Grappling with Maoist Insurgency

A four-year-old Maoist insurgency in Nepal has left about 1,300 people dead, posing a challenge that threatens to undermine the country's constitutional monarchy.

Reports of killing of Maoists rebels, police personnel or civilians have become routine, especially since December when the Nepali Congress government constituted a high-level task force headed by former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba to try to forge a political consensus on ways to resolve the issue. It has been asked to submit a problem-solving report but has not been given a time-frame.

The objective of the radical Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), which has launched what it calls a "people's war", is to abolish the monarchy and establish a republican polity in the country. But constitutional monarchy with a multi-party parliamentary system is an unamendable provision in Nepal's Constitution. As the Deuba task force holds talks with major political parties, officials say killings have gone up dramatically. "People are being killed like birds are shot by hunters," a human rights activist said.

The nation has been numbed into virtual indifference to the killings. Since the launch of the insurgency, more than 1,300 people have lost their lives either in attacks by the rebels or in police encounters. Starting from two remote mountain districts of Rukum and Rolpa in February 1996, the Maoist "people's war" has made now engulfed over 42 of the 75 districts in the country. Rebels have mounted attacks on a number of police stations, especially in districts in the western, mid-western and central parts of the country.

They have bombed banks, revenue offices, forest offices; killed police personnel and politicians; and looted weapons, ammunition, jewellery and cash. The rebels have repeatedly rejected the government's offers to hold talks. Some political analysts say the government should outline a structure for the proposed talks if it wants a serious response from the rebels. But others feel talks are impossible. "The Constitution does not allow the government to negotiate on matters of constitutional monarchy or the multi-party parliamentary system.

And the Maoists' mission is to establish 'dictatorship of the proletariat'," pointed out Supreme Court advocate Reeta Karki, indicating that there was little room for dialogue. As the government struggles to tackle the problem, rival parties, particularly the leftist groups, accuse the ruling Nepali Congress of crushing opposition under the pretext of tackling the insurgency. "The police is killing our party workers and naming them terrorists," the Communist Party of Nepal-Marxist Leninist (ML) said in a statement this week.

Whenever somebody is shot dead by police in remote districts, the deceased is labelled a Maoist, opposition leaders allege. Officials and ministers merely "confirm" deaths in police enounters for the sake of the media, but there are no probes into such killings. Human rights activists have repeatedly demanded judicial probes into every encounter killing. But their voices go unheard.

"Killing people in any circumstance cannot be justified. It is a state of anarchy," says Sushil Pyakurel, president of the Informal Sector Service Centre, a human rights organisation. "The government and police have no immunity to kill people.

Wrong doers should be prosecuted under the law," he said.