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NEWS FROM
NEPAL From
English language Kathmandu newspapers and other media,-December 2002-February
2003 VII-1 ____________________________________________________________________________________________ “THE PEOPLE’S WAR” Cease-fire Announced. “We have
received a notice yesterday from the government side notifying us that they
have withdrawn the terrorist tag and price on our heads,” declared Comrade
Prachanda (real name Pushpa Kamal Dahal),
leader of the insurgents, in a
faxed message on January 29. “We are
considering this move a positive step and have decided on a cease-fire, and
have agreed to take part in peace talks.”
Shortly after this announcement, the government confirmed that it had
accepted the Maoist terms for opening talks.
These included dropping the
“terrorist” tag, withdrawing its offer of bounty for bringing in Maoists dead
or alive, and rescinding its call to Interpol to arrest top leaders if they
should be found outside the country.
Thus a seven-year conflict that has taken more than 7,000 lives,
seriously damaged Nepal’s economy and infrastructure, and caused many thousands
to leave their homes, has been brought at least to a temporary halt. Minister of Physical Planning and Works
Narayan Singh Pun, a former lieutenant colonel in the army, has been appointed
to represent the government in forthcoming talks. Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, the Maoists’ No. 2 leader, will head a five-member team that includes
Ram Bahadur Thapa, who is generally considered to be more extremist than other
Maoist leaders and is thought to have adopted a unilateral position in
sabotaging earlier peace talks. Pun has
been involved in preliminary negotiations which, according to one vigorously
denied rumor, included ferrying Dr. Bhattarai and Thapa to the Narayanhiti
Royal Palace in Kathmandu for five hours of talks with King Gyanendra. What is not rumor is that the cabinet stayed
up until the wee hours discussing the Maoist offer and met again in the early morning
before announcing its acceptance.
Orders to lay down arms have been issued on both sides and the Maoists
have called off a planned two-day strike in mid-February. There are still many
serious differences to be worked out if there is to be any permanent
peace. Leaders of the political parties
have not expressed enthusiasm about the breakthrough, perhaps because they were
not involved in negotiating it. Yet
Comrade Prachanda has made it plain he expects them to take part in resolving
Nepal’s present crisis. “The party’s
stance for a round table conference of all the parties and intellectual
personalities, an interim government, and constituent assembly election is
aimed at resisting all sorts of regressive moves..,” he says. The move for a cease-fire, he adds, was made
“without any prejudice. We want
seriousness of all the political parties and intellectuals on the gravity of
the problem.” (all news media, January
29 ff) Inspector General of Police
Shot. Krishna Mohan Shrestha was Nepal’s paramilitary Armed
Police Force’s first Inspector General of Police. When he was shot on the street on January 26, it was assumed it
was the work of Maoists. If so, he
would be the highest ranking official to have been killed by them. The shooting took place on Ring Road outside
of Lalitpur when Shrestha, his wife (a teacher at Lincoln School) and a
bodyguard were out for their morning walk.
All three were killed. Police
followed a trail of blood to a nearby house, where they arrested Krishna Mohan
Sainju as an accomplice to the murder.
Sainju told the police that it
was his role to signal the arrival of the Inspector General (IGP) to five armed
assailants. In the course of the
firing, Sainju received a bullet in his leg.
Police believe him to be the local commander of the Bhaktapur ring of
Maoist terrorists. Following the
murders, Prime Minister Chand summoned an emergency cabinet meeting. Security measures in the capital were
intensified with checkpoints being set up at entry points to Kathmandu from
Lalitpur. Witnesses observed as many as
seven police buses being loaded with suspects be taken in for
interrogation. The 15,000-member Armed
Police Force was created about a year and a half ago to combat the
insurgents. That the assassination of
Shrestha took place while talks were underway for declaring a cease-fire, and had pundits wondering if
it might be designed to strengthen the Maoist hand in negotiations, an attempt
by rogue hard-line elements of the party to sabotage the talks, or simply a hit
team that did not get its orders on time.
(Kathmandu
Post, nepalnews.com, Nepali Times,
January 26-27) Until Now, the Only War in
Town. If the cease-fire brings peace to Nepal, it will end
what a German research group has labeled as the only current war in Asia. Of the 42 wars or violent conflicts in the
world counted by the Institute for International Conflict Research at
Heidelberg University, most were in Africa.
The Institute admitted that there were 12 other “serious conflicts” in
Asia; yet none except Nepal’s Maoist insurgency met their definition of
“war.” (Kathmandu Post, December 13) Children are Victims in
Insurgency. Many of the casualties of “The People’s War” have
been children. One-hundred-sixty-eight
of them have been killed in the six-year conflict and 95 severely injured,
according to a human rights group, Child Workers in Nepal Concerned Center
(CWIN). Some 2,000 have lost their
parents and 4,000 have been uprooted with their families. More than 10,000 have been denied access to
education because of the insurgency and 1,089 have simply disappeared. The Center is also worried by reports that
many children have been recruited into the Maoist’s army, but it is also
concerned that at least 100 have been arrested by the army. Of the hundreds who have fled their homes
fearing for their safety, many have “involved themselves in dangerous work for
a living.” The Center is probably
including those who have allowed themselves to be commercially exploited for
sexual purposes in dance halls and restaurants in the city and on the street “
by local and foreign pedophiles.” It
has recorded 137 cases of trafficking in minors. A joint survey conducted by CWIN with Norway’s Save The Children
reveals that 20 percent of children in Kathmandu have been subjected to sexual
abuse. Even if it is responsible for
leaving children psychologically scarred (encouraging violent tendencies or
causing them to be “locked up in fear and depression”), “The People’s War”
cannot, of course, be blamed for all of the children’s problems. CWIN reports that a number of factors can be responsible for 46 youthful suicides
during the year, including poverty, family tension, frustration in love affairs
and failure in exams. Sixteen percent
of Kathmandu’s street children are addicted to drugs. Fifty-six percent are smokers; 26 percent take snuff; whereas 54
percent inject drugs into their bodies.
More than 50% of Kathmandu street children have been found to be
addicted to glue sniffing. (The New York
Times, January 16; Kathmandu Post, February 3) Driven From Their Homes by Threat of
Retaliation. Besides those who have left the country because of
the effect of “The Peoples’ War” on their own lives, there are those who have
left their homes but stayed in Nepal.
An estimated 1,700 people from 14 districts in the Maoist dominated
mid-western districts of Nepal have left their homes after local security posts
were closed and police personnel transferred to district headquarters. Most of these have reason to fear the Maoists:
they are active in political parties opposed to the rebels or are known as
“informers” to the government. The
regional office has promised a “displacement allowance” for such people. Yet officials concede that they are having
difficulty in verifying which persons are authentic victims of the insurgency.
