Online Coverage Of The Maoists

I just bumped into a trove of stuff. Looks like our BRB has been getting published widely in the global ultra left circles.

1. Dr. Baburam Bhattarai on the Royal Dictatorship and the Need For a Democratic Republic in Nepal
2. Dr. Baburam Bhattarai on the Failure of the Peace Talks in Nepal
3. Women’s Leadership and the Revolution in Nepal
4. A Communication from the Revolutionaries in Nepal on the Current (September 2002) Situation in the Civil War
5. Comparisons Between Recent U.S.-Backed Coups: Caracas and Kathmandu by Wayne Madsen
6. Birthpangs of Democracy in Nepal: Commentary from Dr. Baburam Bhattarai
7. The Letter of Dr. Baburam Bhattarai on the Palace Massacre in Nepal

8. Nepal: Two Futures, Two Roads by Li Onesto

9. Dispatches: Report from the People's War in Nepal

10. People's War In Nepal
11. Photos From The People's War In Nepal
12. Interview with Prachanda

In The News

• FEATURE-Orphans bear brunt of Nepal's brutal war Reuters AlertNet, UK Two-and-a-half years ago, Sinam's mother was shot dead by the Nepali army, allegedly for violating a curfew in the countryside..... Her father became an alcoholic ..... she looks completely lost...... "Children write to us that they are scared they will be abducted, scared they will be beaten or killed, scared that they will be blown up, and too scared to go to school." On a recent trip to the Maoist heartland of Nepal, a Reuters team saw children scarcely more than 10 years old carrying rifles, members of a Maoist village militia. Locals said children as young as 14 or 15 are recruited into the Maoists' frontline fighting force, the "People's Liberation Army"...... The teacher said Maoists came to his school almost every month and took children off for several days of indoctrination. Others are asked to join the militia forces, or to work as porters or messengers..... Maoists plan to introduce their own curriculum, and have already forced rural schools to observe a minute's silence at morning assembly instead of singing the Nepali anthem..... they are asked to pay five percent "tax" to the rebels, except when the Maoists come on a "emergency fundraising" drive -- and ask for an entire month's pay ...... Side by side, victims of the security forces eat, sleep and play with the victims of the Maoist rebels. .... 10-year-old Hira Pariyar. Her father was killed by the police in 1996, just a month after the Maoist revolt began. Her mother married again, and left Hira and her brother Krishna to fend for themselves.
• Nepal-Pakistan Joint Economic Commission meeting on Mar 26 New Kerala, India
• Swiss cut back aid projects in Nepal Swissinfo, Switzerland "We are working in an environment which is partially unreal, as what we read and see in the capital Kathmandu is very different from the information we are getting from the field" ...... I think the picture you get abroad is probably more accurate than the one we get in Nepal ..... "The picture we get in Kathmandu is a rosy one that does not correspond with the reality of escalating conflict and increased insecurity." ..... 73 per cent think the conflict between government forces and Maoists could be resolved through talks .... people in the countryside were defenceless ...... During the nine years of insurgency there has not been a single incident in which a tourist was attacked......
  
• Nepalese Parliamentary Parties Back Maoist Call For Constituent ... Indymedia Ireland The wildcard in Nepal's civil war has been the marginalized parliamentary parties centered in the capital city. .... victims of the army's rapes and abuse ...... the Maoists have galvanized the lower classes, particularly the desperately poor peasants, into a cohesive fighting force that cannot be defeated by the monarchy...... U.S. ambassador James Moriarty told the BBC that failure to bring the "mainstream" parties back into alliance with the monarchy could result in victory for the Maoist rebels....... The Congress Party, UML and the other main "legal" parties declared in a March 16 New Delhi meeting that "This will be our last fight with the king. There will be no more compromise." They have accepted the Community Party of Nepal's main demands for an end to the monarchy, the establishment of a republic and the calling of Nepal's first constituent assembly...... Li Onesto, a journalist with the Chicago-based Revolutionary Worker, trekked into the heights of the Himalayas to meet with the rebels in their base areas, mass organizations and scored a unique interview with the CPN's leader Prachanda. Her recent book Dispatches From the People's War in Nepal ..... Her portraits of common people in struggle and their inspiring belief that they can remake the world against centuries of oppression is a tonic to the lowered expectations and defeatism afflicting much of the post-everything left.
  
• Soldiers kill three students in Nepal: report New Kerala, India Nepalese soldiers in plain clothes shot dead three students seeking donations ahead of a Hindu festival and then tried to allegedly cover up the triple murder..... Narayan Bahadur Kanaugee, 17, Tek Bahadur Gaha, 15, and Dal Bahadur Darlami, 15 ..... According to a statement issued by the army headquarters in Kathmandu, the teens were terrorists extorting money from passenger and car drivers. ..... relatives of the students took out their bodies from the graves in which the soldiers had buried them, two of them still in school uniform, and took them to a hospital at Tansen town for autopsy...... The killings were reported in details only Sunday by a web site, United We Blog.
• Nepalese soldier arrested for murder New Kerala The soldier was under the influence of liquor when the incident occurred
  
• Let exams be unhindered, UN to forces, Maoists New Kerala over 300,000 Nepalese teenagers ...... Schools have fallen victim to the conflict (between the communist guerrillas and security forces). They have been used for political purposes and as barracks. They have been attacked, destroyed and their grounds mined and dug with trenches....... Maoists have threatened to disrupt examinations if their demand that the government open more examination centres in remote towns and villages was not met. .... House owners are reluctant to take in young people from areas known as Maoist strongholds for fear that they might have guerrilla links and invite the wrath of the army...... In the past, there have been several instances of the guerrillas and the security forces clashing on school premises, causing the death of students in the crossfire.
  
