a public school. "It was great injustice to the teachers,” he says of the wait.

These teachers will be missing the grades and the money that would have accrued to them had the results been published on time.

Even if the government finally clears its appointment backlog, many applicants will not go back to school to teach in a country where the drop-out rate before the students reach Grade 1 is 14.5 percent – and the overall drop-out rate in public secondary schools is around 40 percent.

"We are aware of this possibility since some teachers are now teaching in colleges after acquiring education and some have changed their profession," TSC Chairman Soti says, adding that the replacement candidates would instead be appointed.

But the teachers’ commission still has to fill an additional 26,000 vacancies – and it has an ambitious plan to fill the vacancies by the end of the current fiscal year in mid-August 2004.

There are few takers. "Look at what happened to our results (eight examinations years ago). Is the TSC serious?" asks Saha.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Jul 11 2003 (IPS)

Bhutanese refugees of Nepali origin are relying ever more heavily on U.S. intervention to resolve the deadlock over of their repatriation to their home country.

A statement of concern and support by the U.S. Ambassador to Nepal, Michael Malinowski, circulated to major newspapers in Kathmandu on Wednesday calling for a re-examination of ”inconsistencies” in the repatriation process, is the latest in a series of interventions that the refugees find welcome.

After all, they are up in arms over what they say are restrictive conditions that the Bhutanese government set with the Nepali government in May, terms that would prevent many of the 100,000 refugees from being able to return to Bhutan.

Washington, which has been backing the refuges’ reintegration through the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), regards as a glaring inconsistency the labeling as non-Bhutanese the parents of young people categorised as eligible to apply for Bhutanese citizenship.

The call of the U.S. Embassy for the involvement of the UNHCR in the Bhutanese refugees’ verification process is significant, since the U.N. body runs the seven refugee camps for them in eastern Nepal.

UNHCR officials in Nepal have been saying that they are ready to play a role if both countries ask for it. While Nepal favours the U.N. agency’s involvement, Bhutan has opposed the U.N. body’s role since the very beginning.

"Let us see if the two countries agree to the UNHCR’s role," R B Basnet, president of Bhutan National Democratic Party (BNDP) told IPS. "If it is involved, we will have lot of faith in the repatriation process and the rehabilitation and the resettlement that will follow."

Now that Washington has pronounced its position, Basnet said: "We are confident that now both Nepal and Bhutan will treat the issue more seriously and with justice."

The Bhutanese refugees have been staying there since the early 1990s, after fleeing the Druk kingdom. Some 25,000 others stay in India.

The Lhotsampa refugees – the mainly Nepali-speaking Hindu people in southern Bhutan – left their homes in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the Druk government was accused of launching a cultural and religious unification drive to preserve Bhutan’s Buddhist character.

Others left due to Thimphu’s decision to expel all those who could not provide proof of having lived for more than 30 years in Bhutan and whose population, excluding the refugees, was put at more than 650,000 by the government in 1999.

During the dying days of Clinton presidency in 2000, the U.S. government sent a high-powered team to Nepal to provide impetus to attempts to address the problem of refugees between the two Himalayan kingdoms, separated by Indian and Chinese territory.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton had urged the two governments to take steps towards resolving the problem. Soon afterwards, the two countries formed the Joint Verification Team (JVT) that was tasked with the verification and categorisation of the Bhutanese refugees. They started with the Khudunabari camp in eastern Nepal.

Three years down the road, the U.S. government has again made public its dismay over the work of the JVT. The refugees are upbeat again, saying they feel that this would put much-needed pressure on the governments to solve a problem that has been festering since 1993.

The latest instance of U.S. support comes at a time when the refugees staying in camps in eastern Nepal have been crying foul over "suspicious activities" by the Bhutan government, including the "restrictive conditions" it put for their return to their country.

These conditions were circulated to the refugees of the Khudunabari camp after the JVT report was made public on Jun. 18.

