#369 5 - 11 October 2007 18 pages Rs 30 Weekly Internet Poll # 369 Q. What is your opinion on monarchy? Total votes: 7,600 Weekly Internet Poll # 370. To vote go to: www.nepalitimes.com Q. What is your opinion about the NC's decision to go for republicanism? RAJESH KC Slashed and burnt fter suffering three weeks There is one banda after With the Kapilbastu highway BURNING THE MESENGER: of shutdowns since another till Dasain, some blockade by victims of riots, these Freshly printed editions of AAugust, the tarai is overlapping with each other: closures have brought the country Kantipur's eastern edition were paralysed by another series of Sunsari, Siraha and Saptarai to a grinding halt at a time when taken out of a delivery van and set ablaze by Maoists near Biratnagar crippling strikes that have face an indefinite banda called by people are travelling home for on Tuesday morning. The previous effectively closed down the East- the Tharuhat. holidays. Bus companies have day, they damaged the main West Highway before Dasain. Three-day tarai banda 4-6 stopped taking bookings, schools printing facility in Kathmandu and There is deep frustration here October called by Rajendra are closed, term exams can't be threatened to kill staffers at the with leaders in Kathmandu who Mahato's Sadbhabana. held and the sick can't get to Bharatpur plant. are too preoccupied with politics Two-day Morang and Saptari hospitals. A hitherto unknown to care. "We are fed up with the banda called by the Biswas group called the Garib Mukti republic before full proportional endless highway blockades, my faction of the MJF. Morcha held a two day banda last representation polls. Prime business is finished," says Indefinite eastern Nepal week in the Eastern tarai and set Minister Koirala is holding out, Biratnagar transporter Shekhar strike by the Limbuwan and fire to three trucks. and the Maoists are smarting from Niraula. "This is why we need to Khumbuwan. A pregnant woman died after universal condemnation of their get these elections over and done Another two-day banda in Limbuwan activists set fire to a attacks on Kantipur. If a deal is with. Politicians should stop Bara and Parsa on 9-11 October by bus at Belbari in Morang and a not worked out before the punishing the people." the MJF's Biswas young man was killed when MJF deadline for election nominations group. activists hurled a bomb at a night on Friday, poll postponement bus in Parwanipur in Bara two looks inevitable. Which means weeks ago. more uncertainty, more protests Meanwhile in Kathmandu, and even more shutdowns here in leaders are deadlocked over the the tarai. Maoist demand to declare a Kunda Dixit in Biratnagar 2 EDITORIAL 5 - 11 OCTOBER 2007 #369 Published by Himalmedia Pvt Ltd, Editor: Kunda Dixit Design: Kiran Maharjan Director Sales and Marketing: Sunaina Shah [email protected] Circulation Manager: Samir Maharjan [email protected] Subscription: [email protected],5542525/535 Open border, closed minds Hatiban, Godavari Road, Lalitpur GPO Box 7251, Kathmandu 5543333-6, Fax: 5521013 [email protected] Printed at Jagadamba Press, Hatiban: 5547018 www.nepalitimes.com Blaming the border for the madhes crisis distracts attention from Nepal’s domestic political failure apilbastu brought into Bihar. People came from Uttar Darbangha for treatment, the MESSING WITH THE MESSENGER focus the implications of Pradesh and participated in the Tilhati family which needs to The Maoists call it ‘direct action’. In effect it is a kangaroo K Nepal’s open border with recent central tarai riots. visit relatives in Birpur, the court, inquisition and paranoid cultural revolution-style India. Ever since the madhesi These linkages are inevitable thousands of pahadi and persecution all rolled into one. uprising in January, many when there is a conflict in a madhesi Nepalis who move to Perhaps it was inevitable that the revolution would Kathmandu politicians and border zone. Despite India to work. degenerate to this: using militant unions to set fire to newspaper analysts have argued that the sophisticated control and Cross border links led many premises, attack printing facilities, damage machinery and threaten to annihilate staff. The worst transgression was by the border lies at the root of the fencing, there is constant flow of in Kathmandu to suspect that head of the Maoist trade union Saligram Jamarkattel who in a unrest, and demanded it must be people between India and India is fuelling the crisis. That vicious speech delivered to YCL goons outside Kantipur tightly regulated. Pakistan, between India’s is unlikely. Both Delhi and Publications on Monday publicly threatened to make the paper Northeast and Bangladesh and Lainchaur diplomats were happy “history” and to “break the head” of its managing director. The TARAI EYE Burma. The open border may with the madhesi movement fact that Jamarkattel is also a member of the