If The Basic Rights Were Restored

The hot news today is that the King G administration might restore civil liberties. It is bound to do so by the end of April, but that it might do so earlier. First, do we believe the statement? What is the timeline? When exactly is that to be done? Why are the ministers not being specific? What does the king mean when he says some not all emergency measures will be lifted? Either you restore all basic freedoms or you don't. I am seeing too much doublespeak. Besides, Nepal might simply be responding to international pressure. Perhaps they are testing the waters, as to how much they have to let go to tempt the donors into believing all is fine now, and so go on ahead with the aid. Personally I have a hard time believing Ramesh Nath Pandey, a total whack of a guy who has recently made outlandish comments suggesting there was only one thing standing between the Maoists and their takeover of India and the world: the king of Nepal.

Should it happen, that will mean politicians like Girija Koirala and Madhav Kumar Nepal will be released. Press freedom will be restored. People and parties will be free to organize protest rallies. Those who have sought refuge in India will be able to come back. Human rights activists and organizations will get back to work, and there might be a renewed attempt to get the Royal Nepali Army and the Maoists to sign the Human Rights Accord.

That would be a major, positive step. But then we will have to move on to the next question. What gives this cabinet its legitimacy? Are these people more qualified? If so, how? What exactly in their plan to seek peace with the Maoists?

I continue to believe, even if the fundamental rights are restored, there is no way out except to create an all-party government that includes the Maoists, that goes on to conduct elections to the Constituent Assembly.

In The News Today

• Nepal Sends Envoy to Explain Emergency Rule to Donor Nations Bloomberg ..... International donations fund 62 percent of Nepal's development budget...... Nepal is one of the poorest in the world with 42 percent of people living below the poverty line and 80 percent of them relying on agriculture for a livelihood...... King Gyanendra said he imposed emergency rule to prevent the ``fragmentation'' of the country .....Nepali Congress yesterday called on party members to stay in Nepal and take part in a civil disobedience movement to protest the state of emergency
• Civil liberties to be restored soon in Nepal Indian Express
• Nepal stops activist boarding plane to US Sify Dhungana said he had been invited by the University of California in Berkley to speak at conference related to the king's power grab and declaration of emergency rule, which suspended civil liberties...... Under the emergency rule provisions, Nepalese citizens are forbidden from making comments critical of the king's takeover......Rights groups say more than 400 activists are in detention or under house arrest......But Nepal's royal-appointed foreign minister, Ramesh Nath Pandey, said in New Delhi that "very few people are in detention."
  
• Nepal Says to Restore Rights, Frees Prisoners Reuters ....the king planned to revoke some of the tough emergency measures he has imposed.
  
• NEPAL: Vaccination and other health drives to continue Reuters AlertNet, UK .....the concept of vaccination as a child right, and the campaign to date has been supported by both sides in the conflict.....the Maoists may call another nationwide strike blockade on 14 March ....Around every second Nepali child is stunted and malnourished.....The Nepal Vitamin A Programme started initially in just eight districts in 1993. By 2002, it had expanded to all 75 districts in the country.
• NEPAL: Impact of conflict on food security Reuters AlertNet Kalikot, Humla, Mugu, Dolpa, and Jumla are some of the country's most neglected districts within Karnali province. Here, malnutrition is the major cause of death and villagers have a long history of chronic food shortages and periodic famines......Karnali Air, the only company allowed to transport food utilising its helicopters, was asked by the security force not to airdrop, fearing that supplies would fall into the hands of the rebels.....The plants are worth more than US $5,000 per kilo in China and India but now they are forced to exchange the precious plants for basic foods......In a country of 25 million, nearly 10 million have to cope with food shortages.
  
