Poverty over brutality

Back in 2003, amidst a ceasefire and the appointment by king Gyanendra of Surya Bahadur Thapa as prime minister, Nepalis hoped that this would end the Maoist conflict. The ceasefire ultimately did not hold.

Elsewhere in rural Nepal, the young had fled the violence. Terrace farms left fallow, empty houses, no dogs barking. Pipey village in Jajarkot was one such place. Nepali Times 20 years ago this week 4-10 July 2003 in issue #152 carried this field report. Excerpt:

Pipey is a Maoist stronghold and there used to be 200 families here before 1996. The sound of a plaintive cry from a nearby house is magnified by the silence. We find Bal Bahadur, a sick 60-year-old man on the floor bed. He has been bedridden for nearly a year, and his wife is taking care of him. The district hospital is a long and hard walk from the village. There are no health posts nearby. There is no where he can go. People here are used to misery.

In the next house 50-year-old Pahiley Nepali and his wife stare blankly at us. Since their daughter's death before the ceasefire, all they do is just stay home quietly, trying to forget what happened that day. "She was just 18," the mother says about her daughter, a Maoist activist who had come home after a long time to meet her parents. The army patrol arrived and spotted her. She changed her clothes and ran as fast as she could but in vain. The villagers and her two brothers found her body a few days later. She has sent her other three daughters and two sons to India and told them never to return home.

Pipey is two hours of hard walking from the Jajarkot district headquarters, in Khalanga bazar. We asked a family with only female members whether they receive any help from Maoists or the army. "We don't want their help. It only means trouble," says the eldest female member. "We can deal with poverty, we've always lived with it. But we can't deal with this brutality."

From archive material of Nepali Times of the past 20 years, site search: www.nepalitimes.com