(Kathmandu
Post, January 11) POLITICAL The First 100 Days. A poll conducted by Nepali Times just before the
announcement of a cease-fire, found 55.3% of Nepalis rating the performance of
the Chand government as “bad,” as opposed to 23% who thought it was either
“good” or “excellent.” It may be that
many people were expecting something more dramatic after the King ousted the
elected government and replaced it with one that supposedly would spend less of its time on the all-engrossing
political struggles that have distracted a succession of elected
governments from the problems of the
country. In its first 100 days,
completed not long before the cease-fire announcement, the new government had
accomplished little more than its predecessors. Yet its most vociferous detractors seem to be the leaders of the
political parties who, through no choice of their own, have been made
irrelevant to the course of events.
The two major political parties, who have rarely been able to
cooperate in anything else, have found
common ground in their opposition to an un-elected government. Nepali Congress (NC) President Girija Prasad
Koirala has agreed with United Marxist-Leninist (UML) General Secretary Madhav
Kumar Nepal to launch a joint movement “on a massive scale” to pressure the
King to reverse his decisionto take over the government. Although they are of like mind in that they
want to “safeguard the achievements of the 1990 people’s movement,” they have
not made clear what course they would like the King to follow. The NC has officially stated it would like
him to revive the dissolved House of Representatives, whereas the UML wants an
all-party government (which should, in their opinion, be led by their own party
leader). If there are to be reforms in
the Constitution, says Koirala, they should come from the parliament. “Those advocating a constituent assembly [a
group made up of all parties to decide on a new constitution and new
government, as advocated by the Maoists] should clear their bottom line on
whether they respect constitutional monarchy, multiparty system, people’s
sovereignty and the parliamentary system.”
(Kathmandu
Post, January 15) A Meeting That No-one Attended. An all-party meeting to discuss permanent peace with
the Maoists was called by Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand for February 16
but no-one came. The major political
parties, after a meeting of their own, decided to boycott it. “Since the government is illegitimate and
unconstitutional and has failed to make the dialogue with the Maoists
transparent,” said the leader of the Nepal Sadbhavana Party, “we have decided
to boycott the meeting.” The prime
minister’s own party, Rastriya Prajantantra Party, originally voted to attend
but then changed its mind. The Koirala
faction of the Nepali Congress party did not even attend the all-party meeting
since it had been called by Koirala’s
main NC rival, former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba. Yet it made it clear
it did not want to participate in Chand’s meeting. Koirala has predicted that the cease-fire will be short-lived
because “no homework has been done for confidence building measures” for the
talks with the Maoists. “Rather than
holding talks with the King’s representatives, “ says the leader of the Nepali
Congress party and former prime minister, “they should talk with the
people.” (Kathmandu Post, February 14,
15) Koirala Promises to Reveal TRUE
Story of Palace Killing. Who
was really
responsible for the killing of the royal family in June of 2001? Former Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala
knows and has apparently known all along, but has kept the information to
himself out of fear that releasing it might trigger a fresh round of
unrest. Now, however, he promises that
very soon he will “expose the brain and
the actors of the ‘grand design’ . . . I deliberately choose to keep shut,” he
told a group of Nepali Congress workers, “but I will expose everything at an
opportune time.” (Kathmandu Post, January 2) NATIONAL Change in Phone Numbers. If you will be telephoning Nepal after March 15 you
may have to add a new prefix to the number you are dialing. Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA),
the country's regulatory body for telecom services, is altering existing
telephone numbers throughout the country.
Those in the Kathmandu district will be prefixed with 4, Lalitpur with 5
and Bhaktapur with 6. Numbers outside
the Valley might have any one of the allocated digits. The change is being made to allow expansion
of exchanges whose numbers are exhausted.
The NTA has arranged for recordings to help callers who dial old
numbers. (Kathmandu
Post, February 14) Cold Spell Cripples Terai. An unusual spell of extreme cold weather settled over
northern India and Nepal in January, lingering for more than three weeks and
causing the deaths of nearly 50 people, mostly old people and children. Central and eastern districts in the Terai
were particularly hard hit. Schools
were closed down for extended periods, shops were open only in the middle of
the day, and some local governments arranged for large bonfires to be built to
help keep villagers warm. Farmers were
particular sufferers with extensive damage to crops and the death of some
cattle. (Kathmandu Post, Rising Nepal,
January 10, 14) Corruption in Nepal: a Survey. Transparency International, an international
organization with a branch in
Nepal, has conducted a two-year,
five-pronged study of corruption in 3,600 households in 10 cities and 51
Village Development Committees, and has
learned that politicians are considered to be more corrupt than anyone else in
public life - twice as corrupt as their
counterparts in business and finance.
They are followed by others in government - people in the bureaucratic
and judicial sectors, with professionals and those involved in the social
sector farther down the list. As far as
kinds
of corruption, monetary corruption was deemed the worst, with misuse of public
property second and negligence of duty third.
Those who were aware of corruption and were victims of it were asked if
they had tried to do anything about it.
Most had not because they felt it was useless. Those who did tended to take their problem directly to the person
concerned, but a little more than half
said this did them no good. More than a
third of clients of the Land Revenue Office said they had to pay bribes. Others were forced to pay bribes to the
Electricity and Telecommunications offices and to the police. Only a few had to give extra money to local
government and hospitals for their service.
When asked if the bribes were demanded or whether they were offered
merely as encouragement for performing a service, almost 80 percent said that
they were compelled to fork over the money.
By and large it went directly to the person in charge of performing the
service, not to an intermediary. Nearly
all agreed that the bribe did accomplish its purpose. When asked if they were optimistic that corruption will be
controlled, only 15.6 percent said “yes.”
(Nepali
Times, January 10; Tansparency International press release, January
15) First in Bio-diversity
Conservation. There is at least one field in which Nepal can count
itself as Number One. The International
Hereditary Resource Organization has pronounced Nepal’s work in bio-diversity
conservation as the best in the world.
It reached this conclusion after a six-year study of nine countries around the world. The work involves the conservation of paddy,
millet, barley and cucumber. (The People’s
Review, January 30) INTERNATIONAL US Aid Reduced. The United States will not, after all, be giving
Nepal the $20 million it promised last year for help in its “war against terrorism.” The amount approved by Congress for the fiscal year is $12
million. “The total was decreased
because of a number of factors,” explained a State Department official. These included “overall budget stringencies
and a shifting of priorities in the war on terrorism,” as well as a tailoring of the amount to fit “what [the
Nepalis] need and what they can afford.”
This would be individual weapons and communications equipment suitable
for guerrilla conflict, not fighter jets.
“Twelve million can’t buy a hell of a lot of F-16s [fighter jets], but
they don’t need F-16s,” the official said.
“It is much more basic than that.”
It is likely that a team from the US Pacific Command that had toured
western Nepal last year had a large input in deciding what the needs were. Nepalese defense officials had hoped for
funds sufficient for the purchase of night-vision goggles, helicopters, rocket
launchers and automatic weapons. The
Maoists have made it plain that they are vehemently opposed to any aid given to
the Nepalese government for the purpose of combatting their insurgency. To indicate their displeasure, they twice
attacked and damaged Coca-Cola factories in Nepal in protest. (Kathmandu Post, January 3) US “Global Gag Rule” Hurts Aid
Organizations. It
has been estimated that six Nepali women die each day in Nepal because of unsafe
abortions. Although last August,
Nepal’s parliament passed a bill conditionally legalizing abortion under strict
consensual and health guidelines, there are still hundreds of women in jail
serving sentences for abortion.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as The Family Planning
Association of Nepal have been able to help with the problem but recently have
had to seriously curtail their efforts after US President George W. Bush
reinstated the “Global Gag Rule” that prevents NGOs from receiving US funds for
providing abortion-related services, including counselling and referrals. “This is not about supporting abortion -
it’s about population, development and motherhood,” says Wasim Zaman, the
Kathmandu-based South Asia Director of the United Nations Population Fund
(UNFPA). “They [the US] should be
taking the lead, not slowing down.”
