Kathmandu Archive

Kathmandu, Nov 3 – Nepal’s former Maoist guerrillas, who have kept up a siege on parliament since May and Monday launched fresh street protests against the coalition government, finally capitulated to growing pressure from the international community and called off their proposed blockade of the airport next week.

The European Union, the US and Russia Tuesday sent their envoys to meet Maoist chairman and former prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, to express serious concern about the planned demonstrations, the ‘risk of escalating tension’ and the proposed blockade of Nepal’s sole international airport on Nov 10.

The envoys underlined the ‘significant damage’ the proposed closure of airport and obstruction of Nepal’s tourist infrastructure would do to Nepal’s reputation, particularly during the peak tourist season, and the ensuing damage to the country’s economy.

Heeding to the mounting world concern, the former guerrillas Tuesday said the airport blockade has been called off.

Prachanda also condemned a move by party cadres Monday to set up a parallel government in Dhankuta district, saying it was done against the party policy.

Nepal’s government has already condemned the move with government spokesman, Information and Communications Minister Shankar Pokhrel, saying it violated the peace pact the Maoists had signed with the parties three years ago to end their civil war and return to mainstream politics.

The Western diplomats also asked Prachanda to reconsider the protest programme and instead use the Constituent Assembly, parliament and other peace process mechanisms to oppose the government.

They have also asked the ex-rebels to respect the safety and right to freedom of movement of the people of Nepal, foreign citizens, and of the representatives of diplomatic missions and international organisations.

The mounting fears come after Maoists cadres went on the rampage in Dhankuta, torching nine vehicles and triggering a retaliatory attack by the ruling party, the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (UML).

However, it was not certain immediately if the former rebels would go ahead with their plan to blockade Kathmandu valley Nov 10.

While there was no immediate reaction from Nepal’s immediate neighbour China, India is expected to make its view clear to the chief of Nepal’s ruling party, who Tuesday began a five-day visit to New Delhi.

Jhalanath Khanal, whose Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist is leading the current 22-party government in Nepal, will be holding talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, president of India’s ruling Congress party. India has expressed support for the present government of Nepal despite the Maoist demand for its dissolution.

Khanal will also hold consultations with India’s communist leaders, who are regarded as being close to the Nepal Maoists, like Sitaram Yechury of the Communist Party of India-Marxist. The communist leader will consult India’s opposition Bharatiya Janata Party leaders as well.

Khanal was invited by the Indian government, his party said. Nepal’s communist-headed government is grappling with fresh Maoist protests that started Sunday.

The Maoists are demanding an apology from President Ram Baran Yadav, who they say acted unconstitutionally when he reinstated the chief of the army, Gen Rookmangud Katawal, whom they (Maoists) had sacked.

Kathmandu, Nov 3 – A group of Buddhists from Nepal as well as animal rights organisations have begun urging India’s state administrations and animal welfare organisations to help prevent the slaughter of thousands of birds and animals as Nepal’s government said it would not ban a Hindu festival in the Terai plains for fear of ruffling religious sentiments.

‘We have asked the administration of India’s Bihar and Uttar Pradesh states, which border Nepal, as well as other bordering Indian states to prevent the smuggling of animals and birds from India to Nepal with the intention of slaughtering them at the Gadhimai Fair,’ said D.B. Bomjan, chairman of the Tamang Rastriya Mukti Morcha, an NGO from an indigenous community that is Buddhist by religion.

Bomjan said that Nepal’s animal rights organisations have also asked their counterparts in India to help create mass awareness and stop hundreds of Hindus from travelling to Nepal’s Bara district across the border at the end of this month to take part in a religious festival they are describing as the ‘largest animal killing fields in the world’.

The plea came after Nepal’s communist-led coalition government declined to intervene in the festival at the Gadhimai Temple in Bara, scheduled to start from Nov 24.

The festival, held once in five years, has grown in notoriety due to the growing mass animal slaughter at the altar of the goddess. This year, the organisers of the festival say about 500,000 birds and animals will be killed.

Though former Indian minister and noted animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi wrote to Nepal’s Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, urging the government to intervene, the spokesman of the government said the state would not use force as it was a sensitive issue.

‘We do not plan to use force to prevent the sacrifices,’ said Information and Communications Minister Shankar Pokhrel, who is also the government spokesman.

‘It is a sensitive issue and we don’t want to hurt religious sentiments.’

Bomjan said that in the past, human sacrifices were also considered to be essential for Hindu festivals. But they had been stopped.

