GEN - Maoist rebels kill 47 in Nepal

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47 killed as Nepal's Maoist rebels step up bloodshed

By Julian West in New Delhi

AT least 47 people, including 29 policemen, were killed when Maoist rebels bombed a police post in western Nepal, government officials said yesterday.

The attack, in Dailekh district on Friday night, was staged by black-hooded guerrillas wearing red headbands as part of a fresh upsurge in violence in the Himalayan kingdom. In the past week, more than 70 police officers have died.

Hours before the latest massacre, a government minister's house was bombed. The attacks coincided with a Maoist-led general strike that brought much of Nepal to a standstill. On Monday, 300 rebels attacked an outpost in Rukumkot, western Nepal. At least 32 policemen died on that occasion and the Maoists are still holding 23 others hostage.

Another 10 policemen were killed in other attacks last week. The Leftist rebels, who launched their insurgency in 1996, have killed at least 1,600 people, including 344 policemen. Their website says they aim to turn Nepal into a "Red Fort", with a hammer-and-sickle flag hoisted on top of Mount Everest.

Nepal's so-called people's war was launched by Dr Baburam Bhattarai, a Nepali intellectual, and Pushpa Kamal Dahal, an agronomist, in an attempt to overthrow the monarchy and establish a Maoist regime. Last week's national strike was called to demand the abolition of the monarchy.

On Friday, the government unveiled plans to create a 15,000-strong police task force to combat the guerrillas in the northern and western areas where they have established their strongholds. At the beginning of their campaign, the rebels were active only in some remote villages, but they have now spread to more than 30 districts. Efforts to hold talks to end the violence failed last November. The Maoists and the government accuse each other of not being serious about dialogue.

The insurgents, who often stage hit-and-run, night-time attacks on police positions, have been compared to Peru's radical Shining Path guerrillas. Using brutal tactics similar to those employed by the Shining Path in the Eighties, hooded guerrillas chanting slogans enter villages in the dead of night, murdering their victims, who are usually local bureaucrats or government supporters. Often they kill them with their bare hands.

Initially, the rebels numbered a few hundred, mainly poor peasants, former soldiers and unemployed youths, drawn to the movement by Nepal's grinding poverty and widespread disenchantment with its frequent changes of government and corrupt politicians.

They have since grown, however, to a force of more than 25,000, with training camps in the remote rhododendron forests of western Nepal. Three years ago, the Maoists announced the "Fourth Stage" of their war. Since then, numerous attacks have been undertaken on police stations by guerrillas armed with crude weapons and home-made bombs.

They have burnt local banks and disconnected power and telephone lines in an attempt to establish Maoist-controlled areas. Although the source of their funding is uncertain, they are believed to raise money from the several hundred thousand Nepalis living and working in India.

Reports have also circulated of extortion campaigns against retired British Gurkhas, whose traditional homeland is in western Nepal. The level and brutality of the insurgents' tactics and a subsequent government crackdown - in a country where violence was once virtually unknown - have drawn criticism from human-rights workers, who accuse both sides of abuses. The bloodshed also threatens to jeopardise the tourist industry on which Nepal depends.

About 500,000 tourists visit the kingdom every year. Parts of western Nepal are now off-limits to travellers.

-- Anonymous, April 07, 2001

Answers

we should send ollie north over there, have him fight for a representative republic. we can't just have kings and commies duking it out.

-- Anonymous, April 08, 2001

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