The U.S. statement addressed the refugees’ concern that very few of the appeals by the refugees against the categorisation would be entertained. "The appeals are submitted to the same adjudication body that made the original determination – a body not likely to reverse its own decisions,” the embassy statement added.

An "unofficial" list of conditions mandates that the mainly Nepali-speaking refugees need to know the Dzongkha language and Bhutan’s history and culture, although refugees who were born in the camps in this country hardly know them.

Likewise, it requires that they stay away from political activity while their applications for citizenship are being processed.

The refugees have also been asked to produce new documents and to lodge their appeals within two weeks of the publication of the report – a move many refugees say is aimed at preventing the appeals for the sheer shortness of the time.

When approached by IPS, Bhutan’s officiating Foreign Secretary S T Rabgye, who is in Kathmandu to attend a meeting of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), pointedly declined comment. "I am aware of the news reports about the U.S. ambassador’s statement but I do not want to make any comments,” he said.

U.S. support is timely given that 94 percent of the more than 12,000 refugees from the Khudunabari camp have appealed against the JVT findings.

Only 2.4 percent of 12,183 individuals from 8,595 families qualify as bona fide Bhutanese forcibly evicted or what is known as Category 1 refugees, according to the verification team. It classified 70.2 percent in the second category of willing emigrants, 24.2 percent as non-Bhutanese and 2.85 percent in the fourth category as Bhutanese with criminal records.

The findings left the refugees aghast, and for the first time they accused the Nepalese government of a "sellout".

Nepal has since dubbed the ”unofficial” circular containing the conditions as being against the "spirit" of the bilateral agreement it reached with Bhutan in May.

The refugees want the grant of citizenship made in the camps itself and have asked for the creation of a "conducive" atmosphere for their "dignified" return.

But Nepal’s Foreign Secretary Madhu Raman Acharya said the refugees had to be realistic. If the refugees wanted the situation in Bhutan to improve before their return, "then they will have to wait for decades”, he said.

Referring to the refugees’ demand for the amendment of Bhutan’s 1985 citizenship law, Acharya said the refugees need to make the choice – to go now or stay in the camps for an indefinite time.

Many hope that things could change after the U.S. statement this week. "We remember how things moved ahead after the U.S. nudge in 2000,” Ratan Gazmere, chief coordinator of the banned Association of Human Rights Activists-Bhutan, told IPS.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Jul 2 2003 (IPS)

More than 1.5 million children in Nepal are having what promises to be a long break, although school vacation is over.

Nearly all of the up to 10,000 private schools in this Himalayan kingdom have been closed indefinitely starting Jun. 30. They are caught in a tussle between the government and student unions – affiliated with political parties critical of the government – on tuition fees and curricula.

Many parents are now toying with the idea of withdrawing their children from local schools – and those who can afford it are thinking of sending them to India and other places.

The Private and Boarding Schools’ Organisation of Nepal (PABSON) and National Private and Boarding School Association Nepal (N-PABSAN) decided to suspend classes on Jun. 28, after talks between the government and the seven student unions failed on the nine demands put forth by the student groups.

This despite the fact that the unions are all college and university based and have no standing in schools, prompting accusations that schools are becoming a casualty in a political battle between the government backed by King Gyanendra and its critics.

N-PABSAN on Tuesday agreed to resume talks with education officials, but those who have to miss classes are not very happy.

"I am worried about the study hours lost in the school," said Asish Acharya, a student of Grade 8 of Little Angels School, one of the largest private schools here.”The loss means that the teachers and we have to rush through our syllabus when school reopens."

In this academic year 2003-04, which began mid-May, some 27 days have been lost due to agitation launched by the student unions that began in June.

The unions are demanding a "significant reduction" in fees charged by the private schools, provision of scholarship to 25 percent of enrolled students in a school, making the syllabi in private schools similar to that of public schools, and making the institutions run under some public trust.

