NEPAL: Life in the Red Capital
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ROLPA, Nepal (Asia Media Forum) - When the Nepalese government unleashed a police operation called Operation Romeo in this remote western district in November 1995, Jaan Kumar was a 14-year-old sixth grader. He was living with his family in Uwa village in Rolpa, now the headquarters of Nepal's Maoist insurgency. Operation Romeo, initiated by the government to "contain criminals", was actually a state operation designed to contain communist hardliners in the left stronghold of Rolpa. It took place even before the Maoist insurgency started. "The police operation was indiscriminate. They beat up my mother and chased away my family from the village," says Jaan Kumar, who is now a soldier in the People's Liberation Army (PLA), the military wing of Nepal's Maoists. "The best chance of survival for me was to join the communists. In any case, the state saw everyone living in Rolpa as a communist," he says. Indeed, Operation Romeo was infamous for gross human rights violations that included random arrests, beatings, and rapes, facts that are well-documented by Nepal's rights organisations. Operation Romeo was initiated only four years after Nepal began its experiment with multi-party democracy and constitutional monarchy in 1990. It was undertaken by a democratic government, a fact that convinced communists in Nepal's western hills that their living conditions could not be improved without eliminating the feudal state structure of Nepal. In February 1996, only three months after Operation Romeo went into motion, a faction of the Communist Party of Nepal-Unity Centre, called the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoists (CPN-M), mounted attacks on poorly guarded police posts in several districts in Nepal and declared a ‘people's war' against Nepal's monarchy. Not many people paid attention to these incidents, which the media did not devote much space to. By 2001, Nepal's Maoists were in a position to attack army barracks and were armed with modern automatic weaponry seized from the police and the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA). The army has remained the basis of power for Nepal's monarchs, who have ruled the country for 237 years now.
Comrade 'Bibek', chairman of the people's government for Mirul village in Rolpa, says that Operation Romeo made the Maoists understand that they could take on the state forces. "In the beginning, people tolerated police atrocities. A point came when they started to retaliate. As villagers retaliated throwing stones at policemen and fighting back with sticks, we realised that we were good fighters even without arms," he says. Of course, the CPU-Unity Centre had considered starting an armed revolt years before Operation Romeo. But the police operation convinced them that it was possible. Many people who suffered during Operation Romeo joined the Maoist movement. Later, as the Maoist party grew into a formidable force in Nepal and the state unleashed deadlier operations like Kilo Sera 2, joining the movement was the best prospect for most youth in Rolpa. Remaining neutral meant being seen as enemies of both the warring sides. As state authorities were gradually chased away from villages to district headquarters, the villagers faced only two choices, both very difficult: leave the villages or support the Maoists. Those with means left, and those without stayed and supported the Maoists either verbally or by sending an able-bodied member of their family to the Maoists as what the rebels call "Whole Timer". As the war's toll increased, Maoists ran short of recruits and every family in the villages was required to send at least one "Whole Timer" to serve the rebels. Unlike males who were often reluctant to join the rebels, for village girls tired of the age-old patriarchal social order, becoming a PLA was the best way to get their rights. WAR AS A WAY OUT OF PATRIARCHY Comrade Rekha, 26, says that her first motivation to join the PLA was to achieve gender equality. From the way she presents herself, it is obvious that the war has liberated her from the shackles of traditions. Unlike the average Nepali village girl in Nepal, Rekha is outspoken, confident, and unafraid of strangers. "I got my rights as a woman by joining the party. There is gender equality in the party. Girls like me joined the party because traditional social life was too oppressive for us. We acquired our rights by joining the party. Now, we are fighting for the rights of all our countrymen," she says. Rekha joined the Maoist party three years ago. She has fought for two-and-half years as a PLA soldier. The biggest battles she participated in are the now legendary Bhalubang and Beni battles. She got married to Comrade Neperu, also a PLA soldier, with the permission of the party. Now, she has a 10-month-old son. The party gave her three months' leave during her pregnancy, and now she has been given the responsibility of a political commissar of a battalion in the 1st brigade of