‘We also used to burn widows on the pyres of their husbands as part of tradition,’ he said. ‘But didn’t we end that atrocity?’

However, the response from Nepal’s major political parties – which three years ago abolished Hinduism as the state religion and last year ousted the royal family to turn the Himalayan kingdom into a republic – has been extremely lukewarm, Bomjan said.

‘We invited them to discussions to chalk out alternatives to the sacrifices,’ he said. ‘But they haven’t responded.’

A few of them had indicated that they did not want to go against prevailing religious sentiments, Bomjan said.

The Buddhist community is pinning its hopes on Nepal’s ‘Buddha Boy’.

Ram Bahadur Bomjan, who shot to fame nearly five years ago when he started meditating in a remote forest in the Terai for world peace, has been campaigning in the nearby villages to stop sacrificing animals in the name of religion.

Bomjan said the teenaged wonder, who commands widespread respect and devotion from Buddhists and Hindus alike, will go to the village where the Gadhimai temple is located, on Nov 20, four days before the killings start, to make an appeal.

The Gadhimai killings are condemned as the world’s greatest wanton cruelty of animals and are a severe danger to the environment and public health.

In the past, two animal-borne diseases entered Nepal during the fair and this time, livestock experts are fearing the spread of bird and swine flu.

The slaughtered animals are not eaten but the carcasses are left in the open while rivers of blood drench the fields.

Kathmandu, Oct 25 – Concerned at the spurt in the smuggling of rare animal organs and skins to China and India via Nepal, the coalition government of Nepal is pressing China to sign an agreement in a bid to jointly man the common border and curb the menace.

‘We have forwarded a draft of the memorandum of understanding to the Chinese government and are hoping it will be signed in November,’ said Nepal’s Forest Minister Deepak Bohra, ahead of a key meeting on tiger conservation to be held in Kathmandu from Tuesday.

China, which farms tigers for commercial use, is also the world’s biggest consumer of tiger organs, which are believed by the Chinese to have medicinal and aphrodisiac powers.

Two years ago, at another international meet in Kathmandu to discuss strategies by countries with wild tigers on how to protect and increase their numbers, Chinese tiger farm representatives had been lobbying for the lifting of the 1993 international ban on trade in tiger parts.

Though the ban still remains, it is expected that at the four-day Global Tiger Workshop 2009 in Kathmandu, which will be attended by over 200 participants comprising policy and decision-makers, scientists, conservationists from all the tiger range countries, partner organisations and individuals, China will renew the lobby.

‘The MoU discussed between Nepal and China is a welcome step in the conservation of endangered wildlife,’ said Ghanshyam Gurung of the World Wildlife Fund. ‘In the past, China had been refusing to acknowledge at all that there was a trade in banned animal organs. Now it is ready to talk about it.’

The smuggling network extends from India to China with Darchula in farwestern Nepal increasingly becoming the border point used by poachers.

Nepal plans to discuss strategies with China to step up joint vigilance along the northern border it shares with China-held Tibet, share information between the security agencies of both countries and train security, customs and forest officials for regular monitoring.

Though Nepal also has a similar pact with its southern neighbour India, it has been rusting due to political changes in both countries.

While forest officials are scheduled to hold meetings every two years to assess the situation and improve the existing vigilance, such a meeting has not been held for several years.

Bohra told IANS that Nepal is also seeking a similar pact with Thailand.

Besides government-to-government interactions, Nepal is also focusing on raising social awareness, especially through the media.

‘The actual poacher gets a fraction of the money killing a tiger,’ Bohra said. ‘Poaching is also linked with poverty and we need to address that too.’

The key partners of the workshop include CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) Secretariat, Global Tiger Forum, Global Tiger Initiative, World Bank, Save the Tiger Fund, National Trust for Nature Conservation and WWF Nepal.

The main goal of the four-day workshop, to be inaugurated by Nepal’s Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, is to define strategic actions to save the wild tiger from extinction.

The experts will assess the present situation, challenges and strategies for wild tiger conservation and identify the most urgent needs and priority actions to be implemented.

It is also looking at generating agreements among the tiger range countries on effective monitoring indicators for conservation and management of tigers, prey and habitat including trans-boundary cooperation requirements.

The Global Tiger Workshop will be followed by a conference of forest ministers from Asian countries to be held in Thailand in January 2010.