That organization and others
have suffered funding cuts up to 23 percent and have had to lay off large
numbers of experienced employees. “We
respect the US right to decide its own policies,” says former Health Minister
Sharat Singh Bhandari, “but we urge it to take a wider perspective in issues
that might have global impact and implications.” (Nepali Times,
January 31) Gurkhas (and Communists) March for
Peace. Around 2,000 ex-British Gurkhas took to the streets
to protest America’s threat to invade Iraq.
Such an invasion would likely involve the active participation of the
Gurkhas. All who are now on leave in
Nepal have been called back by the British government, which is providing
troops to support the action. “Whenever
and wherever a war breaks out, it is the British Gurkhas who are made to face
the first bullets, not the British soldiers,” said a Gurkha. There are currently around 3,500 of these
Nepalese soldiers serving in the British army, considerably fewer than the
10,000 serving before 1998. Currently,
there are cases pending in British courts in which Gurkha soldiers have sued for
pay, pension money and war compensation equal to that of other British
soldiers. If the government loses, it
may put an end to Gurkha recruitment, according to British authorities. The February 15 marchers demanded that the
UN and international law be respected.
Although Temba Tsheri Sherpa, the youngest person to climb Mt. Everest,
is not a Gurkha, he joined the demonstration, carrying a banner that said,
“Let’s Live in Peace.” Another group
that took to the streets on February 18 to protest a possible US invasion of
Iraq was organized by all ten of the Communist parties in Nepal. (Kathmandu Post, February 14, 15) Some Progress in Refugee Situation. The long-standing argument about what to do with the
100,000 Bhutanese refugees who have been living in camps in southeastern Nepal
for the past 12 years is inching towards at least a partial solution. After
intensive talks between the foreign ministers of Nepal and Bhutan, the former
country has tentatively accepted Bhutan’s proposal that the refugees be asked
whether they want to live in Nepal or Bhutan and those who choose Bhutan be
taken back. According to one official,
“both Bhutan and Nepal agreed to show flexibility and an accommodative spirit
under which Bhutan would take back those who were forcibly evicted and,
significantly, those who willingly left the country. Nepal, on the other hand, has agreed not to force those refugees
who do not want to go back.” Those who
do want to return to Bhutan may find that their homesteads have been taken over
by other Bhutanese. Bhutanese donors are said to be considering some kind of
rehabilitation support for these.
Activist refugees have denounced the agreement. “As citizens of Bhutan, we have the right to
return to our country,” says one of their leaders. “They can’t just take some of us back and leave the others
behind.” Refugees from six camps have
joined 4,000 at Khudunabari Camp in a relay hunger strike that has been going
on for more than a month. (Kathmandu
Post,
Nepali Times, February 7) INTERNATIONAL - NEPALIS OUTSIDE
OF NEPAL Foreign Employment Up. According to government figures, 50,134 Nepalis left
the country in search of work in the first six months of the current fiscal
year, more than twice as many as during the same period last year. Most go to the Gulf countries (12,954 to
Qatar; 8,612 to Saudi Arabia) or Malaysia (22,659). The numbers are expected to increase with South Korea’s offer of
jobs for 4,200 Nepalis and the Gulf countries’ recent revocation of a ban on
Nepali women workers. Nepal’s
government encourages this migration and in fact has even included a Rs 100,000
(US $1,280) item in its budget for collateral-free loans for foreign
job-seekers. Remittances form a major
chunk of the national income (see below).
Besides, giving employment to those who can find no work at home helps
reduce social problems. (Kathmandu
Post, January 22) Conflict Causes Large-Scale
Emigration. One thing that the cease-fire may discourage is a
large-scale departure of Nepalese people from their home country. Although it is nothing new for Nepalis to
leave Nepal in search of work (many leave after harvest time to find seasonal
work in India, and many others leave for good simply because the living is
better - there may be more Nepalis living outside of their country than in it)
, “The Peoples’ War” is probably responsible for something that could be
described as a large exodus. No-one knows the exact number of people who
have been leaving, but at one checkpoint on the border beyond Nepalgunj, border
police officials counted more than 8,000 people departing in one week in December. “We left because it was getting more and
more dangerous,” said one of them. “The
soldiers come and want to know about Maoists, and the Maoists come and punish
us for talking to soldiers.” People who
leave their villages need letters from authorities to prove to police on both
sides of the border that they are not Maoists, but because most local village
offices and police posts no longer exist, they have go to their district’s
headquarters where usually they have to pay a bribe to lower level
officials. “Incidents like this,” says
one observer, “make many villagers glad to be leaving a land where there is no
justice any more and where they are exploited both by the government and the
rebels.” Nepalis do not need a visa to
cross the border into India, yet it is possible with an increasingly tight job
market in India, they may not be welcome for long. It is also hard to assess what the departure of some 16,000
Nepalis, mostly able-bodied men, will mean to Nepal and its economy in the long
run. (Nepali Times, December 13) Recommends Better System for Getting
Money into Nepal. Sending money to Nepal through its banking
system is an “unnecesarily lengthy and complicated” process, claims Nepal’s
Ambassador to Qatar. Because of this,
most of the 70,000 Nepalis working in that country route their money through
India, Hong Kong, Singapore or other countries, where money handlers change
take charge of getting it to Nepal in rupees (and make a profit on the
exchange). Thus both the individual
recipient - who receives less money than was deposited - and the Nepalese
economy - which depends on money sent from Nepalis abroad as its greatest
source of convertible currency - suffer.
The ambassador’s charges are backed up by studies conducted by Nepal’s
central state bank, Nepal Rastra Bank.
These show that, although an estimated Rs 72 billion is sent intoNepal
each year, the official remittance intake is around Rs 12 billion - or only 20
percent of the total. He is
recommending a restructuring of that part of the banking system that handles
remittances and a mechanism to insure their quick delivery. (Kathmandu Post, February 15) The Money That Never Got There. Raju Pakhrin looks like a man you can trust.
Otherwise he would not have been able to collect some Rs 5.5 million (around US
$70,500) from fellow Nepalis working in Saudi Arabia on the promise that he
would deliver it to their families in Nepal.
Instead he has disappeared, taking the money with him. Perhaps he will re-appear in six months, as
he did earlier this year after collecting Rs 3 million (around US $38,500) from
50 Nepali workers, and explain, as he did then, that the money had vanished
because of the deception of “some agents.”