PLA. A few years for her son, and she will again fight battles. "And when he grows up, he will also become a PLA soldier," she says, caressing her son lovingly. As a political commissar of her battalion, Rekha in the past faced opposition from male soldiers when she gave them orders. "But that was temporary. Even the PLAs are humans," she says. Like many PLA soldiers who have absolutely no doubt about the 'greatness' of their cause, Rekha proudly says that she has killed a lot of government soldiers, and adds that she does not fear death. However, she has not thought of what she would do if the war were over. "I'll probably remain with the PLA. The country will need us for development work," she says. Comrade Neperu lost two wives before getting married to Rekha. His second wife became a 'martyr' of the people while training in Sukidaha village in Rolpa while her first wife met a natural death. He wants to send his son to one of the model schools built by the Maoists. EDUCATION WITH BOOKS - AND WEAPONS The first model school to be started by the Maoists is in Thawang, the capital of Nepal's Maoists. It is called the Martyr's Memorial Model School. Children of PLA soldiers and 'people's martyrs' are taught economics, agriculture, and mathematics in the primary level. By the time they are in the secondary level, they are taught how to shoot a gun, how to detonate a bomb and even how to make explosives. Thawang is a remote but considerably well-off village, a three-day trek to the north of Libang, the government headquarters of Rolpa. There are about 100 houses in Thawang. It is not a formal capital and the big leaders do not live here, but Thawang is special for several reasons. With the model school, a martyrs' park, and several communes in the village, Thawang is to the Maoists a small communist haven that they want to replicate in other districts in the country. Comrade Inkar, chairman of the village people's government in Thawang, says that there are no landless people in Thawang any more. It is not hard to believe him when we remember the fact that all the big landowners in Thawang, and in most of the villages under Maoist control in Nepal, left for safer towns and cities years ago, fearing for their lives. Inkar does not make a secret of this fact. "Before the war began, there were many peasants here tilling the lands of big landowners. But after the war started, the landowners left the village and peasants acquired the land," he says. DEEP RESENTMENT Though farther from civilisation that many other villages in Rolpa, Thawang is significantly bigger in size, and has hotels, shops, and even toilets -- rarities in the villages in Rolpa. Everyone in the village is a strong supporter of the Maoist movement. There are ample reasons for that support. The strongest among these reasons is an incident that happened in 2003. Back then, police arrested two 14-years-olds, Amar Jeet Rokka and Amar Bahadur Rokka, both sixth graders in Shree Himalaya Phulban Lower Secondary School in Mirul village. The boys were kept in police custody for several days in Libang, the government headquarters of Rolpa. Later, they were brought back to a forest near Dhangshi village and shot dead. The state-owned Radio Nepal said the next morning that two rebels had been killed in an encounter. "We couldn't believe our ears," recalls Jayan Singh Budha, a teacher who taught the two boys in school. "That morning, we totally lost faith on government forces. They were hard-working students from really poor families," he adds. Ghanashayam Acharya, president of Human Rights Awareness Centre, a non-governmental organisation in Libang, admits that there have been more cases of rights violations from the state than from the rebels in the district. "There have been cases where government soldiers have raped village girls. There has not been a single such incident from the rebels," he says. "Rolpa is the district with the highest number of casualties in the whole country. Out of the 13,000 lives lost in the war so far, about 2,000 have died from this district alone. Most of those who died are Maoists and civilians." Thawang alone has lost 34 people in the war, according to Comrade Baz, who runs a community hotel in the village. Maoists in Rolpa have been preparing themselves for governance. Their biggest development project is the construction of 106 kilometres of track road to connect the Maoist capital of Thawang to the East-West highway. The construction began in December 2004, 30 kilometres of road is already complete and the Maoists expect the road to be completed in three years. Road construction is a big basis of arguments for the Maoists to support their claim that they are not terrorists. "Terrorists do not initiate development efforts. We are doing something that the state has not done for Rolpa for centuries," argues Comrade Inkar. A section of the road built by the Maoists has extremely sharp bends, so that buses have to stop several times to move back and forth around the bends until it was safe to move on. It is an extremely risky road, but thanks to it, people can reach in eight hours what used to take them two days to traverse. Ever since the monsoon ended this year, 900 PLAs have been working on the road construction. In addition, every able-bodied villager is required to give a week's work to constructing the road. They are not paid even a paisa for the labour. COMMUNES COME UP