The union leaders said that they have twin purposes: to reduce the fees in private schools, and to focus attention on the huge gap in performance and quality standards between private and public schools.

Every year, the annual secondary-level board exams give a very dismal picture. This year only 32 percent of the 170,389 students passed the exams that are known as ‘Iron Gate’.

To force the schools to concede to their demands, the student organisations, all affiliated with political parties, locked the principals’ offices and accounts sections in some 300 schools, including 200 in Kathmandu, since Jun. 23.

The number of private schools varies between 8,500, according to government data, to 10,000 as claimed by the school organisations. Government data says there are some 800,000 students in these schools.

Some parents told IPS that a big number of private schools were indeed charging "exorbitant" fees without providing facilities in return, but did not approve of locking the principals’ and accounts offices.

"The schools are looting money from us," fumed Uma Bhandari, whose daughter is in in Grade 6 at Pushpa Sadan Boarding School and son at Grade 3 Green Lawns Academy here. "We are simply helpless and have no option but to comply with the exorbitant fees without any corresponding facilities."

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a parent whose son and daughter study in Galaxy Public School said that "high-bracket" schools charge fees from parents on different pretexts.

He said schools charge extra money for library, computer use, magazines, development fees, building fund and children’s welfare fund, among others. "But closing the schools is no solution,” he added.

Just before the imposition of the state of emergency in November 2001, the Maoist- affiliated student union launched a violent campaign against fees, forcing many schools to scrap admission charges, development and building fees.

Parents alleged that many schools have reneged on the spirit of this agreement by charging fees under various headings.

The Jun. 28 deadlock arose over two points: a significant reduction in private school fees and the provision of scholarship for at least 25 percent of the student population.

B N Sharma, vice chairman of PABSON and principal of Children’s Paradise Higher Secondary School in neighbouring Lalitpur district, said they are not in a position to reduce the fees as demanded by the unions which, "in any case is very vague".

He said private schools cannot provide scholarships to 25 percent of students unless the government gives subsidies.

Meantime, Sunaina Shah, a member of parents’ association of Rato Bangala School, one of the most reputed schools, said that the standoff could force parents to send their children to school in neighbouring India. "This will be so unfortunate against the rights of the children to study in their own country. We as parents have the right to decide where to send our children,” she said in an interview.

But she pointed out that this was not the case with most reputed schools. "Lack of transparency and infrastructure have given the unions the handy tool to launch their campaign,” she added.

Suprabhat Bhandari, president of the Parents’ Association, Nepal echoed fears of student exodus to "India and elsewhere".

All three – Sharma, Shah and Bhandari – accused the student unions of "being politically motivated". Said Shah: "The private schools are being used as pawns by political parties to further their political agenda."

Their accusations come at a time when the political parties’ street protests against King Gyanendra – whom they accuse of violating democratic principles by appointing an unelected government – has waned significantly. The unions, say the three, are being instigated by the parties to keep up the momentum of the agitation.

On Tuesday, U.N. Children’s Fund representative Suomi Sakai was quoted as saying: ”Not even schools have provided a safe haven for children. This is unacceptable.”

But Gururaj Ghimire, president of the largest student body, the Nepal Student Union affiliated with the Nepali Congress party, said: "This is a baseless charge. Our aim is to reduce the burden of the parents who are forced to pay such exorbitant fees."

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Jun 3 2003 (IPS)

Kelsang, 22, says he left his monastery in Tibet after ”Chinese officials asked us to denounce the revered Dalai Lama and introduced practices in our religion that were not acceptable to us”.

He later decided to escape from Tibet, going south to Nepal, as did the other Tibetans interviewed by IPS here, such as teenage girls Metho and Penkye and three men apart from Kelsang – 22-year-old Sonam, 27-year-old Adaie and 33-year-old Karma.

All except Sonam and Kelsang arrived in Nepal in May, and Karma says he had to travel for more than two months through mountainous passes before arriving here.