But maybe this time his involuntary benefactors may be less likely to
believe him and entrust him with more of their money. It now appears that he has practiced the same scam in Bangkok,
where some time earlier he cheated 40 people out of Rs 2.5 million (around US
$32,000). “These Nepalese left their country because of financial weakness and
are suffering the scorching heat of this desert to accumulate a little money,”
says one of the Saudi workers, “but somehow they never seem to be free of the
clutches of cheaters and imposters here either.” (Kathmandu Post, December 24) Japanese High Court Convicts
Nepali. Readers may remember Govinda Prasad Mainali, the
Nepali national who was accused in Japan of robbing and murdering a Japanese
woman, acquitted by the Tokyo District Court, but then re-arrested. Now, convicted again of committing the crime
by the Japanese High Court, he is back in jail. It is not only his brother (who was allowed to seem him no more
than 15 minutes - during which time he
found him “irritated and upset”) who worries about the verdict. There are apparently many Japanese who are
concerned that justice has not been done.
In a five-column article, The Japan Times presents a picture
that is generally sympathetic to Mainali, noting that the only evidence against
him is circumstantial, and quoting his brother: “How could he commit such a serious crime, risking his own life
for a few hundred dollars?” (he did not
need the money, said his brother; he had already earned Rs 3 million while in
Japan (about US $40,000). Although
sympathetic, the newspaper expressed no surprise at the High Court’s decision.
Only one person brought before it in one year;s 1,436 cases was acquitted.
(Rising
Nepal, February 13) HUMAN RIGHTS Children are Victims in
Insurgency. Many of the casualties of “The People’s War” have
been children. One hundred sixty-eight
of them have been killed in the six-year conflict and 95 severely injured,
according to a human rights group, Child Workers in Nepal Concerned Center
(CWIN). Some 2,000 have lost their
parents and 4,000 have been uprooted with their families. More than 10,000 have been denied access to
education because of the insurgency,
and 1,089 have simply disappeared.
The Center is also worried by reports that many children have been
recruited into the Maoist’s army, but it is also concerned that at least 100
have been arrested by the army. Of the
hundreds who have fled their homes fearing for their safety, many have
“involved themselves in dangerous work for a living.” The Center is probably including those who have allowed
themselves to be commercially exploited for sexual purposes in dance halls and
restaurants in the city and on the street “ by local and foreign
pedophiles.” It has recorded 137 cases
of trafficking in minors. A joint
survey conducted by CWIN with Norway’s Save The Children reveals that 20
percent of the children in Kathmandu have been subjected to sexual abuse. Even if “The Peoples’ War” is responsible
for leaving children psychologically scarred (encouraging violent tendencies or
causing them to be “locked up in fear and depression”), it cannot, of course,
be blamed for all of the children’s problems.
CWIN reports that a number of reasons might explain 46 youthful suicides
during the year, including poverty, family tension, frustration in love affairs
and failure in exams. Sixteen percent
of Kathmandu’s street children are addicted to drugs. Fifty-six percent are smokers; 26 percent take snuff; whereas 54
percent inject drugs into their bodies.
More than 50% of Kathmandu street children have been found to be
addicted to glue sniffing. (The New York
Times, January 16; Kathmandu Post, February 3) Children Rescued from Factory
Slavery. It may not be every kid who has the good fortune to
find a wallet with Rs 10,000 in it (the
equivalent of around US $128) but that is what happened to 14-year-old Bijay
Giri as he was on his way to school in the southeastern district of Jhapa. He had never seen that much money in his
life and decided to use it to go to the big city. Unfortunately when he arrived in Kathmandu, he found that the
money had disappeared. Alone and
penniless, he did not know what to do.
When a friendly young man appeared and offered him a job along with food
and shelter, he followed him to the
Jaya Banglamukhi Wool Factory in Boudha.
He had no idea of what he was
getting into. “We were constantly
beaten and never allowed to go outside the factory,” one of his youthful fellow workers at the factory explained after
being rescued with Bijay and 12 other children by Child Workers in Nepal (CWIN)
in early January. “We had to work more
than 18 hours a day and often we were not fed enough.” They were locked up at night to prevent
their escape. Yet nine of them once
broke out and got as far as Bhaktapur.
They were caught there, severely beaten, and locked in a room for 16
hours. What brought CWIN into the
picture is not known, but the organization not only was able to rescue the kids
but has filed charges against the wool factory. Four of the children have filed a complaint against the man who
enticed them into its employment for “indulging in the flesh trade.” He seems to have disappeared. (Kathmandu Post, January 31) The Nepalese Taliban at Work. Although it has been declared illegal, the caste
system is still a strong force in Nepalese society. There are about a dozen boys in Sanhaitha (in Sirhaha in south
central Nepal) who can tell you about that.
They have been banned from taking part in any of the tribal affairs of
their village after they were found to have had a meal at the house of an
untouchable in their village. (Kathmandu
Post, November 22) KATHMANDU VALLEY Foreigners Take Lead in Cleaning
Tundikhel. No-one other than its users has the responsibility for cleaning upTundikhel, the large
park and parade ground in the center of Kathmandu, and generally speaking, the
users don’t care. But one day when
staff members of an international youth-focused development organization,
Students Partnership Worldwide (SPW) were returning from the rural communities
where they had been conducting educational and environmental programs, they had
the idea of applying the same litter-campaigns that they used in the villages
to the city. They got together with
other organizations, talked the municipality into providing trucks for carrying
away the litter, and showed up with 85 volunteers, who combed the area and rid
it of its garbage. They hoped their
effort would set an example. “It is
better to become an example than to go around citing one,” said an SPW
officer. “If foreigners can clean
Tundikhel,” demanded a Nepali member of the group, “why can’t we?” (Kathmandu Post, February 2) Night Life in Kathmandu Gets
Livelier. Not long ago, bars, restaurants and snooker houses
were rare in Nepal but in a short time, they have become a popular feature in
the lifestyle of the young, particularly those who come from the wealthier
families. Satellite television is said
to be responsible, along with other developments in information
technology. Bars that initially opened
to entertain tourists now cater mainly to Nepalese. Although most visitors are described as “unemployed youths with a
strong financial background,” the clubs and bars cater to a wide class of
patrons. “It’s fun to come to discos on
weekends and holidays with friends,” says a 9th grader, reflecting a desire of
many just to have a chance to keep abreast of global culture. Traditionalists note the contrast between
these urban pleasures and life for young people outside of the city, and worry
about the invasion of western culture.
“If not controlled in time,” grumbles one of them, “a time will come
when the upcoming generation will accept western culture as their own,
oblivious to the rich heritage bequeathed by their ancestors. (Spotlight, January 10) The Leopards of Kirtipur. A leopard that injured five people, including three
women, in Kathmandu was darted near Kirtipur in the western suburbs of the
capital, and after a night at the zoo, released “in the wild,” as was,
apparently, another leopard that had “unleashed a reign of terror in Kirtipur
and Lalitpur.” Zoo officials offered
no explanation for why they freed the animals instead of keeping them in the
zoo. When a third leopard appeared in
Kirtipur, “attacking residents and killilng domestic animals,” the local people
took matters in their own hands and killed it without informing the
authorities. (nepalnews.com, January
26, February 17) ELSEWHERE Driven From her Village on
Illegitimate Birth Charge. Kanchhi Biswokarma of Ranichuri village in the east
central part of Nepal has been forced by her neighbors to leave town. Her crime was that she engaged in “illicit relations” with a Maoist and ended
up with a child. Kanchhi is a dalit, a
member of an oppressed class, whose husband was shot dead in what is described
as a “security action” some five years ago.