For families who belong to castes low in the Hindu hierarchy, the Maoists are no less than saviours. Dilip, a 15-year-old boy in Tutu village in Rolpa, belongs to the untouchable caste. Before the Maoists took power in his village, it was common for him to face humiliation from people of the upper caste who kept from drinking water in his house and even touching him. But today, Dilip runs a hotel and a shop in Tutu. It is common for visitors to live in his place and eat food cooked by his mother. While Dilip is thankful that the Maoists abolished the caste system in the country, he is not too enthusiastic about becoming a soldier. The Maoists have their own set of 'doctors' for treating soldiers wounded during battles. Comrade Jana Abhimat Akrosh Jwala, 20, joined the PLA three years ago. "They put me in the medical team. I was trained by Swiss and Swedish doctors from the International Committee of the Red Cross," he says. He is the chief of the medical unit in a battalion of the 1st brigade. He is required to be with PLA soldiers during battles so that medical help reaches quickly to the injured soldiers. "I work with a team of 12 health workers. We have done many amputations, bullet extractions and tractions," he says proudly. His team uses general anaesthesia for amputations. The last amputation he did was after the Khara attack in July 2004. "Many of our comrades were shot in their legs. We couldn't take them to hospitals. As always, we did amputation in villages near the battlefield," he says. Apart from the medical teams, the Maoists have units that manufacture bullets, repair weapons and make explosives. Comrade Chapamar (‘guerrilla' in Nepali), is an experienced weapons repairer. "They bring guns to me for repair. I have a team to do that. I also make hand grenades for the PLA," Jwala says. Once a hand grenade he was just about finished making exploded and burnt his face. There are still burn marks on his face. His two sons, daughter in laws, a daughter, and a son-in-law are all in the PLA. The economy in the villages in Rolpa is primitive. According to Comrade Baz, Thawang does not depend on supplies from outside. "We grow everything here, and make clothes and shoes. We want other villages to be economically independent like Thawang," he says. But there is one thing that these villages export: hashish. Elderly ladies can be seen making hashish in the villages. At first, they say that they are just making pickles and threads for clothes. But tell them that you are a trader, and they produce hashish. They sell hashish for 60 rupees every 12 grammes. Big traders from Kathmandu arrive in the villages to take hashish in bulk. The Maoists have not banned hashish trade in the villages. "That is a money-making business. They have been doing that for years. If we tell them to stop, we have to be able to give them an alternate source of income," he says. SOCIAL ORDER? One of the biggest changes the Maoists have brought about in the villages has to do with marriage. Child marriage is on its way to becoming a thing of the past. The Maoists have set the age of 20 for girls and 22 for boys for marriage. "Our party allows youngsters to fall in love. They can do what they want, but they must come of age to get married," says Comrade Baz. That is a big liberty when one considers the strict restrictions imposed by traditional Nepali society on male-female friendships, let alone relationships. "When they come of age, they need permission from the party to get married. If both the candidates are willing, the party gets them married," he adds. If the marriage does not work well, they can even get a divorce from the party and remarry. One of the significant impacts of the Maoist rule in the villages has been the control of petty crimes. There are virtually no thieves and robbers left in the villages. But this improvement has come at a cost of lives. Thieves and robbers have been executed in the villages. One and half years ago, a robber was executed near Tila village for raping and killing a woman. But Maoists collect tax for the security they give. "We have to pay five percent of our salary to them," says Shiv Shanker Mahato, a government-appointed auxiliary health worker working in Gumchal village in Rolpa. Apart from that, the health workers teachers and postmen - the only government employees still working in the villages - have to give the Maoists the whole of their annual Dashain festival bonus. ANTI-MONARCHY DEAL, NO POLLS Recently, the Maoists signed a 12-point agreement with the mainstream political parties in Nepal to stage a united fight against the monarchy. Santosh Budha Magar, a senior Maoist leader and chief