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Nepal News
Update
While the world’s media is quick to leap on and showcase even the
slightest item they consider favours their imperialist masters,
such as a paltry and hypocritical charity “handout” to those their
system is starving in Africa, they are equally adept at burying
news that they wish to hide from the eyes of the world’s oppressed.
Hence it is not surprising that it is hard to find news that for
over two years now the people of Nepal have embarked on the path
of people’s war to overthrow their very system. AWTW is thus
proud to present a statement from Comrade Prachanda, the General
Secretary of the vanguard of the People’s War, the Communist Party
of Nepal (Maoist), analysing the situation and tasks of the People’s
War today.
While the world’s media seeks to bury news of this great
development, in Nepal itself the strength of the People’s War has
smashed the media blackout. Headlines regularly report clashes in
the countryside and scream for "anti-terrorist laws" and
for the army to be brought in, while at the same time holding out
the carrot of "peace talks" to try and divert the revolutionary
war.
Since Comrade Prachanda’s statement was released in spring
1998, a countrywide bandh or strike was called by the United
People’s Front, a revolutionary united front organisation led by
the CPN (Maoist). While the People’s War is based mainly in the
countryside and implements the strategy of mobilising the peasants
as the main force in surrounding the cities from the rural areas,
the strike showed the strength of the People’s War in the urban
areas as well. As the Kathmandu Post conceded, "The
strike paralysed most of public life in the capital and other parts
of the kingdom." Kathmandu was likened to "a ghost town
and in many other towns and cities throughout the country shops
were closed and traffic came to a halt. The strike was called, as
The Worker, organ of the CPN (Maoist), clarifies, "…to
protest against the state terror, genocide and repression unleashed
by the fascist state throughout the country and to press for the
40-point charter of demands put forward by the UPF". The Home
Ministry had declared that a huge number of police forces will be
deployed in the streets to prevent “unpleasant incidents” and about
2000 people were arrested around the country – but obviously to
no avail!
Since August 1997, the CPN (Maoist) has been mobilising to
implement the Third Strategic Plan to "Develop Guerrilla Warfare
to New Heights", which has entailed raising the military ability
of the revolutionary forces both qualitatively and quantitatively.
As the Editorial in The Worker no. 4 explains, in essence
this means "the creation of a base for local organs of political
power and raising the political, organisational and technical level
of the people’s guerrilla army so as to be able to contend with
the rival army in the prospective guerrilla zones". This effort
has forged ahead. The People's War has spread, covering the central
hilly region from the west to the east of Nepal. In hundreds of
villages the masses have been drawn into new forms of participation
in the People’s War, including logistics support and making weapons.
The Janadesh Weekly newspaper reported recently on one of
the most successful actions yet in the People’s War, in which a
team of about 30 guerrillas carried out a surprise attack on a police
post, killed its commander and captured rifles and ammunition. There
have been reports that the morale of lower level policemen is down,
and that many are resigning. There have been cases where, learning
of a large group of guerrillas in the area, the reactionary forces
wait until they are sure the guerrillas have left, then come around
loudly demanding to know where the guerrillas are and shouting about
how they are ready to fight.
One of the key successes of the Third Strategic Plan has
been that in several hundred villages across Nepal the local officials
have been forced to flee, creating a power vacuum that the revolutionaries
have seized on. New organs of local power are being built, called
three-in-one combinations since they are formed of representatives
of the Party, the army and the local masses
At the same time, in a more ominous development, the government
has launched a military operation called "Kilo Sera 2",
in which several tens of thousands of special troops were deployed
in May in 20 out of the country’s 75 districts. This is the biggest
military operation in the history of Nepal. In the two months since
then at least 200 people have been killed as the military has unleashed
ferocious repression in the countryside. In a typical operation,
several thousand troops attempt to surround a given area, cutting
off the roads to block efforts to flee, and then methodically enter
to carry out house-to-house searches in the hunt for guerrillas.
Although there have only been initial reports from the remote
regions of Nepal, it is clear that the revolutionaries had anticipated
that the reactionaries would launch an encirclement and suppression
campaign. The young guerrilla forces have drawn on their deep roots
among the masses to evade the encirclements of the enemy, whose
troops are not local and hence often find themselves flailing in
the dark. With hearts and minds prepared and united, the comrades
of the CPN (Maoist) have managed to lead the masses to stave off
this attack and to launch some counter-attacks on the enemy.
The military terror was condemned in a press release by Comrade
Prachanda on 10 June, which strongly denounced the savage and impudent
killing of the masses. In response to the wave of support from women
for the People’s War, military officers who used to regard women
as inconsequential or often as the “booty of war” have now begun
mass arrests and attacks on women too. Fourteen women have been
killed in the last two months, leading to protest from women’s groups
and others. There has been mass resistance in the urban areas to
the military repression, as well as a wave of protest by human rights
groups. These have included denunciations of the attacks by one
of the architects of the Nepali Constitution and a rally in Delhi,
India, home to many Nepalese immigrants. The rally was organised
by the All-Indian Nepalese Unity Society. Eight thousand people
gathered in Delhi to hear statements of protest at the killings
in Nepal, given by a wide variety of prominent human rights figures
and political leaders, including a former Minister in the Nepal
government, the leader of the All-India People’s Resistance Forum,
the former Chief Justice of Punjab, and many others from both Nepal
and India. AWTW has also received a joint statement by 14
human rights organisations in Nepal on the results of a fact-finding
mission to the districts affected by "Kilo Sera 2", which
gives a clear picture of how the military repression is even violating
Nepal’s own constitution in these areas (available upon request).
In a small country, one of the poorest in the world, the
people are rising up, defying increasingly fierce repression, to
take their destiny into their own hands. The People’s War in Nepal
deserves the support of all those who long for an end to imperialist
oppression, and is a clarion call to intensify the efforts for revolution
everywhere. – AWTW
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