It was not a Maoist who is the father of her son, she claims, but a
fellow villager, Prem Kumar Magar, who had pretended to assist her after her
husband’s death but instead had
sexually exploited her. This had gone
on for a long time. Prem Kumar seems now to have disappeared and his relatives
are insisting that it was not he but a Maoist who is reponsible for the
child. They have been backed up in this
by the local administration and local political parties. “Everybody has favored the accused because
I am a dalit,” claims Widow Biswokarma, who has registered a complaint at the
police station demanding the right to certify the paternal relation of her son,
a necessary step before the boy can be baptised. She is also looking for help from human rights
organizations. (Kathmandu Post, January 21) Squatters’Homes Demolished by
“Upper-Caste” Villagers. At a time when householders were away at a nearby
health center where they had taken their children for polio shots, their
neighbors attacked and destroyed their houses.
The victims were Chamars, described as “a supposedly low-caste community
that works with skin and hides,” and the land that they had built their houses
on in a village in the southeastern district of Siraha was owned by the state
but had been traditionally used by higher-caste local residents for grazing
cattle. These had earlier asked
authorities to remove the people they viewed as squatters on their communal
land but the Chamars said they would not budge unless an arrangement was made for alternate living
space. Besides destroying ten houses,
the 40 or 50 attackers were accused of carrying away ten chickens, a sack of
rice and a sack of rice-grain. One
woman who had tried to intervene was severely beaten. The Chamars have lodged a complaint with police but in the
meanwhile have no place to stay. During
Siraha’s current cold spell they have been surviving by huddling around fires
and sleeping on hay that they have begged from sympathetic villagers. (Kathmandu Post, January 7) Wild Boars Do the Herding. Nobody in the village of Lamitar (in south central
Nepal) tends sheep any more. They have
turned this task over to wild boars.
They catch them young in a nearby jungle and train them to herd both
cattle and sheep. “Even a human herder
is not as skillfull as these wild beasts,” says a 50-year-old resident. Every one of the 193 homes in this village
has from two to five wild boars. Those
who do not become herders end up in the market, where they can be sold as a meat delicacy at a large profit. The use of wild boars has helped the
community in more ways than one.
Because there is no longer a need for the children to go out with the
cattle and sheep, they can go to school.
“How could we have sent our children to school,” asks a resident,
“without the help of the boars?” (Kathmandu
Post, February 4) ROYALTY Princess Marries Commoner. If an observer had suddenly popped into the Royal
Palace the evening of January 22 (an impossibility these days with post palace
massacre security), he might discover His Majesty busy washing the feet of his
only daughter and the man she was about to marry, while the Queen poured the
water over them. It was not some quirky
foot fetish nor an obsession with royal cleanliness. The foot washing, which takes place to the accompaniment of Vedic
chanting, is an important part of the ritual by which a king gives away his
daughter. In this case, Princess Prearana was about to take the hand of Raj
Bahadur Singh, a computer science graduate from the University of
California. Although the groom is a
commoner, the marriage had been arranged by the parents of the Princess. Commentators note that Nepali royals have
often married wealthy locals, or into India’s princely families. King Gyanendra raised his new son-in-law’s
position to that of a royal family member by conferring upon him the title of
“Kumar.” (Reuters, January 17; nepalnews.com, January 22, et al.) POLICE BLOTTER Ex-RNAC Chief Accused in Biggest
Corruption Case. Ramagya Prasad Chaturvedi, a former Chairman of Royal
Nepal Airlines Corporation, started his career with just five bighas of
land. He now owns properties worth Rs
77.1 million (close to US $1 million).
When asked by the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority
(CIIA) where it came from, he could account only for Rs 8.1 (about US
$104,000). His wife has disappeared
after testifying before the Commission.
His two children did not even show up to explain their case before the
CIAA. The latter body makes it plain
that it has named them and their mother as defendants only for the purpose of
confiscating property in their names.
Its case against Chaturvedi “for amassing wealth beyond his means” is so
far the biggest corruption related case (in terms of the amount of property) in
the investigating body’s history. (Rising Nepal,
February 13) Busy Bandits. In the space of one hour (2-3 am), a group of 70 to
80 bandits managed to make off with valuables from some 20 houses, including
that of the Village Development Chairman, in three villages near the Indian
border of India in the southeastern district of Siraha. Only 15 days earlier, 18 houses in the same
area had been looted. Authorities have
announced that, at the request of locals, they have transferred the assistant
sub-inspector for police to another post.
(Kathmandu
Post, January 31) Next Time She Will Ask for Their
Birth Certificates. Dhan Kumari Limbu was delighted when two nephews whom
she had not seen since they were infants showed up in her village in Sunsari
district in southeastern Nepal and became regular visitors at her house for
about a month. One day they told her
about a problem: they had Indian currency worth Rs 1.2 million (about US
$14,100) that they needed to exchange for Nepalese rupees. Dhan was happy to help her relatives and
brought out the money that her husband had sent her from his job in
Brunei. The nephews opened their
briefcase to show her the Indian money.
She says that it had a strong smell of medicine and that it made her
sort of dizzy. She remembers going with
the nephews to the bus stop to bid them farewell as they left for an unknown
destination and then coming home to collapse.
At 2 that afternoon, she came to herself and took a look in the
briefcase. There was no money - only
some papers, a syringe and a pouch smelling of the medicine that had made her
dizzy. She reported the matter to the
police but the phony nephews were already long gone. “I had really believed they were my nephews from the paternal
side, “ she wailed to a reporter, “but they have deceived me in such a
way! What will I do now?” (Kathmandu Post, January 15) Caught Smuggling Rhino Horns. How do you look casual in an airport when you are
carrying seven rhino horns? This man,
identified only as a Nepali national, apparently did not manage to fool
anybody. He was arrested in Japan’s
Narita Airport in early January for smuggling contraband goods. One-horned rhinos are an endangered species
and their population in Nepal has been rapidly dwindling, especially in recent
months. (Kathmandu Post, January 9) ON (AND OFF)THE ROAD 16 Dead in Bus Accident. This driver apparently had trouble seeing the road in
heavy fog on the road between Deupur and Banepa, just east of Kathmandu valley,
and missed a turn. The bus plunged 200
meters (more than 650 feet) into a ditch, killing 16 people including five
children. Sixty others were
injured. (Spotlight, January 21) WILDLIFE No-one Knows What Kinds of Things
Are Going On Inside Barun-Makalu Park. “We don’t know what’s happening inside the park,”
admitted the man who is supposedly in charge of the Barun-Makalu National Park
and Conservation Area, Warden Nilambar Mishna. About a year ago, Maoist rebels
destroyed its headquarters in Sedua in Sankhuwasava district, as well as area
offices in Hatiya and Tanpu (in the same district) and Bung in Solukhumbu,
seized most of its equipment and evicted all park personnel from the
reserve. “We are guarding this office
here,” says Warden Mishna, indicating an ill-furnished building that now houses
the park’s 60-member staff, “while criminal elements are increasing their
illegal activities in the park. . . .
