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Nepal: Suffer the little
children
By Suman Pradhan
KATHMANDU - The Nepali media was awash early
this week with reports of abduction of schoolchildren by
the underground Maoist guerrillas, who have been waging
an increasingly violent "people's war" to overthrow this
Himalayan monarchy and establish a communist republic.
According to Samacharpatra, a respected Nepali
newspaper, 80 students of a school in remote Salyan
district in Nepal's violent western region, were
kidnapped by the rebels early this month. They are
forcibly being indoctrinated as future rebels, the
report said.
Such reports have played out with
increasing regularity, and underscore the violent nature
of the six-year-old Maoist insurgency that has turned
the once tranquil Himalayan kingdom into one of the
world's most violent places.
In November,
government figures put the number of people killed in
the Maoist rebellion so far at more than 7,000 people,
though many say that it is very hard to verify casualty
figures.
In the villages of Nepal, where 90
percent of the nation's 23 million people live, there is
genuine fear.
On a recent day in Sindhupalchowk
district just east of the capital Kathmandu, villagers
told IPS that they had been forced to send their
children to relatives in towns because they feared that
they would be recruited by the rebels.
"The
Maoists come to the village and ask each family to
provide either a son or a daughter to include in their
ranks," Krishna Sapkota, a resident of Mude village
said. "We have no option but to hide them far away."
As the Maoist insurgency gathers momentum, it
appears that the use of children in the fighting has
grown correspondingly. Children are no longer safe in
the remote rural areas where the insurgency has hit the
hardest. Every week, villagers say, children are either
kidnapped or forcibly recruited by the rebels for their
cause or die in skirmishes with government forces.
Child Workers in Nepal (CWIN), the best known of
rights organization working for children's welfare, says
that so far more than 4,000 children between the ages
14-18 have been recruited in the fighting by the
Maoists. CWIN also unveils other grim statistics: 146
children have been killed in the fighting, another 4,000
rendered homeless and 2,000 orphaned.
"This has
been a brutal, violent war for children, especially in
Nepal's western hills," says Gauri Pradhan, the chief of
CWIN and a well-known child-rights campaigner.
Things have come to such a head that many rural
families have fled to the plains or to India with their
children, adding to the already vast multitude of
displaced people caused by the Maoist war. The growing
use of children as fighters in the insurgency is now
attracting international attention, and condemnation.
Just a month ago, a coalition of international
child-rights groups submitted a report to UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan, listing countries where children
were being pressed into war. Nepal was one of the
nations featured in the report.
Amnesty
International, the London-based rights watchdog
organization, has also repeatedly and scathingly
criticized the practice of recruiting child soldiers in
Nepal. These reports mostly blame the Maoist rebels for
forcing children to fight in their ranks, but also do
not spare government forces who are accused of killing
child fighters in the name of "skirmishes" or
"encounters".
But none of these condemnations
have had much impact here. For instance, during one of
the general strikes called by the rebels late last year,
a passenger bus with five people inside was set on fire
by rebels in Chitwan district, killing a young girl who
was going to a religious festival with her family.
In recent days, reports have emerged of similar
abuse of children held by the army in various jails
throughout Nepal on suspicion of being rebel soldiers.
Last year, the top Maoist leader Prachanda
denied that his forces used children in the war, but
evidence to the contrary has only mounted in the ensuing
months. For its part, the government denies it kills
children knowingly and uses the euphemism of "caught in
crossfire" whenever such deaths occur.
Privately
however, army officers admit that in the heat of battle,
soldiers rarely distinguish between men, women or
children. "Anyone with a gun is an enemy," an army
captain told IPS.
The majority of children
pressed by the Maoists for their cause serve not as
active combatants but as support staff. According to
"Child Soldiers: A Global Report" released in London by
an international coalition in London in July, 30 percent
of the Maoist insurgents are children between 14 and 18
years old. Almost all of them function as messengers,
intelligence gatherers and transport workers for the
rebels, the report says.
In an effort to stem
the deteriorating situation, several groups in Nepal
have come up with a scheme to protect children from the
fighting. They are advancing the idea of creating zones
of peace within the kingdom where children can be safe.
"The idea is to send peace workers in 22
districts where the insurgency has created havoc and
help protect children from the violence," said CWIN's
Pradhan, whose organization is one of those
participating in the program funded in part by the
Norwegian government.
"We will work towards
ensuring the continuity of fundamental infrastructure
necessary for children such as livelihood, education,
health, shelter and food," he said.
(Inter Press
Service)
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