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Nepal: Civil Society Caught Between
the Devil and Deep Blue SeaBy Marty Logan
Inter Press Service
May 23, 2005
It isn't easy working for Nepal's civil society these days. Groups pushing for the return of constitutional democracy after the Feb. 1 royal takeover are being harassed by state security forces, while rural development workers are squeezed between the army and Maoists as they battle for supremacy of the hinterlands. Their nine-year civil war has killed more than 11,000 people.
Two events this month highlight the fragility of civil society in a nation that celebrated a return to democracy in 1990 after three decades, but where dead telephones and grounded planes on Feb. 1 signalled what many see as a step back into the past.
Four development organisations announced last week they were suspending work in one of the South Asian country's poorest districts after Maoists severely beat two employees of a non-governmental organisation (NGO) employed by German development agency GTZ. The two workers were training women in western Nepal's Kalikot district when they were confronted by Maoists who told them to leave, GTZ Director Ulf Wernicke told IPS. They beat the pair over three days, especially the woman, finally urging her to dig her grave but she was too weak, he added. The Maoists then left after taking money from the employees. ''We consider this a very serious incident; it's not like stealing a car ... It was also clear here in the donor community that everyone assesses this as very grave,'' said Wernicke.
GTZ and the other bodies -- the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV) -- decided to stop work until the Maoists apologise and publicly agree to honour the groups' basic operating guidelines, which include, 'We do not accept our staff and development partners being subject to violence, abduction, harassment or intimidation'.
Wernicke admitted that suspending the rural community infrastructure works programme, a road-building project accompanied by other development activities, will directly put 1,200 men and women in Kalikot out of work. The decision will affect a total of 6,000 people, in an area where three months' work on such a project can guarantee a family's food security for one year. ''The situation is OK now -- no one will starve,'' he added. Local groups have urged the development agencies to keep working but ''it is a matter of principle,'' according to Wernicke. ''They (the groups) say it will not happen again, but it's happened so many times, so we stopped (work).''
Maoist harassment of aid workers is common in Nepal, where it is estimated rebels control up to three-quarters of the area outside the capital Kathmandu and the country's few other major cities. They launched their ''people's war'' in 1996 to destroy an economic system whose resources are in the hands of a tiny elite and denied to Nepal's 60-odd ethnic groups, lower-caste people and women.
Usually Maoist demands on aid workers are limited to cash ''donations'' and requests to register with their ''government''. These are so common that ''no one talks about it any more,'' said Wernicke. The agencies deny giving in to those demands but admit that the local partner organisations they work with might not resist the pressure. The government believes the workers pay the Maoists, an official with the ministry of local development told IPS earlier this month.
Basant Raj Gautam, who is responsible for the suspended Kalikot project, told IPS that in recent months the Maoists had disturbed it and other ''food for work'' projects less and less but that U.N. agencies had become more cautious, hampering these programmes.
GTZ, in cooperation with DFID, has created a risk management office ''to assess information from a more professional point of view,'' said Wernicke. ''Our people also feel more secure. They learn to communicate, how to behave when they are asked questions'' in the field, from both Maoists and soldiers. Other development agencies still working ''in the field'' (outside the heavily-guarded Kathmandu Valley) are also reassessing their security plans. In case workers need to be quickly evacuated, ''do we shift from (using jeeps) to having a helicopter on call?'' asked Nina Ellinger, resident representative of the Danish Association for International Cooperation (MS Nepal).
About two weeks ago the group invited other international NGOs to its Kathmandu office to discuss keeping foreign workers in the field. Many organisations have already decided that it is too risky. ''From the partner (organisations') point of view it's important that we're not just in the valley because the quality of information (outside it) is very low,'' Ellinger told IPS. It is also important that ''local people see that not all foreigners are deserting them'' while ”international presence gives (them) some protection.”
But while MS strives to maintain a presence -- and in some areas supplies the only foreign development workers -- the nature of the work they do has changed considerably. ''The job they applied for two years or one year ago may not be really relevant, not to say that they're redundant but the focus has changed,'' said Ellinger. According to Ellinger, workers, and the entire organisation, must be flexible enough to know that in some situations they should ignore previous plans and just step back and ask, ''what is the most meaningful thing we can do right now?'' MS, which has never faced a serious threat to its workers but has ''recalled'' them to Kathmandu three times in just over a year, is also beefing up its security capacity by hiring an advisor who will start work in June, Ellinger revealed.
While 2005 marks nine years of civil war in Nepal, May 11 was day 100 of direct rule under King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah. On Feb. 1 he fired the government for being corrupt and inept at dealing with the Maoists and announced he would solve the nation's problems and restore democracy within three years. The king also imposed a state of emergency suspending most constitutional rights, which he lifted Apr. 29, but that move has not ended repression of groups opposed to the takeover.
According to a report by the Nepal Coalition of Human Rights Defenders, released by the Kathmandu-based human rights group INSEC (Informal Sector Service Sector), 3,284 politicians, journalists, rights defenders and students were arrested after Feb. 1 and 1,516 were still under house arrest or in detention centres on May 3. ''The government has also imposed travel restrictions on many human rights defenders -- who, however, have not been informed of the same and have instead been sent back from the airport,'' says the group's report, ' One Hundred Days of Royal Takeover and Intensified Human Rights Crisis'.
Those stopped from flying include journalists, academics, lawyers and prominent NGO leaders as well as members of the government-created National Human Rights Commission. ''On Feb. 26 police at the airport barred a human rights defender to travel to (western Nepal's) Nepalgunj to attend a workshop on humanitarian law. Ironically, (he) was to have travelled at the request of the security forces there, who were participating in the meeting,'' adds the report.
The document suggests, ''the government is now said to be considering restrictions on activities of all human rights organisations, including international organisations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross''.
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