interim parliament make these linkages more because it weakened the Maoists. Prashant Jha just makes all this much worse for his party. pronounced but this remains a But India is neither pleased No longer can the Maoists now hide behind excuses of not subsidiary feature. about the present situation in the being able to control hardline cadre, or of taking the war to class This view is shared by some The real issue is domestic Nepal tarai nor is it engineering enemies. For too long this peace process has been a one-way in Delhi. An Indian editor who Nepali politics. Gaur happened the unrest. street, where the Maoists have been allowed to blackmail the knows Nepal remarked: “Good not because the border was open India’s Nepal policy is nation with threats of going back to war. The people have seen through their duplicity, the forked tongue of its leaders and their fences make good neighbours.” but because the Maoist-MJF dominated by stability, in blatant shifting of goalposts. The vandalism at Kantipur was no The elite in the two capitals relationship was antagonistic. keeping with the larger vision of accident. There is a method to the Maoist madness and its must not be allowed to change Kapilbastu happened because a peaceful periphery. The tarai repercussions will be equally serious on the party. the nature of the border. This political competition, developments not only threaten The supreme irony in all this, of course, is that it was view overplays the impact of statelessness and ethnic tension to derail the entire Indian effort Kantipur that helped the Maoists occupy their moral high ground cross-border elements in inciting came together. Madhesi leaders of the past two years, but can also by highlighting the failings of mainstream politicians, the human trouble, ignores the crucial live in Bihar in the way Maoist have a potentially destabilising rights violations of the army, and giving lavish space to friendly linkages shared by people and leaders did. It was not the active impact on north Bihar and east columnists. It was Kantipur’s job, as a medium for public debate their livelihood and cultural deployment of border forces, but UP politics. What India wants is in a democracy, to allow them that space. But when a party no concerns, and prescribes the the peace process that stopped a quick, snappy solution, not a longer cares for public opinion, and has no intention of facing the wrong solution. Better Maoist activities. Similarly, once conflagration. Those who believe people in elections, it has no qualms about killing the messenger. Now that their masks have been pulled off, the Maoist administration and cooperation the root causes in the madhes are otherwise have not kept up with leadership has suffered irreversible damage to the public support on both sides is the answer, not addressed, these armed groups this basic change in South it still had. If their threats and attacks on the media don’t stop more restrictions. will come on board or be Block’s mindset. forthwith, they will have no future in open politics. The Maoists With the law and order marginalised. MEA officials in Delhi have shot themselves in both feet, and not accidentally. situation improving in Bihar, The other part of the occasionally meet their many criminals have decided to solution lies in more competent counterparts in the central Home make the most of and less corrupt administrative Ministry and intelligence the anarchy in the machinery on both sides, not in agencies. To expect that they are Nepal tarai. Some tightening the border. closely working with home people from Militarisation will not deter ministries in Bihar and UP, local Bairgania either criminals or politicians intelligence agents, and SSB to participated in the who will find a way to keep up support madhesi groups or create Gaur massacre and the links, crossing open fields instability in tarai is over- ran back to India. and rivers, travelling at night, stretching it. In fact, there are Jwala Singh paying off custom officials. Other only two officials in Bihar and spends most of ordinary people will be adversely none in the UP government who his time in affected: the madhesi woman keep track of Nepal. Delhi neither Darbangha and who is married in Raxaul but has the motive nor has invested Muzaffarpur, Goit comes to teach in a Birganj college resources to keep the crisis going. lives in Supaul every day, the small trader who It is Nepal that has to address and Patna among lives in Jogbani and runs a shop the madhes issue and the other places. in Biratnagar, the dalit rickshaw political vacuum domestically, Madhesi groups puller from Nepalganj who works not blame it on the open border. acquire their guns in Bahraich, the young medical Indeed, the border is the best from the small representative in Janakpur who thing to have happened for arms market in has to take his mother to millions of Nepalis.