299 26 May - 1 June 2006 18 Pages Rs 30 Remoteremote Control Control
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
#299 26 May - 1 June 2006 18 pages Rs 30 RemoteRemote control control KUNDA DIXIT hat will the rest of Nepal: don’t wait for the restoration of state to bring development, do Wdemocracy mean to it yourself. Nepal’s remote regions and All it takes is some seed marginalised people? Will the money or catalytic help to get Karnali and mountain these regions going. Jumla and districts that are untouched by Kalikot need the Karnali roads finally get a hearing in Highway, Humla urgently needs faraway Kathmandu? to finish the Hilsa road to the The Mahakali Primary Chinese border to end its School in Langduk in Humla isolation and (above) has 100 percent Mugu could Editorial p2 enrollment–all the boys and easily be Momentous month girls of the village go to connected school. Living standards in once the Humla's road Langduk are higher than even Martadi road to the future p8-9 the district capital of Simkot reaches because farmers here sell Bajura. “It is the lack of access vegetables that they grow in that is keeping us backward,” their own greenhouses. says Jivan Shahi, the former Langduk has a lesson for the DDC chairman of Humla. “Once there is a road everything else will follow.” Like elsewhere in the Weekly Internet Poll # 299 country, the Maoists have come Q... Is it time now for the Maoists to above ground in the far west as renounce violence? well. Along the trails in Humla, Total votes:7,166 guerrillas in civvies walk to Simkot, not even concealing pistols wrapped in black plastic bags. Their mass meetings may be well-attended but it will be Weekly Internet Poll # 300. To vote go to: www.nepalitimes.com difficult to judge real support Q... Do you agree with parliament’s decision as long as they keep their to declare Nepal a secular state? weapons. Bar 2 EDITORIAL 26 MAY - 1 JUNE 2006 #299 Published by Himalmedia Pvt Ltd, Chief Editor: Kunda Dixit Desk Editor: Marty Logan Design: Kiran Maharjan Web: Bhushan Shilpakar Vicepresident Corporate Affairs: Sneh Sayami Advertising: Sambhu Guragain [email protected] Subscription: [email protected] Hatiban, Godavari Road, Lalitpur [email protected], GPO Box 7251, Kathmandu Tel: 5543333-6, Fax: 5521013 www.nepalitimes.com Printed at Jagadamba Press, Hatiban: 5547018 Lest we forget Plenty of democrats and peoples’ warriors have MOMENTOUS MONTH the peoples’ blood on their hands It has been a month, yet the implications of these past weeks are just beginning to sink in. Who would have said in early April that a o the people are officially would tell tales of atrocities and because they couldn’t function restored parliament would be giving itself the power to decide who sovereign. Good. And that how these had driven them to peacefully in a democratic can be the future king of Nepal? S horrible parody of a become peoples’ warriors. system, however flawed. They Who could have imagined that the cabinet could with the national anthem is going. Much of the time, especially ruthlessly targeted politicians stroke of a pen erase ‘His Majesty’ from the official name of the Excellent. Gyanendra Shah’s before 2002, they were not and political parties for much of government and take out ‘Royal’ from the army? And these are not wings are clipped and Paras talking about the RNA, now NA. their so-called ‘Peoples’ War’. just cosmetic changes, they represent a fundamental shift in the could be tried for murder and It was the police and the armed From time to time, headline status quo with symbolic and actual transfer of power. Elsewhere in the world, a similar changing of the guard in the national army other crimes. Couldn’t be better. police that had killed, maimed, attacks on the security forces would be accompanied by wholesale slaughter or state collapse. tortured raped and stolen. Yes, would give the illusion that an Even in Nepal, these changes could have happened through a HERE AND THERE these days, you’d find a horrible actual war was under way. But bloody revolution, as the Maoists have always wanted. That this Daniel Lak litany of abuse on the lips of mostly, cadres and commissars transformation took place through a relatively non-violent uprising country folk. But for much of the systematically exterminated the is further proof of the maturity and dignity with which the Nepali Maoist war, the army refused to infrastructure of political parties. people and their political leaders have carried themselves. The But again, MPs and Maoists get involved. The UML, for much of the 90’s past month has proved that a non-violent political process has greater legitimacy and is always more cost-effective. alike need to remember In those early years from the most viable democratic force The challenge now is to convert this accomplishment into something. It’s not just the royals 1998 until 2002, the names that in rural Nepal, came in for socio-economic progress. We have to take the country back to and feudals who are resented by stood accused of ordering particularly brutal attention. 