Kathmandu, Oct 23 – For the first time since 2006, when Nepal’s Maoist guerrillas signed a peace pact and confined their ‘People’s Liberation Army’ (PLA) to makeshift barracks, the UN Security Council Friday sent representatives to visit the combatants, marking mounting concern in the world forum at the political stalemate in the Himalayan republic.

The heads of the embassies of China, France, Russia, Britain and the US, the permanent members of the UN Security Council, and of Japan visited the Maoist army cantonment at Chulachuli in eastern Ilam district to evaluate progress on implementation of the peace agreements, including the integration and rehabilitation of the PLA.

The envoys also inspected the Nepal Army arsenal in Chhauni in the capital, where, as part of the peace pact, the state army has laid down its weapons under UN supervision.

The visit reflects the Security Council’s mounting concern that the proposed merger of the PLA with the state army as well as the discharge of the Maoists’ child soldiers and other illegally recruited fighters is yet to start, even three years after the civil war ended.

The concern has been deepened by the fact that the UN agency mandated to monitor the Maoist and the state army, the UN Mission in Nepal (UNMIN), will end its tenure in January 2010.

UNMIN’s stay in Nepal has been protracted due to the peace negotiations coming to a standstill and after several extensions, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has expressed his desire to withdraw UNMIN after Jan 23, 2010.

Though Nepal’s new government said the PLA child soldiers would be discharged by November, it seems to be impossible with the former rebels Friday setting a Nov 1 ultimatum for the government.

The Maoists are asking the government to meet their demands by Nov 1 or face nationwide protests, including a civil disobedience movement calculated to bring the government on its knees.

The UN Security Council will be meeting in New York next month to discuss the Nepal situation and the UNMIN mandate Nov 6.

The ambassadors are asking the Nepal government to create a unified approach among the political parties and begin the process of discharge, integration and rehabilitation of the PLA so that the UNMIN can be winded up by Jan 23, 2010.

Kathmandu, Oct 23 – Nepal’s former Maoist guerrillas Friday extended the 24-hour ultimatum they had slapped on the coalition government, saying they would start fresh protests if their demands were not addressed by Nov 1.

The central committee of the formerly outlawed party began a council of war at the party office in Kathmandu Friday to finalise a new protest movement that would include encircling government offices and a civil disobedience movement, according to Narayan Kaji Shrestha, the deputy chief of the party.

‘Our party chairman Prachanda proposed that the government be given till Nov 1 to create a conducive atmosphere for arriving at a consensus,’ Maoist lawmaker and spokesman Dinanath Sharma told the media after the meeting ended.

‘If we find the government is not serious about addressing the unconstitutional step taken by the president (Ram Baran Yadav) or ready to pledge civilian supremacy (above the military), we will start a vigorous movement,’ Sharma said.

Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal Friday called a meeting of his council of ministers to formulate the government’s strategy, especially how to tackle the looming financial crisis.

The Maoist protests started since May, when the Prachanda government tried to sack its arch enemy, then chief of the army, Gen Rookmangud Katawal.

The fired general was reinstated by the president, leading to the collapse of the eight-month Maoist government.

Since then, the former insurgents have been seeking to censure the president, calling his role unconstitutional and seeking a debate on his move in parliament.

With the ruling parties refusing to admit the debate, the former guerrillas in retaliation have laid a siege to parliament, not allowing it to sit.

The blockade has prevented the government from passing the budget for the current financial year, leading to a dire financial crisis.

From the current Nepali month, all government salaries have been stopped due to the paucity of funds. Finance Minister Surendra Nath Pandey Thursday appealed to the former rebels to allow the budget to be passed.

The growing crisis has been further fuelled by manoeuvres by Defence Minister Bidya Bhandari to push for fresh recruitment in the army.

The bid goes against the peace pact signed between the parties and the Maoists in 2006 that saw an end to the 10-year-old civil war claiming over 16,000 lives.

In the pact, both sides pledged to stop recruitment or buy new arms.

However, both sides have flouted the pledge with impunity.

Bhandari recently asked parliament to revise the peace pact, saying the recruitment freeze was hindering the army from carrying out its responsibilities.

It lead to the chief of the UN agency that is monitoring the truce in Nepal, Karin Landgren, to meet the prime minister Thursday, conveying concern at Bhandari’s statements. Landgren said Bhandari’s statements were provocative and could affect the peace negotiations.

Though the government distanced itself from the defence minister, saying her statement was not supported by the parties, the minister’s action has raised concerns about the rise of a third force, which is inimical to peace and democracy, and trying to bolster the army to trigger a new confrontation with the Maoists.