[From The Worker, #3, February 1997.]
Genocidal Campaign in Mirul (Rolpa)
Rolpa, Rukum & Jayarkot districts in Western Nepal have had the highest number of casualties and faced the worst type of state repression during the first one year of the people's war. Even among these Mirul village in the lap of the mighty Jaljala mountains in Rolpa district has borne the brunt of severest genocidal campaign by the reactionary state, where more than a dozen revolutionary activists and peasants have been brutally murdered by the police and their hirelings.
The worst instance of state terrorism and genocide so far was witnessed in this red bastion inhabited by poor peasants of oppressed nationalities of Kham Magar stock on November 17, 1996. On that day armed police forces and state protected goons from the surrounding areas descended on Mirul, ransacked the peasant households and took into custody almost all the unarmed adult population from two wards of Rapa and Bisauni in the Mirul VDC. While the rest were released subsequently after thorough screening and dire warnings, five of them were taken to a nearby jungle and shot dead. Those brutally murdered were 70 year old Bardan Roka, 65 year old Singha Budha and Bal Prasad Roka, Dilman Roka and Kumari Budha. The young woman revolutionary Kumari Budha was still alive when her body was set on fire.
On December 3, Sunsara Budha along with her 2 year old daughter was captured, stripped naked, paraded through villages and shot dead in front of her infant child by the armed state goons.
Similar instances of state terrorism and brutality have recurred regularly in Mirul with a view to shatter the revolutionary will-power of the masses into submission. However, the terror tactics has boomeranged on the reactionaries. Not only have the peasant masses boldly resisted this repression, they have retaliated by eliminating the enemy agents in the village and virtually seized the local power in their own hands. Mirul has thus shown the way for the liberation of the oppressed masses in the country.