1996 when grassroots democracy was empowering local people to the Nepali people. They too are horrific abuses weren’t yet Shah, Who could forget how bring health, education and livelihoods to their constituents. stained by dishonour and more Rana or Thapa. Those cursed for Maoists deliberately savaged the Parliament can’t afford to be so bogged down with reprisal and than a little blood. a disappearance or a brutal police few gains of 1990s democracy? retribution to kickstart development. Unless people see a Before I reluctantly left Nepal action would be Deuba, or Physical infrastructure was measurable improvement in their living standards soon, the joy of freedom will once more turn to despair. in 2004, I used to venture forth Koirala. Bam Deb Gautam wasn’t blown apart and so were the In remote Humla, people have been waiting for decades for from time to time to meet particularly well thought of DDCs and VDCs–both of which Kathmandu to listen to their needs (see p 8-9). Mugu, Bajura, villagers and cadres in Maoist either, despite his leftist were becoming successfully Bajhang and Doti are in the grip of a severe drought-induced food areas like Rolpa, Rukum, Dang credentials. entrenched as forces for real shortage. Across the tarai, farmers need help with irrigation and and Salyan. Sometimes women These gentlemen, now so change at local and regional agriculture inputs. These things can’t wait and the quickest way to carried the guns, most often it prominent in the nation’s newly levels. The Maoists saw this as a address them is to urgently fill the vacuum at the VDC and DDC was men. But to a person, they restored loktantra were in charge threat to their myth-driven level. Let’s see a government that behaves like a government and exert its presence in when the brutal operations ideology, so they blew up areas from which it has pulled back in the known as Romeo, Kilo Sierra 1 buildings, oppressed employees past ten years. and Kilo Sierra 2. Sher Bahadur and kept political control firmly Reconstruction has become a buzzword Deuba and Comrade Gautam as in their mailed fists. but we didn’t have that much infrastructure to ministers were believed to have Sure, Nepal needs to be be destroyed to begin with. The telecom ordered police actions. Girija modern, sovereign and probably towers, VDC buildings and bridges blown up Prasad Koirala was prime some sort of republic. It’s up to by the Maoists are already being rebuilt. Instead of reconstruction we have to lay new minister during some tough the people. And those who foundations for far-reaching progress. Start times. wreaked havoc and devastated with linking the 15 districts that still don’t Amnesty International and the land need to answer for their have roads with 700 km of new highways, other groups rightly condemned crimes up to and including increasing power generation by 700 elected Nepali governments for Gyanendra Shah, his cronies and megawatts to meet growth in demand, those operations. International sycophants, senior RNA officers attracting investments to create the 500,000 media and local reporters spoke and others. But as the weeks new jobs that Nepalis need so they don’t have to migrate to work. to victims and found horror progress, let’s be wary of attempts There is a lot that needs to be done: Nepal stories galore. The Maoist war to claim that justice is done is the most deprived country in the world’s began and worsened under when the feudals are purged. most deprived region. Even while the political democracy. Democrats ordered There are plenty of democrats issues are being resolved, there is no reason murders, brutality and vengeful and peoples’ warriors with the to be folding our hands and twiddling our assaults on villagers in Kalikot, peoples’ blood on their hands. At thumbs. The political process is just a tool to Salyan, Rukum and Rolpa. very least, they need to own up raise the people’s living standards. We won’t Nor do the Maoists have get an opportunity like this to set things right. to their sins and apologise to anything to be sanctimonious those who suffered from them. about. Their violence arose At very least. KIRAN PANDAY LLL ETTERS JUSTICE So it is in a democracy that by definition slow as you say in DEFANGING Otherwise the danger of re- The violence on the streets of the people who expressed their your editorial (‘Guns and After reading Kunda Dixit’s igniting the chaos will be Kathmandu on Monday was free opinion in support of the slogans’, #297).