Like many others before them, these Tibetans expected to be safe in this Himalayan kingdom before crossing the open border to go further south to India, where the Dalai Lama runs a government-in-exile.

But now, they are at a loss over what lies ahead for those planning to escape Tibet. To the shock of Tibetans and anger among activists here and elsewhere, 18 Tibetans – who crossed the border to Nepal on their way to India – were caught by Nepali police, then turned over to Chinese officials on Saturday.

China has claimed sovereignty over Tibet since it sent troops in 1951. But Tibet remains home to a restive population, including groups that want to separate from China and say Beijing is trying to stamp out Tibetan culture and religion. The Dalai Lama fled Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.

Since the weekend turnover of the Tibetans, foreign governments and rights groups have been expressing concern over the action of Nepal, located between giant neighbours China to the north and India toward the south.

In an interview, Wangchuk Tsering, the representative of the Dalai Lama in Nepal, said Kathmandu had breached a 1989 ”verbal agreement” under which it would turn over Tibetan asylum seekers to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Under this agreement, the Tibetans were then sent to third countries, mainly India, said Tsering. His office, however, is not recognised by the Nepalese government.

The 18 Tibetans deported Saturday were among a group of 21 who arrived in Nepal on Apr. 15. They were caught by Nepalese police at Thankot, a checkpoint just 10 kilometres from the main centre of Kathmandu and handed over to the Department of Immigration.

This was not unusual as sometimes the police do nab some refugees – but they were never deported until Saturday.

The 18 Tibetans were first kept in the immigration department’s custody from Apr. 17 to May 29 before being handed over to Chinese embassy officials on May 31 – despite appeals from the 25,000-strong Tibetan community in Nepal and the UNHCR.

The remaining three in the group are children, two girls and a boy who were handed over to UNHCR.

The Nepalese government maintains that there has been no shift in policy towards ”escaping Tibetans”, and Foreign Affairs Minister Narenda Bikram Shah says Kathmandu remains ”sensitive” to them. But activists say the deportation harms Nepal’s role as a haven for refugees from neighbouring places like Tibet and Bhutan.

Cheng Ji, chief of the political and press section at the Chinese Embassy here, said that the 18, ”who are Chinese citizens, basically”, will be tried under ”our own Chinese law” for illegally crossing the international border and coming to Nepal.

Criticism was especially bitter because the Tibetan community here, with the Dalai Lama’s office in Kathmandu taking the lead, had been collecting the amount that the immigration department said the group needed to pay – 8,000 rupees (105 U.S. dollars) per head – or face a 10-month jail term for illegally crossing into Nepal.

Tsering claimed that even this fine was unheard of in the past, saying that every year 2,000 to 2,500 Tibetans make good the escape across mountain passes to Nepal.

Speaking to local press on Monday, Tsering appealed to Nepal’s government – which in recent years has had more economic, business and tourism ties with China though it has traditionally been closer to India – ”not to repeat the incident”.

Gopal Krishna Siwakoti, executive director of INHURED International, a human rights body, blasted the move: ”This has been done under Chinese pressure.” Siwakoti demanded immediate ratification by Nepal of the 1951 U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 additional protocol.

The UNHCR has termed the deportation a breach of international refugee law and a ”refoulement”.

Meantime, Nepal’s actions are confusing to Tibetans here, who say there are more like them who want to leave in search of a freer and better life and escape Chinese rule.

Metho, among the six interviewed by IPS in the Dalai Lama Representative’s office, says she has had just one year of schooling. Penkye has been to school for six years but both had to drop out, unable to pay the fees. Both want to go to Dharamsala, to study. Their parents remain in Tibet. Sonam, a university graduate, wanted to take up post-graduate studies, but says he was discriminated against by Chinese authorities in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. ”We do not get to study according to our wish and even after completing education, jobs are difficult to get,” he said.