• Pandey hints at early end to Emergency Himalayan Times
• World Bank freezes Nepal aid Times of India
• Nepali military torturing politicians, say leaders taking refuge ... Express Newsline .... Nepali political leaders who managed to escape to New Delhi fearing hostile action by King Gyanendra's administration, have alleged that Nepali military was illegally detaining and torturing leaders back home. The allegation from the leaders-on-exile assumes significance as it came hours before new Nepali Foreign Minister Ramesh Nath Pandey arrives in New Delhi.......Rambaran Yadav, senior leader in Koirala's Nepali Congress and a former health minister, said the military was on rampage and many of their leaders were being picked up and beaten mercilessly....... Yadav said three prominent pro-democracy activists in Jhapa in the country's eastern belt, Sudhir Shiva Koti and Udhav Thapa, both of the Nepali Congress, and a regional trade union leader Deepak Taman were tortured nearly to death by armymen....... All of the three leaders were taken into a military camp, laid down on a trench and beaten badly by the armymen with ice cold water being poured over them all through. ...... The men were beaten nearly to death. The military is torturing people and we have no control over anything. Even five to 10 people gathering at a place are arrested and tortured ..... Mahant Thakur, Nepal's former information minister, who also fled to India last week, added that it was not just the politicians but common people as well who are bearing the brunt of army atrocities....... The soldiers, he said, often barge into homes and misbehave with women ...... as for the political leaders, the establishment simply cannot stand them ..... The way the foreign minister of such a country should be treated, I urge the government of India to treat the visiting foreign minister in the same vein .....
  
• Health of detainees in Nepal beginning to deteriorate: rights ... Designerz.com .....at least 450 people have been detained ..... some of the political detainees were suffering from diabetes, heart problems, typhoid, fever and other ailments.... health checkups were being done by health assistants rather than doctors or specialists ......detained activists and political leaders -- some in their 80s -- want access to newspapers, radio and television, telephone connections and contact with people outside their immediate family ..... Narhari Acharya, Laxman Ghimire, Gopali Raj Pahadi, Gopal Rai, Madhu Acharya, and former Kathmandu mayor Haribol Bhattarai.

News Clips: March 6 to 9

March 9

• Let's meddle in Nepal Sify, India .....there are 9.9 million Nepali speakers in Nepal compared to six million in India ..... as a consequence of the “Maoist” insurgency states that since January 2003 the number of Nepalis entering India has been over 2,000 persons a day ..... So, whatever the king of Nepal and the India-baiting Nepali upper class might have to say, what happens in Nepal is very much our business...... Within India, in North Block, there is much information available about the “business” activities of Gyanendra: suffice to say that several of his Indian business associates are quite dubious, to say the least....... In the small political spectrum occupied by dictatorships, a despotic and kleptocratic monarchy is about the most wretched and deserves zero tolerance...... the CPN (M) is really an extreme nationalist group like the Sri Lankan Janatha Vimukhti Perumuna (JVP) ..... This leaves us just with a motley bunch of broad-based political parties and crooked politicians to support....... Democracy comes with a heavy baggage of deadweight ..... withdrawing all assistance to the RNA and putting a tight control on all material entering Nepal. The Nepal establishment has played the China card for far too long and we should leave them the option of getting their supplies from Tibet...... The Nepal Maoists could, likewise, play a historically useful role by ridding Nepal of a hated king and an anachronistic monarchy. Thus, the first priority is to get rid of Gyanendra and gang. A reformist regime and military force can then force the CPN (M) into the mainstream.
• Nepal: Grim alternatives Rediff .....Maoists entrenched in roughly three-fourths of Nepal's total territory ..... The prospects of nurturing an indigenous political party in Nepal, which would swear by democracy and yet oppose the Maoists, is likely to grow dimmer in the aftermath of the recent developments...... That negotiations with them have collapsed occasion after occasion is directly attributable to their insistence that the starting point of any arrangement to establish viable peace in the country must be abolition of the monarchy...... Baburam Bhattarai, had his education in north Indian universities. He wrote in the late 1970s a doctoral dissertation for the Jawaharlal Nehru University, The Nature of Underdevelopment and Regional Structure of Nepal: A Marxist Analysis...... Bhattarai's book describes in frightening detail the grim nature of inequality in land distribution in Nepal......Should Nepal be overrun by the Maoists, the pressure to democratise Bhutan and dissolve its absolute monarchy would be unbearable......The American intrusion can perhaps be avoided if the government of India stands aside and encourages Nepal's traditional parties to come to an understanding with the Maoists on the basis of an agreed programme which underwrites the multi-party democratic process. Such an understanding will immediately sound the death knell for monarchy, and even the Americans will not dare to intervene.
  
