| ashu |
Posted
on 07-Mar-03 11:43 PM
Hi all,
What follows is a short speech by Keith D. Leslie, the Himalayan Field Office Director of Save the Children (US). Keith is based in Kathmandu. Keith gave this speech in New York early last month.
Though cynics may see this as a commercial for Save the Children's work, I post this here to spread information about the plight of Nepali children -- a group we have heard awfully less about, let alone know much about in and out of Nepal.
Disclosure: Keith is a good friend; and I do NOT work for the Save the Children.
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
***********************************
February 19, 2003
Namaste!
I am here today from Nepal to speak about children whose lives are wounded by a war in the Himalaya. It's painful to realize how much Nepal has changed since I first went there to work in the ‘80s. In truth, it’s almost unimaginable. The land of peace and beauty that I once knew is beset by war, fear and death. A country now controlled by security forces fighting Maoist guerillas committed to a violent revolution. Yet, they are all -- after all -- Nepalis...
I remember years ago when I sat on a ridge in Gorkha district beside some teenage Nepali boys to practice my meager Nepali. After chatting a bit, I stood to leave and gave them my respectful "Namaste". To my surprise, they waved, Lal salaam!". "What is that?", I asked and they said, "the red salute". I should have understood then that there were deeper troubles ahead. Little did I know at that time that the leader of the Maoist revolution Comrade Baburam was teaching at a high school in Gorkha, not far from where I sat.
Yet, Save the Children was busy in its own world in Gorkha. We were teaching evening literacy classes to young girls and women who were too busy to go to school during the days. Girls who were up before dawn to grind their daily food and fetch the firewood to cook their family's meal. We were, we felt, teaching them to perceive and understand the world around them, to question their place in the world and the structure of society.
For me, by day Nepal was a place of wonder and profound beauty; yet at night, when the sky closed in upon us I could see more clearly the rough and hard life of the village. I remember so well a woman one night high up on a ridge wailing because her child’s death passed too quickly under that darkened sky. For so much of Nepal is described by their proverb "batti muni adharo", which means, “Below the candle's light is darkness”, which is where most Nepalis live…
And, within the darkness grew a political force that most of us did not foresee at that time. We were busy working with women and children. We felt the stirring force of the nascent political democracy, but little could we see so clearly the radical awakening of a Maoist ideology finding roots in a disgruntled and impoverished population.
But, the violence came in 1996 when a Save the Children office in northern Gorkha was attacked by a band of local communists who raised their voices against foreign imperialism and burnt our office seeking cash to feed their revolution. It was clear then that Nepal's fledgling democracy, fraught w/ corruption and nepotism, would not be able to dissuade thousands of frustrated youth that politics was more promising than revolution. So, unseen by the outside world, the violence in Nepal grew and spread.
Today there are already over 8,000 dead, including 200 children. Each of these numbers representing human lives and dreams destroyed. I’m sure that for most of you this war in Nepal is a distant reality, as there is little coverage about this minor conflict in a distant land. Yet, for me, living as I have among the Nepalis for two decades, this battle is, literally, in my backyard.
Even worse, for many women and children in rural Nepal, their lives have been ruined by this war. For those of us who have known Nepal in more tranquil times, it’s hard to believe that fear is now the currency of the countryside. During the day, the security forces patrol the villages, while at night the Maoists make their visits. There are families we know who have heard a knock on their door at night and seen their homes burnt by the Maoists because a father is in the police.
Young women and men, from lower caste or tribal communities, who joined the Maoists out of idealism have been killed by the army. Many women and children from these families are now homeless, scattered to district centers w/o shelter or even cooking utensils. In many cases, older sisters are at risk of trafficking or sex work because they have left their land and there is no one else to provide for their families.
The pain of these events have come to Kathmandu, too. Just two weeks ago, Nudup Shrestha, the third grade teaching assistant at my children’s school, was assassinated while she was walking with her husband, the Inspector-General of the Armed Police. Their three daughters orphaned by this war. How do you explain to your children that their teacher is dead, murdered because the country is in turmoil and, yes, that is her picture on the front page of the “Kathmandu Post”, dead on streets of Kathmandu.
Yet, it will take time for these passions to cool and reason to reach these angry revolutionaries. While Save the Children must do its best to mitigate the damage: to help communities keep their schools open, to keep politics out of the schools, to ensure that children are seen as “zones of peace”, to provide counseling for the children affected by the violence, to reunite children with their families, to identify children most in need of direct assistance, to provide economic opportunities to women widowed by the conflict, and to use the media and key leaders to spread words of tolerance and peace within a society at war.
For Save the Children must stand by children in the darkest of times, when the storm of human passions are most destructive. We must remind the world, once again, of the basic rights of children and their need for protection. For these are universal rights that every child everywhere deserves and every adult must always remember.
Thank-you.
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