Trapped Between King And Rebels, Nepal Goes Without Food

by Marty Logan

(IPS) KATHMANDU -- For the vast majority of Nepalis who live outside the Kathmandu Valley, neither the words of the king, the Maoist insurgents or international agencies, nor the deeds that sometimes follow their promises, are improving their deprived lives.

Take this snapshot of life in Ilam. Close to India's famed tea-growing Darjeeling district, Ilam has the same mild climate and misty skies that nourish the tea bushes that carpet steep hillsides in emerald green.

Today the tea estates of Ilam are silent, the valuable leaves are turning to waste in the midst of the picking season, and about 45,000 people are without work after the Maoists ordered an industry shutdown late July, following employers' refusal to meet the demands of rebel-linked unions.

Some tea operations had already closed because the Maoists had ordered all traffic off on Ilam's roads in mid-July. Only ambulances are regularly plying the routes, leaving the area's shops short of essential foodstuffs.

"There is no rice in the market. There is no oil. People are panicking," a resident of one village told IPS by telephone. "They have money, and they come to our house looking for food, but we have nothing to give them."

Earlier this year Maoists ordered all private schools in Ilam to close, arguing that education should not be a profit-making enterprise. That sent hundreds of students to government schools, which cannot cope with the demand, while those who could afford it went to India.

Amnesty International (AI) says the decade-long conflict between the state and rebels, who are fighting to establish a system of government that excludes the king, is "shattering the lives of an increasing number of Nepali civilians."

Per capita annual income here is about $200 but lower among non-urban residents.

On Wednesday AI released a report highlighting the growth of citizen's vigilante groups that target the rebels, and which the organization says are backed by the state. "Restrictions on freedom of movement, extra judicial killings and disappearances, as well as illegal detention and torture perpetrated by the government and unlawful killings and abductions by CPN (Maoist) forces, are a day to day reality for the Nepali civilian population living in districts outside the capital, Kathmandu," said the report.

Friday's 'Kathmandu Post' reported that Maoists detonated a bomb near a house in the Far West region Tuesday after a resident refused to feed them. The explosion killed a three-year-old and injured two other children.

It was not supposed to be this way. Not after King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev tossed aside the government and civil liberties on Feb. 1 to restore peace and a working multi-party system; not after promises from the Maoists -- who now control as much as three-quarters of Nepal's rugged terrain as they wage brutal war with security forces -- to stop killing civilians; and not following April's dramatic confrontation at the United Nations human rights commission, where the king's government was 'forced' to accept the establishment of a human rights outpost in Kathmandu.

In fact, reports like Amnesty's are not the reality, according to the king and his handpicked council of ministers. "The law and order situation has been improving. We have been able to control terrorism. We have been providing efficient public services to the people without any prejudice and they are free of corruption," Home Minister Dan Bahadur Shahi told the BBC Nepali Service on Aug. 3.

The Maoists continue to insist they will stop killing civilians, like the 36 locals sharing a packed bus with uniformed and plainclothes soldiers in June who died when the rebels detonated a bomb on the road.

"Although the Maoist supremo Prachanda issued a statement saying that the Maoists will not kill unarmed civilians, (they) have killed 62 persons, including 16 political activists, after the statement," said Informal Sector Services Center president Subodh Raj Pyakurel on Thursday, reported 'The Himalayan Times.'

Ian Martin, chief of the monitoring office of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights told IPS that "a lot of complaints are finding their way to us" in Kathmandu, in person or by telephone. "I can't say that the human rights situation is improving," he added, "it will be a considerable time before we make pronouncements that talk confidently of trends."

So, given this dreadful situation, why aren't Nepalis rising up? Why not a second 'democratic spring,' months of street protests in 1990 that forced then King Birendra (the present ruler's brother) to accept multi- party democracy?

Rohit Adhikari was there. A civil servant during the day, he and his colleagues left office at day's end, headed for the mass meetings and demonstrations that went on for months in Kathmandu. "I didn't like affiliating myself to one (political) party (but) I was involved very actively (in the movement) because it was consolidated -- everybody could go there and take part," he told IPS.

"Once I was severely beaten. Once I saw people killed in front of me," said Adhikari, who now works for an international non-governmental organization (NGO) and asked that his real name not be used. "It was a kind of addiction also everybody was a democrat."

But he says he will not join the students who have been pelting police with rocks and trying to block Kathmandu streets this week, and have in turn been beaten by police with cane rods.

"I still have energy for democracy" but "I'm not as blind as in that time," says Adhikari. "The root cause (of today's problems) is our poor democratic leaders who didn't deliver."

"Unless good young leaders come up I don't think people will really participate (in today's protests) because they don't believe" the existing leaders, he added.

Fellow 1990 activist Krishna Pahadi would agree. "There is hope but no trust of the (political) parties" among the general public after a dozen years of democracy that was marked by corruption and party infighting, he said, reported the 'Kathmandu Post.'

On Friday, Pahadi and other leaders of the anti-violence movement will hold their second rally in the capital to urge Nepalis to rise up and fight for the liberties stripped by the king.

Outside the capital, in many of the country's roughly 4,000 villages, another menace has emerged. Drought threatens current and future crops as present monsoon rains have spilled just a fraction of their usual moisture on the land.

On Tuesday, government officials in southeastern Saptari district held a 'puja' (Hindu ceremony) to entice the clouds to deliver their promise of rain.

Seventy-five percent of the district's farmland could not be planted with rice this season because of the failure of the monsoons, reported 'The Himalayan Times.'