• Maoist insurgency in Nepal Financial Express.bd .....a month of peculiar political crisis .....It is virtually impossible to sweep through the mountainous countryside. So the army remains confined to the cities and district headquarters...... the Maoist strength in the country includes 95,000 armed guerrillas and 25,000 potential fighters who can be armed as needed and 14000 political activists .....That pits 50,000 soldiers deployed outside Kathmandu against a rebel fighting force of some 35,000, most of them poorly armed but invisible and very effective as fighters......The military actions may contribute to the possibility of a Maoist victory.
  
• Report: Nepal backed anti-Maoist rampage: New Kerala, India .....Reports are emerging from Nepal the government condoned a week-long deadly rampage against Maoist rebels, the BBC said Tuesday...... 700 homes were burned and about 30 people lynched on suspicion of being Maoist rebels by mobs sanctioned by the army ..... the army soon after handed back the trio to the crowd and they were beaten to death
• At least 300 arrested in anti-monarchy protests in Nepal: New Kerala .....50 people in Kathmandu, 35 in Tanahu, 14 in Chitwan, 137 in Dhanusha, 24 in Pokhara and 7 in Dhangadhi
  
• Anti-monarchy protest launched in Nepal Kansas City Star, MO .....the first time opposition parties put together a serious demonstration against the king's emergency rule.... Anti-monarchy protests rallies were held in most of southern cities and towns along Nepal's border with India..... In Janakpur, a city 185 miles southeast of Katmandu, police arrested more than 130 protesters.
• Police deployed to block planned Kathmandu rally Taipei Times
• International court alerted on Nepal rights abuse: New Kerala, India Fourteen human rights and academic groups in Asia have jointly alerted the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague and its state parties to "grave human rights violations in Nepal that could amount to crimes against humanity"......Reports of attacks, arrests, torture, extra-judicial killings, rape and forced disappearances are alarming......The groups demanded that the government of Nepal and the insurgent Maoists put an immediate end to arbitrary detention, torture and extra-judicial killings......The 14 groups include the AHRC, FORUM-ASIA in Thailand, the Asian Network for the International Criminal Court, the Bangladesh Coalition for the International Criminal Court, Odhikar from Bangladesh, the Cambodia Human Rights and Development Association, the East Timor People's Action, the Women's Research and Action Group in India, the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy in Indonesia, Minbyun - Lawyers for a Democratic Society in South Korea and the Pakistan Coalition on the International Criminal Court.
  
• REGION: India says Nepal crisis can spill over Daily Times, Pakistan .....was in touch with other nations to develop a coordinated response to King Gyanendra’s power seizure .....rapidly “deteriorating” economic and security situation ..... India’s comments that Gyanendra’s move had “served to only deepen the crisis facing Nepal” ......Pandey did not explain how Nepal planned to end the insurgency and bring back democracy ..... “Either support the king to restore peace or support the terrorists who propose a one-party communist dictatorship,” Pandey told the Times of India .....“The future of democracy, peace and stability of India and the entire region and ultimately democracy in the world is at stake because of the Maoist insurgency.”
• Royalist party in Nepal demands restoration of political freedom: New Kerala, India .....thousands of activists belonging to five political parties rallied against the royal takeover ......Two of the coalition partners have joined the pro-democracy agitation and two others -- RPP and Nepal Sadbhavana Party (B) have stayed away from it.
• No early end to Nepal emergency BBC News ......The state of emergency in Nepal could remain in force until the end of April according to the country's constitution ......The Nepalese constitution requires the emergency to be ratified by a two-thirds majority in the lower house of parliament within three months of its imposition.....Nepal plans to relax curbs on civil rights gradually
  
