Nepal vigilantes?

Hi Al,

Tried to access it, but the link seems to be a 'members only' site ...
 
Here's the first page of the article.

Vigilantes May Be Nepal's Secret Weapon Against Rebels
By SOMINI SENGUPTA

Published: April 11, 2005

KAPILVASTU DISTRICT, Nepal - In the fifth century B.C., this was where the Buddha came of age. Today, as this country sinks deeper into civil war, it is the epicenter of a violent tit for tat between pro-palace villagers and their enemies in a Maoist insurgency.

Since mid-February, in village after village in this district, ax-wielding vigilantes have attacked those they suspect of being Maoists; the rebels have retaliated by hunting down those they consider responsible.

Thousands of villagers have fled across the nearby border to India. Hundreds of homes remain singed from an orgy of mob arson. Fear and lawlessness now prevail over these fertile plains. And the specter of villagers taking the law into their own hands signals a potentially dangerous turn of events in this troubled Himalayan kingdom.

In the wake of the emergency rule decree by King Gyanendra on Feb. 1, the citizens' crusade here raises a vexing question: Unable to stanch the Maoist rebellion for nine years, has the government turned to vigilantism as its latest counterinsurgency strategy? The government has scrupulously maintained that the security forces did not arm or otherwise aid the villagers. The villagers say their uprising is spontaneous, and their weapons are everyday farm tools: scythes, axes, matchsticks and canes.

However, neither civilian nor military officials have hidden their approval of the so-called anti-Maoist retaliation committees.

"We have a feeling that the people want to fight against the terrorists," King Gyanendra's handpicked deputy, Tulsi Giri, said in an interview in Katmandu, the capital. "Perhaps there will be mass uprisings organized against them, plus military action as well."

Since Feb. 17, the village vigilantes, with the police and the military, say they have killed more than 50 people - all Maoists. A consortium of local human rights groups put the death toll at 31, with 11 more killed in revenge by Maoists. On a tour of Ganeshpur, the village where the hunts for Maoists began, Surya Pratap Singh, a farmer and landlord, held up an old man's walking stick - a danda, they call it here - and demonstrated its utility.

He tapped twice on the back of his head. "One, two hits here, and it's done," he said, and laughed with delight.

"The farmer's gun," added his friend Shiv Narayan Giri, also a farmer, a landlord and a proud royalist, calling the cane by another name. Pinned on his chest was a picture of Nepal's royal couple.

"There is no Maoist problem here," Birendra Mishra, one of the chief ringleaders, declared in an interview arranged by a local police inspector at a police station. "We will finish them off."

Years ago, the government tried arming such villagers in defense committees to fight the Maoists, but dropped the effort after public outcry.

This time, Mr. Giri, deputy vice chairman of the king's Council of Ministers, promised rewards, in the form of development aid, for villagers who stood up to the Maoists. He predicted more Kapilvastus. Twenty villages are said to have formed committees of their own.

"That was all a spontaneous sort of thing," Mr. Giri said. "It has to be organized."

The Kapilvastu initiative began on a Thursday in mid-February when Indra Prasad Bhujel, a retired police officer in Ganeshpur, was abducted by people suspected of being Maoists. Abductions are a common Maoist tactic, but on this day, the villagers were apparently ready for revenge.

They rescued Mr. Bhujel, caught three rebel suspects and killed them even before they could deposit the prisoners at the closest Royal Nepalese Army barracks. The crowd moved on, first singling out villagers who were suspected of sheltering Maoists in Ganeshpur, then attacking neighboring hamlets over the next four days. Twelve people were killed on the first day alone, according to a local human rights group.

The most visible evidence of the ferocity of the attacks is in Hallanagar. The mob burned 305 of the 312 houses in that village. One man, Prem Bahadur Rajkoti, was killed trying to escape.
 
page 2


In Rehara, Badaru Lissa Jolaha wept recently in the ruins of her home, which she said Maoists bombed after killing two of her sons.

Vigilantes May Be Nepal's Secret Weapon Against Rebels

Published: April 11, 2005

(Page 2 of 2)

A witness, Chandra Bahadur Khadka, said an angry crowd descended on Mr. Rajkoti when he became stuck in a muddy ditch and struck him once on the head with an ax. Mr. Khadka said the roof of his own house had been burned.

Why Hallanagar was attacked remains in dispute. Mr. Mishra's group contends that it was a Maoist haven.

Many of its residents, poor, generally landless migrants from the hills who squatted here years ago with government permission, say the atrocities are meant to drive them off the land.

Sita Debi Malla, 26, who came from the hills four years ago, says she remembers hearing her attackers bark as they pummeled her with sticks that she should get off the land in three days or they would kill her. Then they lighted a match under her thatched roof. Within minutes the roof was gone. So, too, was her small patch of beans.

Revenge did not take long. About two weeks later, in Rehara, a nearby hamlet, Abdul Rehman Jolaha was awakened one night by two dozen men he said he believed were Maoists. They dragged him to the chicken shed, tied his hands behind his back, and shot two of his sons dead before his eyes.

He said he pleaded with them to kill him, not them. "They said: 'It's no use killing you. You're an old man,' " he said.

Family members said they had no idea why the two sons, one 40, the other 19, were killed. Later, other villagers said the older son had attended a meeting of an anti-Maoist group in a neighboring hamlet.

Another man who said he had attended the meeting denied that any plans had been made there. The air was thick with fear. No one wanted to acknowledge knowing anything. Even the children looked terrified.

Why the anti-Maoists chose to strike now is no mystery. Mr. Mishra, a large landlord whose crops were looted and whose house was destroyed in the last year by Maoist gangs, said his men gained moral strength from the king's decree.

No longer, he said, would the authorities release people suspected of being Maoists under pressure from political parties. Since emergency rule, no politicians were left; the Parliament had been dissolved. "We stopped being afraid," Mr. Mishra boasted. "People have a lot of faith in the king now."

His cellphone rang. The king has cut off all cellphones in Nepal, but here on the Indian border, the Indian network works well. Conveniently enough, it allows Mr. Mishra to keep in touch with the security forces. When they are needed, they are called, Mr. Mishra said. When the citizens can take care of the Maoists themselves, they do.

One of the most recent incidents occurred on March 21, when villagers from across the district - Mr. Mishra was there himself - surrounded a house in which a man suspected of being a Maoist had holed up, trapping him long enough for the military to come and shoot him dead. Now, his men were preparing for an encounter in another nearby hamlet, where, he said, Maoists had sought shelter.

Investigators with the National Human Rights Commission have investigated the Kapilvastu incident, but their findings may not be released under the king's emergency decree. In March, one of its most outspoken commissioners, Sushil Pyakurel, was barred from going to Kapilvastu.

The army, meanwhile, is careful to distance itself from the most heinous acts of the village committees.

"They're protecting their villages by themselves, that's all," Maj. Sunil Ghale, the company commander in Ganeshpur, said under a shade tree, surrounded by Mr. Mishra and his men. "It's a good thing."
 
Sad times in Nepal.

They are a good and strong people. I hope they pull out of this mess soon.
 
Yes.

I must admit, it's hard not to favor the vigilantes. The Maoists blow up electric lines to hospitals.

But the solution is hardly the elimination of the 'Maoists' with the Monarchy unchanged. That will just invite more revolution.



munk
 
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