of Magarat Autonomous Republic, the biggest ethnic wing of the Maoist party that spans 12 of the 75 districts in the country, says that his party chose to join hands with the capitalists to finish off the feudal state structure. "There are three forces in Nepal: feudal, represented by the palace, capitalists represented by the parties and the communists, represented by the Maoists. The feudals and the communists are at war. The capitalists are a confused lot. Since capitalism in more progressive than feudalism, we had decided to join hands with the capitalists. Of course, our end goal is communism," he says. Magar says that his party will not allow the government to hold municipal and parliamentary polls in the country. "We will make sure that the polls do not take place," he says. He also says that since it is impossible to overthrow the monarchy by taking part in elections, municipal, parliamentary or constituent assemblies conducted by the king, the Maoists will first overthrow the monarchy by use of force -- and then participate in multiparty process. The Maoists conducted their own parliamentary elections in 2002, and village level elections in July this year. There are 130 constituencies in the Maoist parliament, as opposed to 205 in the state's parliament. "Our next parliamentary elections will take place in 2007," says Magar. In the village-level elections they held this year, Maoists won 48 in out of the 51 villages in Rolpa district. The elections were held in 10 districts in Nepal. REVISITING OTHER REVOLUTIONS Magar, who joined the communists in 1979, says that contrary to Lenin and Mao, the Maoists in Nepal identified the oppressed minorities, women and dalits as their core power centre for staging the revolution. "Chairman Prachanda is a very creative person. He has learnt from revolutions in other parts of the world. He is aware of the possibility of a counter-revolution. He will make sure that a counter-revolution does not take place," he says. According the Magar, Stalin was a great revolutionary leader, and his only failure was the inability to identify counter-revolutionaries in Russia. Nepal's Maoists are not happy with the "aberration" that took place in China - the movement toward capitalism -- after the death of Mao Tse Tung. But Nepal's Maoists are more wary of India than China. "India wants to colonize Nepal, the way it did to Sikkim and Bhutan. If a foreign country encroaches on our territorial integrity, we will join hands with the Royal Nepalese Army to fight the foreign force," he says. STILL HOPING FOR PEACE Despite being ideological hardliners, war-weary Maoists in Rolpa hope that the agreement between the Maoists and the political parties brings lasting peace. "We cannot fight forever. A lot of people have died in this war. It's time we had peace now," says Comrade Baz. But it is, as always, a rocky road to peace. On Dec. 22, Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda announced that his party would take "people's action" -- including "special action" --against candidates as well as officials overseeing municipal elections that is being held by the royal regime on Feb. 8, 2006. Comrade Jaan Kumar says he is willing to forgive the police and the army. "I don't hate them any more. They are just government service holders following orders. What frustrates me is that they fail to understand that we are both victims of the state feudal structure. With each death in the war, a poor family is bereaved. The rich and the powerful have lost nothing," he says. Comrade Rekha hopes the King will finally be overthrown with the united effort of the Maoists and the political parties. "And then, we will live in peace," she says. Up until the Dec. 22 statement, army personnel, policemen and even the chief district officer in Libang, the government headquarters of Rolpa district, were hopeful about peace. In the past, explosions were everyday occurrences in Libang. After the Maoists declared the September unilateral ceasefire, government officials have slept in peace and have even enjoyed pool games in the two pool houses in Libang. They hope they can continue to spend their evenings like this -- and even go to the villages some day. For years, they have not left the district headquarters - which are surrounded by barbed wire. (END/AMF/IPSAP/BS/JS/281205) |
By Bikash Sangraula
Apart from road construction, Maoists have started communes in the villages. In Thawang, the Maoists have constituted three communes. In total, 150 families run the Ajammari People's Commune Lodge, the Gemi Sang (Our Martyrs') Hotel, a medical facility and a farm where the villagers grow medicinal herbs, fruits and vegetables. Apart from the hotel, the other properties of the commune are run by a different family every 15 days. The profits of the initiatives are deposited in a common fund that supports the families' expenses.
Aung Htun (not his real name) is one of the young video journalists featured in the award-winning feature documentary 'Burma VJ (Reporting from a Closed Country)'. 