• Unrest slows Nepal tourism Bangkok Post, Thailand ....media reports, which show that the majority of Nepalese are against the king's decision to take absolute power .....enjoyed the nature and rice culture ..... "March and April are the best months to visit Nepal"
• World Bank freezes Nepal aid Times of India, India ......a meeting of the World Bank's executive board in Washington DC, which had summoned Ohashi for a briefing on the Nepal situation..... A Bank statement issued in Washington and Kathmandu
• Japan grants aid to Nepal urging restoration of democracy: New Kerala Other major donors, including the US and those from the European Union, have set preconditions for continuing aid to Nepal and demanded lifting of emergency and restoration of democracy before they provide any economic assistance.
  
• Nepal arrests 200 at anti-government rally: New Kerala, India ......a small but significant rally Tuesday
• Nepalese waiting for a democracy leader Seattle Post Intelligencer .....Nepal is waiting for a charismatic politician who can deliver them both leadership and democracy......we are going from bad to worse ......On the bright side, citizens say that in government offices, where plainclothes security officers assist people, there are no delays or demands for bribes...... streets now become deserted as evening sets in. Shops and restaurants have been ordered to close by 9 p.m......donor nations are cutting back aid, driving Nepal to the edge of bankruptcy ......"We need a leader like Ganesh Mansingh, or Madan Bhandari."
  
• Nepal offers buy three and get one free offer for Indians Deepika, India
• Nepal loses 43 percent visitors since royal coup: New Kerala
• US urges Nepal not to arrest protesters: New Kerala, India ....."The way forward to defeat the Maoist insurgency is clear: a political process open to all who wish to participate peacefully," he said, adding that should be combined with a determined effort to bring to justice those who use terror or violence to advance their goals.
• Nepal: Time to act - State-sponsored mob violence unleashed in ... ReliefWeb (press release), Switzerland ...... The army-orchestrated burning of hundreds of homes and lynching of about 30 alleged Maoists .....The violence and subsequent tension around the destruction of the Babri mosque in 1992; organised attacks on Muslims in Bombay during 1993; and attempted genocide of local Muslim populations by the state government of Gujarat in 2002 ..... In Indonesia the unleashing of anti-communist mobs by the military caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in that country during the 1960s......In Sri Lanka the mob violence against the Tamil population living in Colombo during the 'Black July' of 1983 is well known. Much of the extreme political bloodshed that was to come in the subsequent years had its origin in the horrors of that time. In May 2003 the military regime in Burma deployed mobs to brutally attack a convoy of democracy supporters in the north of the country .....Through destruction, a type of authoritarian anarchy prevails. Nepal is on that path. ......Nepal is descending into an abyss of violence from which there will be no easy return .....has been plunged into this situation by the mindless actions of its dictatorial king and his accomplices
  

March 6

• Nepal's Emergency Rule Deters Aid Donors, Finance Minister Says Bloomberg
• Nepal's security forces destroy Maoist bomb factory: New Kerala, India
• Nepal Extends Detention of Political Leaders Washington Post
• NEPAL AND THE WORLD-I International Community Becomes Active Statesman, India
• SSB forces on high alert along Nepal-India border Nepalnews.com, Nepal
• No SSB role in RNA operation: India Himalayan Times
• Indian assistance to fight rebels Nepalnews.com
• Panic in Indo-Nepal border over bandh Statesman, India
• Nepal sets up association for Chinese, Nepalese tourists Xinhua, China
• Maoist insurgency thrives on narcotics trade: US Times of India, India
• India's dilemma: Tackle monarchy or Maoists? Times of India
• Exiled Nepali leaders vow to continue struggle for democracy: New Kerala, India