What I can tell you for sure is that there is a lot going on there, such as
logging and poaching and even trading.”
The Park borders Tibet to the north with its possible avenues to China’s
lucrative markets for such goods as musk pod, bear bile, snow leopard hides,
and other wildlife products used as medicine and aphrodisiacs. The Park is rich in a diversity of flora and
fauna that includes 56 endangered plant species and such rare and endangered
animals as red pandas, musk deer, wild boars and snow leopards. There are some 32,000 people living in 12
villages in the Conservation Area buffer zone.
The key goal of the Park’s management plan was to alleviate poverty by
involving them in participatory conservation and guardianship of the Park’s
resources. “We have not been able to
establish any communication whatsoever with the people,” admitted one member of
its staff. Meetings have been made
impossible. “Local villagers are
unhappy. They refuse to speak
out.” The government has been of no
help. It has cut the annual funds for
the Park by two thirds. (Kathmandu
Post, January 31) Oldest Elephant Dies. Mahendragaga (“Grandpa Mahendra”), the oldest
domesticated elephant in Nepal, passed away quietlty at the age of 81 at Royal
Chitwan National Park on January 14. He
apparently got his name from the fact that he was the elephant that the late
King Mahendra used to ride on visits to the park. (nepalnews.com, January 15) Woman Axes Leopard to Death. You don’t fool around with Maya Baida, as one leopard
learned too late. When it attacked Maya
and her 60-year-old mother in their home in Makwanpur south of Kathmandu, Maya
fought back with an axe. Unlike the
leopard, the ladies survived the encounter but were taken to Kathmandu for
treatment of their injuries that turned out not to be life-threatening. (nepalnews.com, January 13) Building - and Distributing - a
Better Mouse Trap. These were not elephants that were ravaging the
countryside but mice. But thanks to
government action, the mice are on the run.
Twenty farmers were given mouse traps after the rodents had “ravaged
crops in Byas municipality and sundry other localities.” The mouse traps have done their work. Farmers in the area report a marked decline
in the mouse population. (Kathmandu
Post,
November 22) TOURISM A Bezruchka Report on Current
Travel. Readers - especially those thinking about making a
visit to Nepal - might be interested in
a first-hand account of a recent visit to that country by Stephen Bezruchka,
author of Trekking
in Nepal: A Travelers’ Guide.
In his two weeks in the country, he made a trip to Turturi, north of
Dumre, walked to Ampipal in Gorkha district, visited Pokhara and Baglung, flew
to Biratnagar and made several trips to
Banepa. “I had some security
trepidations before going,” he admits, “but aside from army presence and check
areas along the highways, as well as checks in Kathmandu at night, little
appeared to have changed since my last trip two years ago. Again, superficially, the fear I expected to
see in Nepal wasn’t evident. People
went about their lives much as they had before. I had expected to find many activities curtailed, but at least in
the places I went, this didn’t appear to be so.” He was not aware of encountering Maoists even when travelling in
some areas where they are known to be strong.
Although the army was more visible, it offered him no challenge. “It is hard to know where the army’s
influence ends and the Maoist begins,” he says. “In walking to Ampipal in Gorkha district, one leaves the army
presence in the river bottom and one can assume their influence is gone, yet
Mao presence isn’t apparent. However,
people are missing and there are stories about suspected Maoists being killed
by the police. The soldiers are mere
kids with WW II rifles, carried casually, sometimes with the barrel tips
touching the ground. Some wear
armor-plate vests and armor halos encircling the head, or helmets. There is no sense of disciplined
presence. Sitting behind bunkers or
walking along the roads, they seem like sitting ducks. They don’t tend to bother foreigners - just
wave them by. Airport security is just
as perfunctory for foreigners...”
(e-mail communication, February 12) Bleak Days in Thamel. “Thamel
today bears a very different look from what it used to be three years back,”
notes one journalist. “The usual hustle
and bustle of the travel and trade agents, the crowd of tourists, the shouting
hawkers - are all gone.” With the
disappearance of the tourists, some hotels and restaurants have gone out of
business. Others have closed temporarily,
sending their workers home with the promise that if things get better, they can
return to their jobs. Because workers
have been forced to move elsewhere, many flats and rooms are empty. With fewer tourists, competition has become
more intense. The smaller hotels accuse
the larger ones of price-cutting. Some
“star” hotels are said to be renting rooms for Rs 200 (around US $2.50). Others are promising one free night for
every two-night stay. Now everyone is
waiting to see if things will pick up in the spring tourist season. “As there is no room for slahsing costs any
more,” says one hotelier, “it looks like the next season will decide the future
of a number of hotels.” (Kathmandu
Post, January 13) IN THE MOUNTAINS To the Editors of the Guinness Book
of Records: Hold
the Presses! Fifty years after the first ascent of Mt. Everest,
there are still records to be made, and a number of climbers are lined up ready
to make them. One of these is Velentin
Bojoukov, known in his native Russia as “The Leopard of Snow,” who, at 69,
wants to be the oldest climber to reach the summit. He has been climbing for 50 years and visited Nepal nine times
but has never gone higher than 7,500
meters (24,600 feet). Two
Sherpas, Pemba Dorje and Lakpa, are in competition to make the fastest climb of
Everest. Appa Sherpa has already been
to the summit more times than anyone else (12) but hopes to rack up his 13th
with an American expedition this season.
One record has already been broken.
With 14 expeditions already finalized by the government and three
awaiting approval, there will be more attempts on Mt. Everest than ever
before. At this point, 1,226 people
have successfully climbed the mountain - some more than once (there have been a
total of 1,502 ascents).
One-hundred-seventy-two people have died on it, 50 of them Sherpas and
seven others Nepali nationals. (Kathmandu
Post, February 14) Mountaineers Call for Recognition
from Government. “Has
anybody bothered to know why Tenzing Norgay became an Indian national?”
demanded Da Gombu Sherpa, President of the Nepal Mountaineering Instructors
Association, at a meeting of climbers and tourism entrepreneurs in January. “If the government had bestowed the honor
and social security he deserved after climbing Everest, possibly he would have
stayed in Nepal.” Da Gombu and others
at the meeting urged the government to
give recognition to its Everest climbers and to provide them and their families
with economic relief. “All the foreign
climbers who have climbed Everest have succeeded because of us,” pointed out
Appa Sherpa, who has reached the summit of the world’s highest mountain a
record 12 times (see above). Because
mountaineering forms the backbone of
Nepal’s tourism industry, he called for the government to accord due priority
to preserving mountains and promoting mountain tourism. One step that could be taken would be to
assign experienced Sherpa climbers to foreign expeditions as liaison
officers. “Why can’t the government
recruit trained and experienced Sherpas as liaison officers,” asked Da Gombu,
“and forget sending dishonest civil servants?”
