| surya |
Posted
on 19-Jan-03 04:54 PM
Thanks Sally for the link. Earlier this morning, I had started a post, but of course my newly uploaded dial up program froze on me and I lost all of it. Just as well I guess, hopefully this second attempt will get across more clearly what I thought after visiting the link and others.
The long and short of it is that HURPEC doesn't seem to be just a non-biased "human rights" organization. The stuff it reports are stuff you don't necessarily see in mainstream media. But after exploring their articles and those of others who write about some of the same things, I can say that the "reporting" is hardly non-biased. Reporting about a recent American arms transaction with Nepal, HURPEC says the arms are going to be used against the "Nepalese People" and that the recent joint exercises that the US Army is engaged in with the RNA in Nepal aims to train the RNA to do exactly that… use those arms against the "Nepali people."
Critiquing the Belgian Government's arrest and deportation of a member of the Nepalese People's Progressive Forum, both HURPEC and the forum seem to be spreading the mis-information that somehow the Maoists are fighting a "popular" people's war. There have always been speculations that some foreign and Nepali supporters in the west are raising funds for the Maoists' operations in Nepal. That, in addition to their extortion and racketeering inside Nepal, has made the Maoists better funded and better armed than the RNA. And the support the have been able to garner from outside the country has ensured that they are also better trained and also that they have better intelligence and a more active international propaganda machinery behind them.
Couple all this with the brainwashing of very impressionable, young, disenchanted and often drugged young people looking for a fair chance and an opportunity to get back at those that have wronged them (I have heard the Maoists drug their teenage foot-soldiers to get them pumped and ready for attacks on villages and fellow Nepalis Citizen), what we have in Nepal is a polpot-esque "underground" movement that wants to replace a much challenged, but still democratic, system with an authoritarian regime that will not think twice before crushing the opposition, all "human rights" concerns aside.
Gyanendra and the recent trouble that our young and much challenged democracy has faced aside, the Maoists and their supporters are really just another authoritarian, absolutist threat to our nation's democracy and sovereignty. Anyone who things otherwise is not only delusional, but really dangerous. Without cracking down on those supporters outside Nepal, we are never going to be able to bring about change in Nepal. Surely not only do these people and forums spread misinformation, but they also raise funds and other necessary support.
I think there are many misinformed liberal types here in the States and across the world, who really seem to think that the Maoist are indeed fighting a people's war. I have never been able to figure out how these people explain away the fear and terror that fill the lives of ordinary citizens in villages across the country in Nepal, whose areas have succumbed to the Maoists, because the RNA, ill armed and ill trained have been unable to protect villagers.
While the HURPEC and the Nepalese People's Progressive Forum, in partnership with the Belgian Workers Party, declare Belgian and US sales of arms to Nepal imperialistic gestures aimed at oppressing the "Nepali people," what I really want to know is what HURPEC and the other Maoists sympathizing organizations outside of Nepal, like the 'Nepalese People's Progressive Forum', have to say about the Maoists' inhumane acts and killing of civilians, especially the endangerment and kidnapping of young people. What do they have to say about the terrorized villagers and ordinary citizens? Who are their arms killing?
I am not doubting the claim that oft the captured Maoists might be tortured and mistreated by the Nepali government and that they too deserve human rights protection, but where does it say that people who support and spread terror should be able to operate freely and without consequence? If these Nepali Asylum Seekers in countries like Belgium are operating to raise fund and spread misinformation about the nature of the Maoists terrorism in Nepal, how can the Belgian government NOT clamp down on these supposed "asylum seekers"? If they did not arrest and deport these people, the Belgian government will rightly be called a state harboring terrorists. Right?
I have not totally made up my mind that these folks are all bad; but looking at how the Maoists are waging war against the ordinary poor villagers of Nepal and not necessarily the leaders and elites who have sucked the blood of the people for the past decade and longer, I have to say, the Maoists and their supporters are not the answer to Nepal's desire for freedom and democracy. They are rather just another in a long line of corrupts candidates vying to swallow up Nepal whole. And I am glad that at least there is some international solidarity among some governments to help Nepal. Anyhow, I am open to hear more from people who know HURPEC and the Forum in Belgium differently. Till then I am convinced they are full of shit.
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