Battered but Unbowed

Victims of Nepal's Maoist rebels suffer twice - first from their attackers, then from government neglect.

KATMANDU, Nepal - This was the ultimatum that Nepal's Maoist rebels gave to Purna Lama: "Give us one million rupees in seven days, or else."

For the retired Royal Nepal Army soldier-turned farmer, coming up with the equivalent of more than $10,000 U.S. was the same as if they had asked him for a moon rock. Impossible.

"At the end of the seven days they came to my house," he says. "They beat me with a pistol over my head, sliced up my ear with their knives, then tied me up and led me away like a dog with a rope around my neck."

Maoist victims demand to be heard » View

Lama says when they came to a riverbank about a 20-minute walk from his house, the rebels shot him twice, once in the head and once in the abdomen. He says he lost consciousness and the rebels threw him into some brush on the riverbank.

Remarkably, he was still alive four days later when his wife and children found him. He was taken to a hospital where he says he spent the next three months in a coma.

When he finally came to, he says, he still had his life, but the rebels had forced his family from their home and padlocked it. And the land that they were farming grew fallow during his coma.

Now, two years later, Lama has come to the Maoist Victims' Association, a small dingy office, a fifth-floor walk-up in a nondescript building in Katmandu. On the walls are dozens of framed photographs of men and women who were not as "lucky" as Lama — people killed by the Maoists during their decade-long insurgency.

Today the office is filled with people who have been beaten and displaced by the rebels, but also, they say, ignored by the government, which won't give them assistance or compensation, or even help them get their land back.

They say they're tired of suffering in silence. Following the example of Nepal's recent "People's Movement," in which 21 people were killed and hundreds wounded in clashes with police and the army when they took to the streets in defiance of Nepal's autocratic king, they too will march for their rights.

Their immediate goal is a more modest one: to present Nepal's Home Minister, Krishna Prasad Situala, with petitions listing their demands for support.

In one room, members rip up pieces of cardboard and smear them with glue. They mount photocopies of their slogans to the cardboard. Others attach the signs to sticks, using small pieces of rebar — they don't have a hammer — to pound in small nails.

It is a humble effort, but an inspiring one, from people who still believe that their voices can be heard if they are bold enough to speak the truth to those in power.

Seventy-four year-old Manbahadur Adhakari was also a victim of the Maoists. He says it was his political connection to the monarchy that got him in trouble. 

The bloody legacy of Maoist rebels » View

He says 60 rebels surrounded his house and burned it down.

"Don't torture me, just kill me" he says he told the rebels. "But they told me, 'we want to break your arms and legs and throw you away.'"

He says they beat him for two hours with the back of an ax, breaking his hands, arms and legs. Finally, he says, he passed out and they left him for dead. He shows me the blunt-force trauma marks on his shins — indentations so big they could easily hold a marble.

But while he says the beating was terrible, his neglect by the government in the years following has been even worse.

"The rebels tortured me for two hours," says Adhakari, getting angry and animated, "but the government has tortured me for eight years."

Adhakari says despite all he's suffered, he's optimistic that Maoists will be honest partners in trying to form a new government with a coalition of seven other Nepali parties.

"I trust the Maoists more than I trust the government," he says, but indicates it is a lesser-of-two-evils scenario.

More than 12,000 Nepalese have died as a result of the Maoist insurgency, which began in 1996, and thousands more have been displaced by the conflict.

The rebels are said to be at least 20,000 strong and control 80 percent of the country. But they're not alone in their abuses. International monitoring organizations say the Royal Nepalese Army has also committed many human rights violations in the war with the rebels.

With Nepal's King Gyanendra ceding power back to the parliament that had been dissolved during his rule, the Maoists are negotiating a place at Nepal's political table.

This includes a 12-step "road map to peace," which calls for, among other things, the dissolution of the Royal Nepalese Army and the creation of a new force integrated with the rebels.

The U.S. government and others are concerned that the Maoists could resort to a one-party state once they've gained power. It's a charge the Maoists deny.

But they continue to violate the ceasefire agreement with sporadic killings and beatings of opponents, as well as systematic extortion of the population, which they label "donations."

Hari Prasad

As Hari Prasad prepares to march in the Maoist Victims' Association demonstration, he tells me how the Maoists attacked him not once, but twice in two years. He says they cut him with knives in the first attack and shot him in the second. He survived both, but shows me the scar on his forehead from a knife wound and pulls up his shirt to show where a bullet passed through his torso and out his back.

"We just want peace and security," he says, "and we want our homes returned."

Two of Purna Lama's younger daughters, 14-year-old Sharmila and 11-year-old Urmila, will march with him today. But he says it is another daughter that they will be thinking of during the march.

"My 19-year-old daughter tried to go back to our house just to look — the one the rebels had padlocked," he says. "When they saw her they told her that they had learned that I hadn't died. They demanded to know where I was and killed her when she wouldn't say."

Now, he says, the family's tragedy is overwhelming. They have no home, no food and no compensation. Lama says he wants something to come of the peace talks with the Maoists, but he's not all that hopeful.

"We've seen this twice before," he says. "They talk, then they free the Maoist leaders from jail and they come and kill us again."

When the group leaves the office to march on the government administration building where Nepali Home Minister Situala is meeting with other cabinet members, they are a small but energized force of 120.

They carry their children, their homemade signs and a blue banner that lists some of their demands.

As they walk the streets, some beep their horns in support, others shout for them to get out of the way. At the government building they are met by police, who seem empathetic, but who won't allow them in to give their petitions to the minister. The gate is closed.

Purna Lama and some of the others can bear their frustrations no more. They begin to yell at the police, calling them "rascals," demanding to be let in. They are not. Eventually they go away, angry and unfulfilled. But they are not beaten.

The next day 50 of them go to the prime minister's residence where they sit and wait for a meeting with him. They are told he is sick, but they refuse to go away.

The police finally arrest them, hold them for four hours and send them home. They have suffered worse than this, they know, and are willing to suffer a little more until someone finally listens to what they have to say.

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