Under the present system, few of the non-Sherpas assigned (and paid)
as liaison officers to each
mountaineering expedition get as far as base camp and those who do tend to
spend no more than a day there. There
were also suggestions that mountain guides should receive the kind of training
that can equip them for guiding on mountains outside of Nepal, as some of them
are now doing in Pakistan and Tibet.
“We welcome your suggestions,” said the government’s representative at
the meet, “so let’s sit together and discuss about it.” (Kathmandu Post, January 14) Was Tenzing a National Hero? Tenzing Norgay Sherpa may be the best known of all
Nepalis in the world and a man who, by making the first ascent of Mt. Everest
with Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953, has brought more acclaim to Nepal than any
other. Yet the government of Nepal is
reluctant to grant him the status of national hero, even in a year when the
whole world is celebrating the 50th anniversary of his historic climb. “There is a problem,” says an official in
Nepal’s Tourism Ministry. “Declaring
him a national hero is difficult.” The
problem, apparently, is that, although born of Nepalese parents and brought up
in the mountains of Nepal, he moved to Darjeeling as a teen-ager along with
many other Nepalis to take advantage of its better opportunities for joining
climbing expeditions, and, after the Everest climb, returned to live there,
accepting Indian citizenship along with his Nepali citizenship. There have been many attempts through the
years to convince the government to recognize him with its Rashtriya Vibhutis
award, given posthumously to Nepal’s most distinguished citizens. The pressure
in this anniversary year is particularly strong. “Tenzing reached the top of Mt. Everest as a Nepali and even
hoisted a Nepali flag there,” notes the General Secretary of the Nepal
Mountaineering Association (NMA), which has taken a leading part in demanding
that he be recognized. (It seems not to have bothered anyone that the Lord
Buddha, whose Rashtriya Vibhutis award was uncontested, was born in Nepal but spent most of his life
in India.) The NMA has joined other
mountaineering organizations in recommending a number of other distinguished
mountaineers as national heroes, including Phu Dorjee Sherpa, Sundare Sherpa,
Babu Chhiri Sherpa, Appa Sherpa, Ang Rita Sherpa, Kaji Sherpa, Sambhu Tamang,
Lhakpa Sherpa, Pema Doma Sherpa, and Temba Tsiri Sherpa (see below, “Youngest
Climber...”). The honor has already been conferred on the first
Nepali woman to climb Everest, Pasang Lhamu Sherpa - although some argue that
she did not actually reach the summit before her death on the mountain. Tenzing Norgay’s son Jamling understands
that there is a difference between official and real recognition. “Whether the government declares Tenzing a
national hero or not,” he says, “every Nepali accepts him as a national hero
and it certainly comes from the heart.”
(The
Sunday Post, January 5; The Observer, January 19) A Cyber Cafe at Everest Base
Camp. Everest base camp is to be outfitted with an internet
cafe. That is the plan of Tsering
Gyaltsen Sherpa of Namche Bazar,the mountain's nearest large village, who, with
several high-tech helpers based in America, is working to set it up in time for
the March climbing season. At that
time, some 1,000 climbers are expected to arrive in hopes of climbing Mt.
Everest during the 50th anniversary year of its first ascent by Tenzing Norgay
Sherpa and Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953. It seems appropriate not only that it be
a Sherpa who is responsible for the cyber project but that it be Tsering
Gyaltsen, who is the grandson of the only living Sherpa to have accompanied the
original expedition, Gaga ("Grandfather") Gyaltsen. Jim Foster, who works for Cisco Systems in
the USA, has donated three radios that can relay wireless network data from
base camp which is situated on a moving glacier to a satellite dish planted on
solid ground some 1,500 feet above it.
From there, it will be beamed to an orbiting satellite and thence to an
internet service provider in Israel.
Expedition members, who normally occupy base camp for at least four
weeks, will probably be grateful for an opportunity to talk to the world outside,
and Tsering Gyaltsen and his friends are hoping for a modest profit - but not
for themselves. Whatever money is
earned will go to the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, a non-profit
group dedicated to cleaning Everest of litter.
In off months, the radios will be taken to Namche Bazar, some three to
six day's march away, where they will be hooked up to the existing satellite
dish which Tsering Gyaltsen uses for his internet service there. They then will be linked to the local school
to expand educational facilities and help raise the educational level in the
area. "My friends who are
well-educated," he says of villagers who have left to get an education and
never returned, "are doctors or engineers but they don't want to come back
here. Yet these are the people we need
here." (The New York Times, January
23) Youngest Climber Wants to Use Reward
to Help Village Kids. Since the government has decreed that no-one under
the age of 16 is now allowed to climb Mt. Everest, Temba Tsiri Sherpa will
carry the lifetime distinction of being the youngest to have reached its
summit. His ascent in 2001 at that age
has been recognized in the Guinness Book of Records, which has also given him a
cash reward. He wants to use some of
this to open up a school in Tashinam, the village where he was born, “since my
birthplace has played a pivotal part in my success.” The institute that he wants to establish for this purpose,
Dolakha Mountaineer Association, will be dedicated to helping the whole
high-mountain area of Rolwaling in
which his village is situated, educationally and economically and through the
development of tourism. The proposed
chairman of the institute, Temba Tsiri, will not be able to take office until
after he finishes his high school final exams and passes his School Leaving
Certificate exam. (Kathmandu Post, January 21) EDUCATION Students Call Off Strike, Threaten
Another. Maoist students, who had threatened an indefinite
shutdown of schools if certain demands were not met, called off their strike
after the cease-fire was announced. In
the meanwhile, one of their demands - that private schools lower their fees -
is being met. The Public and Boarding
Schools’ Organization of Nepal (PABSON) is now putting pressure on the 8,500
schools that form its membership to reduce tuition fees up to 25 percent. Meanwhile, Maoist students at Tribhuvan
University locked up the office of the Vice Chancellor and the Election Officer
in an effort to force the university to make public the whereabouts of missing
colleagues. They have other
demands. They want free medical
treatment for wounded students, enrollment of students who could not be
admitted during the 10-month state of emergency declared by the government last
year, and non-interference by security forces on campus. They warn that if these demands are not met,
they will stage a strike and disrupt classes.
(Kathmandu
Post, January 14; nepalnews.com, February 5, 16) Students “Manhandled” by Army on Way
to Rally. Around a hundred students who were on their way from
Dhangadhi to attend a Nepali Congress (NC) mass meeting in Mahendranagar in
southwestern Nepal were stopped at an army
post for a security check. The
students were in a hurry and worried that the check would not allow them to get
to the meeting on time. As they tell
the story, it was when they urged the soldiers to speed up the process that the
latter began to beat them up. Around
two dozen students were “manhandled” after being made to stand in line. The army also tore up the party flag. NC President Girija Prasad Koirala protested
the incident and demanded a probe. The
head of the NC student union saw it as evidence that “the palace is gradually
tilting toward active monarchy.”