• Govt-Maoist word war hits a new peak Times of India ....independent journalists who have contacts with the Maoists say there are some differences in the leadership but not to the extent as propagated by the RNA ..... Some Maoists have told me that Bhattarai and Prachanda do have their differences
  
• UN to review Nepal role in peace missions? New Kerala, India .... Nepalese soldiers deployed on UN peacekeeping operations were involved in sexual abuse in Congo .... the government of the kingdom of Nepal is a generous contributor of troops and civilian police to UN peacekeeping operations ..... peacekeepers in Congo persuaded abandoned orphans to consent to sexual encounters by offering gifts as trivial as two eggs ..... Nepal has about 3,000 military personnel engaged in several UN missions around the world, including Congo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Burundi, Kosovo, Lebanon, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Haiti, Sudan and East Timor...... Their deployment in UN missions is a matter of great pride for the army.
• Three Nepal scholars barred from India meet New Kerala, India Lokraj Baral .... Krishna Khanal and Krishna Hachchethu ..... An indignant Baral told the Kathmandu Post newspaper: "If we are a threat to the state, we ask to be imprisoned. If not, why are we being treated like this?" ...... He also told the daily that professionals should not be treated as politicians...... The new regime has also said it could impose curbs on movements of its citizens as well as others living in the kingdom.
• 17,000 Nepal women forced into prostitution in India Xinhua, China
• Nepal says it is self-sufficient as far as its military ... New Kerala, India

Nepal Communist Party (Progressive)

It is this king and his coterie that have been in the way of lasting peace and progress for the country. The Maoists have time and again expressed their desire for UN mediation to lead to an all-party government and elections to a Constituent Assembly. It is this junta that will not accept that roadmap to peace. And so it is for all forces domestic and international to act like it is this junta that is irrelevant to Nepal's future, that this junta does not have the powers to hijack the future of this country. It is my firm belief that in the current climate when all global forces are lined up against this king and his gang, if the democrats and the Maoists were to forge a strong Democratic Coalition, this regime will collapse. It is time we stopped acting like we are at the mercy of a change of heart on the part of the Monarchists. They should not be given the powers to set the timetable for peace. Homework time.

My first choice is to include all democratic parties without getting into technicalities. We all know what the parties are. Might as well go ahead and recognize them in the absence of constitutional bodies whose job it is to do so. We have the UML, the Koirala Congress, the Deuba Congress, the RPP, Thapa's newly formed RJP, the Mandal Sadbhavana, the Tripathy Sadbhavana, and the Jana Morcha.

The 4S Campaign is for an all-party government and a constituent assembly. The government in waiting is to have the following composition:

Prime Minister: Girija Koirala
Deputy Prime Minister: Madhav Nepal
Deputy Prime Minister: Hridayesh Tripathy
Ministers: Sher Deuba, Pashupati Rana, Prakash Lohani, Badri Mandal, Amik Sherchan, Baburam Bhattarai and about a half dozen others to reflect the gender, ethnic, caste and regional diversity of the country.

But this is assuming all parties accept the 4S Campaign. If there are parties now that do not agree to the idea of a Constituent Assembly, we should work on them. And if we fail, we should kick them out of the coalition. There might be some bad blood between some of the names mentioned here, but this is not a mutual love coalition. This is a coalition with a sole agenda of holding elections to a constituent assembly.

And I would like to suggest that the Maoists do some homework of their own. The Constituent Assembly is their idea. In coming to the idea, the other parties are doing some major homework. It is for the Maoists to reciprocate. And I suggest they do that by giving a fresh look to their ideology.

I believe they should start with their name. I am aware Mao's contribution was that he saw revolutionary potential in poor farmers and peasants as opposed to the traditional industrial base sought by the communists. And so his teachings seemed to make sense for Nepal, a country where 9 out of 10 people are farmers. But the Nepali Maoists need to move beyond cult of personality, and change their name to Nepal Communist Party (Progressive). That means they will continue to be wed to the ultimate goal of a classless, communist utopia, and they will continue to draw upon the works of all major commuist figures, from Marx to Mao, but communism is not Marx, Lenin or Mao any more than physics is Albert Einstein. Physics is a discipline. Similarly the Nepali Maoists should be dedicated to the scientific process. Be constantly studying the local and external conditions, for one.

Used to be doctors performed surgery without using anesthetics. You got to feel all the pain, while your limb got sawed off, for example. But we live in different times. Surgery can be painless. And I think the communists should similarly renounce violence as a political weapon for good. What made some sense a hundred years back is actually counterproductive today, and is to be even less relevant down the line as the human population as a whole gets better educated and information is more easily accessible by the masses. Instead, shoot for what I would call Total Democracy.

Step 1, Total Democracy. Ban political fund-raising and instead the parties get public funds that is directly proportional to the number of votes they secured in the last held national elections. Every elected leader, from local to national levels, is on a decent, monthly salary, so it is an attractive career option, like being a teacher, or a health worker, or a doctor.

Step 2, Transparent Democracy. All expenses by the state, to the last paisa, are posted online and archived. Ditto for the property owned by all politicians and bureaucrats, to be updated annually. Also applies to all public words by all public officials. All political deliberations at all levels of government.

Step 3, Scientific Democracy. To be defined later beyond what is not obvious by the name. It builds on steps 1 and 2, rather than taking away from them.

So Maoists, change the name of your party, redefine your ideology so as to renounce violence as a political weapon for good, and let's create the world's very first democracy. Let's make peace on our schedule, and not on that of the Monarchists. Let's force them out instead of waiting for them to volunteer out, an unrealistic scenario.