Sonam added that question papers in schools and colleges are designed to compel Tibetans to denounce the Dalai Lama as a reactionary and secessionist, following the Chinese government line.

Cheng, the Chinese official, says everyone in Tibet is free to practise the religion one chooses. But he said: ”We do not recognise the Dalai Lama as a spiritual or religious leader. He is merely a political exile.”

One of the asylum seekers, Adaie, came here with his eight-year-old son, but had to leave his wife behind in Tibet. ”I am worried about her and hope she too will escape and join me someday soon,” he said. Whether she will be able to do that safely, if Nepal deports more Tibetans, remains to be seen.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Jun 2 2003 (IPS)

The Nepali government’s talks with the Maoist rebels hang in the balance after the Friday resignation of Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand, ostensibly to cultivate a more stable political atmosphere that would also give the peace negotiations a boost.

Two rounds of peace talks were held in April and May. With no new government as yet in sight, Chand’s cabinet has been asked to continue until alternative arrangements are made. The talks are unlikely any time soon given this political environment – and the rebels are unhappy about this.

"Every now and then the old state power is changing the government," Krishna Bahadur Mahara, Maoist politburo member and spokesman for the talks with the government, told IPS. "This will not send a positive message."

Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, alias ‘Prachanda’, said in a statement on Saturday that the next prime minister would not have any legitimacy and real power. He added that changing prime ministers would not solve the crises that added fuel to the Maoist insurgency.

In truth, the political tensions in this Himalayan kingdom have been simmering since October, making for a less than stable government at a time when the state is trying to settle a seven-year-old rebellion by Maoist insurgents who want to overthrow the monarchy.

Since King Gyanendra dismissed the elected government in October, assumed executive powers and appointed Chand’s government, this administration has had to constantly defend itself from charges of being an illegitimate, unelected one. Political parties are in the middle of an agitation campaign against it and the king.

Chand stepped down on Friday to promote reconciliation between the country’s major political parties and the king, who have been at odds since the king stepped into politics.

Chand sent in his papers just three days before the Jestha 19 (Jun. 2) anniversary of the royal massacre two years ago, giving room to rumours that the palace asked him to resign to stifle the scheduled nationwide black flag demonstrations on Monday.

Even as the political parties had a joint audience with King Gyanendra on Friday, they warned of continuing the movement against the "regressive" decisions of the monarch. The king had called them and three other parties to arrive at a consensus on the next prime minister in 72 hours.

Before meeting the king, the five political parties, led by the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal (unified Marxist-Leninist), decided to propose UML general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal as prime minister of an all-party government.

He would have full executive powers that have been exercised by the king since Oct. 4, when he dismissed the then elected Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba.

In this atmosphere, partisan politics and the formation of a new government has taken centre stage to the detriment of the peace talks.

In fact, this is a conspiracy by the state with ”support from foreign elements" to derail the peace negotiations, said Maoist politburo member, Ram Bahadur Thapa ‘Badal’.

Mahara, the coordinator of the Maoists’ team when it negotiated with the Deuba government in 2001, alleged that it was a delaying tactic by "those representing the old guard". He added, "They do not want to solve the problem through peaceful means.”

The government and the Maoists held the first formal peace negotiations on Apr. 27, aimed at transforming a Jan. 29 ceasefire into lasting peace.

The Maoist insurgency has claimed more than 8,000 lives. Half of these were killed after the first-ever peace talks with the then Deuba government collapsed in November 2001.

Mahara has reiterated the rebels’ commitment to continue with the negotiations, but cast doubts on the next government’s commitment to the peace talks.

The rebels have, time and again, accused the Chand government of lack of sincerity in the peace negotiations and of violating the 22-point code of conduct governing the ceasefire that was signed on Mar. 12.

The government, while denying the charge, has levelled similar accusations against the rebels, especially of abductions and extortions.