(nepalnews.com, February 6) ENTERTAINMENT Nepali Movies Not Making the
Grade. “It is high time we discussed the possible measures
to improve the quality of Nepali movies,” announced Ashok Sharma, General
Secretary of the Nepali Film Producers Association. There is more than one theory for why things have not been going
well for the film industry in Nepal.
Some say it is because the industry does not put enough money into
making films of quality. Others point
to what they call “gross technical ignorance.”
Director Dayaram Dhahal thinks the problem is that Nepali movie-makers
copy too much from Hindi movies. “Every
country has its own social, cultural, and political make-up,” he says. “A movie should always relate to the uniqueness
of the country where it is made.” (Kathmandu
Post, December 26) A Toni Hagen Film. It may be a while before it reaches your neighborhood
movie theater, but Toni Hagen, who as a geologist traveled the full length of
Nepal in the 1950s, has released a
film, Ring
of the Buddha, which, when it was premiered in Germany received
glowing reviews from both critics and the audience. Few foreigners had been allowed in Nepal when Hagen made his
survey, and the book that followed, Nepal,
did much to attract attention and tourists to the country. The documentary begins in 1999 with the
82-year-old explorer returning to Nepal with Chogye Trichen Rinpoche. Past and present are woven together in a
script covering five decades of change in Nepal. Hagen is currently recovering from a bad case of flu in a
hospital in St. Moritz. (Nepali Times,
February 14) RELIGION Christians Plan Missionary
Campaign. There are little more than 600,000 Christians in
Nepal, less than one percent of its population, yet according to a Christian
publication,
Christianity Today, Nepal has one of the fastest-growing Christian
populations among Asia’s 51 countries.
A recent meeting of more than three dozen senior Christian missionaries
at “a quiet resort just outside of the capital city” was devoted to forming
“overarching strategies for the Himalayan region [Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan]”
to encourage this growth. These
included targeting “people not yet reached”; establishing a presence in the
“neediest geographic areas”; and encouraging and promoting an indigenous Nepali
missions movement. The areas of Nepal that
were deemed to need most attention were its northern Tibetan Buddhist districts,
the far west, and some districts in the Terai.
As part of this campaign, the missionaries hope to “place personnel in
national organizations or in government-sponsored positions.” They aim to establish churches on several
different levels, from primary to discipleship, and give the missionary
movement a “bi-vocational” character by combining its “church planting
vocation” with projects that give it a “credible presence in the country,” such
as hospitals. They recommend that their
members seek non-tourist visas for entry into the country since “we believe it
is easier to live and work in the Himalayan region as a resident
expatriate.” Student visas that later
could be converted might be considered as an opening option. Nepal, the world’s only official Hindu
nation, allows freedom of worship but forbids proselytizing. The International
Hindu Federation strongly condemned the Christian missionary plan after news of
it was released, stating that any activity aimed against the national religion
is a serious crime. The Christian
effort may have been inspired by Pope Paul II’s call for greater evangelization
in Asia and a need for “aggressive conversion” there. (Kathmandu Post, January 10, 14; February 10) Lord Pashupatinath Goes On
Line. You no longer have to go to Kathmandu to worship Lord
Pashupatinath. You can offer puja
on-line at a website recently established by Pashupati Area Development
(www.sripashupatinath.com). It will
cost you from Rs 1100 to Rs 1.1 million (around US $14 to $14,000) to get
connected, and if you want to get the prasad (offerings) back, you have to pay a
courier charge of Rs 200 (about US $2.50) if you are in India, and US $50 if
you are anywhere else. (The People’s
Review, February 13) Sacrifiing to the Wrong
Goddess. For many years, locals have been sacrificing goats, buffaloes and chickens before a
statue of the goddess Durga in Dev Daha Bhawanipur in Rupandehi district in
south central Nepal. Recent excavations
have revealed that the image is not that of Durga at all, but of Maya Devi, the
mother of Lord Buddha. Buddhists, who
are opposed to the taking of life, have tried to stop people from sacrificing
animals there, and although the practice has decreased, it has not totally stopped. With its newly discovered identity, the
statue has become the second most important place of Buddhist pilgrimage in
Nepal, after Lumbini. “We tried to stop
animal sacrifice at Dev Daha,” complained a leader of the local government,
“but our efforts have gone in vain. We
sought help from the District Administration Office and the Department of
Archaeology but to no avail. Now we
have formed a struggle committee to fight the evil practice.” (Kathmandu Post, January 20) CULTURAL Australian Women to Copy Nepalis’
Nude Dance. Some may worry about the impact of foreign culture on
Nepalese society. But in this case, it
is Nepal that is exporting of a cultural practice to a more developed
nation. An Australian publication
called The
Age reports that some 170 women from the northwestern state of
Victoria are planning to duplicate a nude rain dance peformed by the women in
the drought-stricken areas of southeastern Nepal last August. These had put down their ploughs at
midnight, doffed their clothes, and danced for Indra, the rain god while
chanting hymns. The men had been locked
inside. “If naked women can bring rain
to Nepal,” ask the organizer of the Australia event, “then why not to
Australia?” Their dance “will be
totally nude, hence no cameras, no men and media,” and it will be performed in
a “ritualistic and sacred style” for which an expert has been hired - not from
Nepal but from Adelaide - for advice.
The last year has brought only a third of the area’s usual rainfall. Among other sufferers are those who raise
crocodiles for meat and skin. The
drought has affected the crocodiles’ sex life.
They cannot produce sperm without rain.
(Kathmandu
Post, January 14) ANNOUNCEMENTS ________________________________________________________________________ Fiftieth
Anniversary Celebration You do not have to go all the way to Nepal to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the
first climb of Mt. Everest. The American Himalayan Foundation is bringing Sir
Edmund Hillary, surviving member of the two-man team that first stepped on the
summit in 1953, to San Francisco along with some 50 other mountaineering greats
for a giant party on June 10, 2003 to commemorate the historic event. They
would be pleased to have you join the group. Your $200 contribution will help
the organization carry on with its many projects in Nepal and other Himalayan
countries that are aimed at bettering the lives of people there. If you DO want to be in Nepal in May when
others will be celebrating the first climb, the American Himalayan Foundation
can help you with that. In partnership
with Mountain Travel Sobek, they are offering two “special adventures,” one
lasting 17 days and the other 24 days, that bring you close to the foot of the
world’s highest mountain and give you the chance to celebrate with Jamling
Tenzing Norgay, son of Tenzing Norgay, among other stalwarts. The real
enthusiast is encouraged to take part in one of the adventures AND go to the
banquet. For details, please contact
the American Himalayan Foundation at 909 Montgomery
St., Suite 400, San Francisco, CA 94133 (415/434-9960; www.himalayan
foundation.org/eventseverest.html. ______________________________________________________________________________ Please note change of zip code and
subscription price. We blame the post
office for both changes: directly for the first; and indirectly for the second,
by raising the mailing costs. NEWS
FROM NEPAL -
4621 SW Kelly, Portland, OR 97239 -
subscription (6 issues or more) $20 |