But Mahara’s counterpart, government spokesman for the talks and outgoing Minister Narayan Singh Pun, said: "It does not matter whose government it is. The peace process is irreversible. Every single citizen wants peace and I believe the parties want it too. Without peace, there can be no elections and this the parties have kept in mind."

Subhas Nembang, a central committee member of CPN (Unified Marxist-Leninist), the political party whose leader has been nominated prime minister, said that the talks would proceed after issue of a new government is addressed.

"The last government was a regressive one. We are of progressive nature. So, now the peace negotiations will gain the momentum it was lacking," Nembang said.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, May 24 2003 (IPS)

Now that Bhutan and Nepal have agreed on the number of the Bhutanese refugees who can return to their homeland after more than a decade of waiting, the curtain should be coming down on one of the most complex and often forgotten refugee crises in the world.

But leaders of the refugee community and rights activists here flayed the agreement reached this week, saying it does not address their core concerns or signify a comprehensive solution to the refugee crisis.

Under the repatriation agreement worked announced Wednesday, the first of the refugees could head home by September this year, Nepalese sources said.

But many refugees remain unconvinced that it is time to go back to Bhutan – and analysts say the actual return of people is the real test of the success of the governments’ accord. Refugee leaders reiterated their call for the involvement of either the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), India or the European Union in the repatriation process.

Kathmandu-based R B Basnet, president of the banned Bhutan National Democratic Party and Rakesh Chhetri, another exiled leader and chief of the Centre for Protection of Minorities and Against Racism and Discrimination in Bhutan (CEMARD), called upon Bhutan and Nepal to involve a third party in the repatriation process.

Without this, they warned, hardly any refugee would venture back to Bhutan.

They said that the Druk government has already resettled other groups – Ngalops from the north-western and Sharchops from the eastern and the western regions – in the homes and lands of the Lhotsampas. "Who will guarantee that we will get our homes and properties back?"

More than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees have been staying in seven UNHCR-run camps in eastern Nepal and some 25,000 are in India.

These Lhotsampas – the mainly Nepali-speaking Hindu people in southern Bhutan- left their homes in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the Druk government was accused of launching a cultural and religious unification drive to preserve the Buddhist character of the nation.

Others left due to Thimphu’s decision to expel all those who could not provide proof of having lived for more than 30 years in Bhutan, whose population, excluding the refugees, was put at more than 650,000 by the government in 1999. Bhutan and Nepal have been trying to reach a solution since 1993.

"It is like something is better than nothing after years of wrangling between the two governments,” Professor Lok Raj Baral, executive chairman of Nepal Centre for Contemporary Studies who has done research on Bhutanese refugee crisis, said of this week’s pact.

But Baral said, ”Two things have to be borne in mind: it has to be bilaterally agreeable, which seems to be the case now. But more importantly, whether there is a conducive atmosphere for the refugees to return."

Without this, he said, "How can the refugees go there?". After all, it is the internal situation back then that had forced these Bhutanese nationals out in the first place, he added.

"At the end of the day, it amounts to nothing simply because it does not take into account the concerns of the refugees. Only when the actual movement of the refugees back to Bhutan begins can we term any agreement positive,” said Yadab Kant Silwal, member of Eminent Persons Group of UNHCR on refugee situation in South Asia.

A day before the Bhutanese delegation arrived here on May 19, Nepal Foreign Minister Narendra Bikram Shah said that those refugees who did not want to go back to Bhutan might apply for asylum in the West and the remaining might be granted Nepalese citizenship. "After all, they are ethnic Nepalese,” he said.

Under the agreement, among the issues yet to be hammered out is the place where the repatriated Lhotsampas will stay while their claims to citizenship are being processed.

The tediousness of the process is highlighted by the fact that it took nine months for the categorisation of refugees in the Khudunabari camp in eastern Nepal, one of the seven refugee camps, to be completed last year.

The report of the bilateral Joint Verification Team (JVT) on this was formally adopted only at this week’s 14th meeting of the foreign ministers of the Hindu kingdom of Nepal and of the Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, where the agreement on repatriation was reached.

News reports say that according to the JVT, which carried out categorisation in the Bhutanese capital Thimphu in February to April this year, the refugees comprise the following groups: about three percent in Category 1 or nationals forcibly evicted, about 75 percent in Category 2 or Bhutanese who willingly emigrated, around 20 percent Category 3 or non Bhutanese, and the last category comprising three percent or Bhutanese with criminal records.

Under Bhutan’s citizenship laws, this means that only six percent – those from Category I and Category 4 – qualify as bona fide nationals. Half of them, however, will have to stand trial and get either acquittal or conviction before their fate is finally decided.

The JVT findings are likely to be challenged, Basnet said in an interview.

Bhutan’s Foreign Minister Jigme Y Thinley said that those in the first category do not require fresh citizenship, but those in the second will have to reapply for it once they go into Bhutan. While their applications are being screened, they will have to stay in "transition camps" in Bhutan, one Nepali official said later, although Nepal’s Shah said he did not get this impression.

In any case, Basnet said, "How can they expect us to move from one camp to another? And that too without the supervision of the UNHCR, which has been running the camps so well in eastern Nepal?"

Refugees are also protesting the fact that Bhutanese facing criminal charges need first to be put in police custody and can head home only after they are acquitted. Chhetri said: "First, the criminal charges are fabricated and were levelled because many of us participated in the movement for democracy and freedom back then. Second, we do not have faith in the kangaroo courts of Bhutan."

Details of the repatriation process will be thrashed out in the next foreign ministers’ meeting in August. While Nepal wants simultaneous verification of refugees in the six remaining camps, Bhutan has suggested taking them one by one, said Nepalese sources.

Excerpt:

By Damakant Jayshi
MUSSOURIE, India, May 17 2003 (IPS)

Sharpa Raj Karki is not entirely happy to see fellow Nepalis here. Because too many migrant workers like him are coming to Mussourie, in India’s Uttaranchal state, daily wages are going down.

Already, wages have fallen by about 40 rupees (86 U.S. cents). Porters like Karki get about 90 rupees (nearly two dollars) after a hard day’s work now.

Hailing from Kalikot district in mid-western Nepal, one of the Himalayan kingdom’s poorest areas, Karki has been coming to northern India for two years. He has also been going to apple orchards in Shimla, capital of Himachal Pradesh state, during the apple-collecting season

In Mussourie, it is difficult to find anyone who is not from Kalikot district. Along with Karki, there are 15 porters, most of them third-generation migrants. All are from the same village from where Karki hails Daha.

Most Nepalis cross the open border to the northern parts of neighbouring India because of poverty.

Nepali groups say that there 2.5 to 3.5 million Nepalis in India, a country of 1 billion people. Some 100,000 are estimated to be in Himachal Pradesh, many of them daily wagers for the public works department. Most Nepali migrants work as porters, cooks, waiters, dishwashers, guards, drivers, factory workers, farm labourers.

Often, they live with lack of water and toilet facilities, ethnic abuse in the local community and police discrimination. For instance, the porters are called ‘bahadur’ (meaning brave, but now used derogatorily) or ‘kanchha’ (little guy) by both the locals and the authorities.

Krishna Maya Gurung, 30, from Syangja stays with her husband in Y Block in Phase I of the Okhla Industrial Area in New Delhi, where like other migrants they live under fear of eviction from settlements on government land. Because there are no toilets, she says that they go instead to the nearby railway tracks every morning.

These migrants cannot fight or demonstrate for proper toilets, simply because they have been staying illegally. "Initially, it used to be such mental torture, but now we are used to it," says Gurung.

Dil Bahadur Bishwokarma, 42, of west Nepal, has been a daily wage worker in the Vegetable Multiplication Farm in Wairtee in Solan, Himachal Pradesh state since 1991. He makes around 4,000 rupees (87 dollars) a month.

His biggest concern is how to get hold of Indian citizenship certificate that his department bosses have asked him to produce if he wants a permanent posting, which will enable him to have bigger salary and other benefits. But being a Nepali national, he cannot do that.

Pramod Saud, 21 works as a waiter in Vaishali hotel in Lucknow, capital of another Indian northern state, Uttar Pradesh. He is sick of the low pay up to 2,500 rupees (54 dollars) a month with tips – but knows that if he asks for more, he will be fired, and another Nepali hired.

Frustrated with work and by the lack of sexual fulfillment, Saud, like many other migrant workers, visits a red light area in Lucknow. "Every week I go to a commercial sex worker," he confesses. "Sometimes I do use condoms, but not every time."

Many Nepali migrants also feel that neither the governments of India and Nepal nor Indian locals appreciate the work they render.

"Does the government even know that we are also the (Himalayan) kingdom’s citizens and contribute to the economy?" asks Prakash Thapa, New Delhi manager of a Nepali weekly, ‘Vishwa Nepali’ (World Nepali) published from Hissar in the north Indian state of Haryana.

Whether the Nepalese are in Lucknow, New Delhi, Mussourie, Solan and Shimla in Himachal Pradesh, they are bitter about their government’s lack of attention and empathy toward their plight.

There is neither entertainment nor recreational options for these Nepalis, except playing cards and gambling. Those away from their wives share a single room and split the rent as many as eight can stay in a single room. Those with their wives and children also stay in a single room. Privacy is the last thing they even dream about.

Drinking and gambling are common among the migrants and petty fights are almost a daily occurrence, says Jai Lal Sharma, secretary of the All India Nepali Unity Society (Mainstream) in New Delhi, said to be the biggest group of migrants in India. "Wife eloping with another Nepali or sometimes a local is the most common occurrence, and sometimes this leads to serious fights," says Sharma.

Some Nepalis also come with complaints of police highhandedness. "If we lodge a complaint with the police and if the defendant happens to be a native, then the police refuse to entertain our complaints," laments Human Singa, a factory worker in Okhla Industrial Area in New Delhi..

However, Balbir Singh, assistant sub-inspector in charge of Saproon police post that has jurisdiction over Wairtee, says: "It is not true that we don’t register cases if a Nepali comes to do so. The problem is these people do no stay in one place and hardly come for any follow-up testimony."

In truth, many migrant workers are not registered with local officials or do not carry the compulsory identification card. This is because many do not stay in one place, says Singh. This is true of those Nepalis who do not have any fixed, round-the-year job at one place.

The workers have two types of migration patterns – shuttling from home in Nepal to their places of work in India during the monsoon, for those who have some land of their own to work at, and being constantly in the move in India itself, for those with no farm land.

Most migrants are men, because women have to look after not just families but their little farms back in Nepal.

The number of Nepali migrants went up when violence escalated after the truce between the Nepali government and the Maoist rebels broke down in November 2001.

Tikaram Wagle, general secretary of the Nepali Public Contact Committee in New Delhi, estimates that there are around 20,000 "floating Nepalis" in the Indian capital and surrounding areas.

Records from the Jamunaha police post in mid-western Nepal, bordering India’s Banke district in Uttar Pradesh, showed a 20 to 30 percent increase in people coming into India. In November, around 1,000 Nepalis were going to India from this point and 240 returning daily.

Bhekh Bahadur Thapa, Nepal’s ambassador to India, says he is aware of the migrant workers’ problems but lacks resources to deal with them. Another problem, he points out, is that Nepalis in India are mostly in the unorganised sector. "So we have no records of how many of them are working and what is their location," he says.

Thapa warns that if Kathmandu does not pay attention to this migration of Nepalis, "it will lead to an explosive situation in future".

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