[nasional_list] [ppiindia] Statement of the Provisional Organizing Committee (Europe) of the World People's Resistance Movement condemning the imposition of martial law in Nepal
- From: RED RPG <peoples_war@xxxxxxxxxxx>
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- Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2005 19:51:40 +0000 (GMT)
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ENGLISH DEUTSCH TÜRKÇE FRANÇAIS OTHER LANGUAGES No to
Martial Law in Nepal!
Stop All Aid to the Gyanendra Regime!
On Tuesday, February 1, 2005, King Gyanendra Shah declared that he had taken
direct control of the government in Kathmandu and had imposed martial law
throughout the country. Domestic and international telephone service was
completely cut off throughout the country and all Internet connections were
capped. Soldiers invaded the offices of all the major publications, radio and
television stations and these have now been placed under direct government
censorship. Hundreds, perhaps over a thousand political activists were rounded
up and taken to undisclosed locations. The leaders of all the major
parliamentary parties were placed under house arrest, including 5 former prime
ministers. In an incident that brought to mind the massacre in Tiananmen Square
in 1989, the Hindustan Times reported that the Royal Nepal Army used
helicopters to attack students in the city of Pokhara who were demonstrating
against the King's move. According to this report 15 students were wounded and
then taken to
an army barracks instead of the hospital where they were subjected to torture.
The police and armed forces in Nepal have been granted essentially unlimited
powers to attack and suppress the people with impunity. Almost all
constitutional rights have been suspended including freedom of press, speech
and _expression; the freedom to assemble peacefully; the right to privacy; and
the constitutional protection against news censorship and preventive detention;
along with the right to property. Any public statements criticizing the King's
actions are forbidden for 6 months. According to the Associated Press: "The new
decree banned any public comments 'made directly or indirectly' about the
security forces 'that is likely to have negative impact on their morale.'"
Violators can be arrested at will by the armed forces and their property
confiscated.
These actions, which in essence amount to the open re-imposition of the
absolute monarchy, have been quickly condemned by a wide range of political
forces within Nepal and internationally. In a public statement by Comrade
Prachanda, the chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) which has been
leading the People's War in Nepal for the last ten years, the King's actions
were described as "imposing medieval feudal autocracy against the great
Nepalese people". Declaring that the "Nepalese people will never bow down
before the threat of history's ghosts that dream of feudal autocracy in the
support of foreign imperialism and expansionism," Prachanda vowed that, "our
party pledges to fight? for the emancipation of the county and people and
complete overthrow of feudal autocracy." Prachanda went on to call for all the
"political parties of the country, intellectual masses, civil society and the
masses of different levels and sects to create a storm of countrywide rebellion
united
under a minimum common slogan of people's democratic republic and constituent
assembly against this last lunacy of the feudal clique". He stated that his
party "is prepared to go ahead by establishing co-work and a broad front with
all that are against feudal autocracy." A declaration issued by 25 human rights
organisations in Nepal stated that, "The King's direct rule is the
establishment of a military regime in Nepal." The groups went on to call on
"all foreign governments to stop all forms of military support, including
supplying arms and ammunition to the Nepalese government, which are being used
to brutally suppress the rights of the common people." Amnesty International,
Human Rights Watch and the International Commission of Jurists said in a joint
statement that, "This action plunges the country deeper into crisis and puts
the Nepalese people at even greater risk of gross human rights abuses."
The internationally known Nepal researcher Prof. Karl-Heinz Krämer of Germany
who was in Kathmandu on Feb. 1 released a statement on the internet thoroughly
refuting the King's wild claims of acting for the benefit of the people: "All
of Nepal's kings up to Gyanendra? have claimed that the Nepali monarchy has
always done and is still doing everything only for the prosperity of the
people. Everybody who has studied a bit of world history knows that this is
nonsense." The Nepalese masses, he pointed out, "have been the victims of royal
politics ever since the process of unification of the country was started only
some 250 years ago. It is simply not true that the monarchy has always
supported the implementation of democracy in Nepal, on the contrary, right from
King Tribhuvan in the 1950s, the institution of [the] monarchy has done
everything to prevent the replacement of absolute monarchy by a functioning
democratic system."
The Provisional Organizing Committee (Europe) of the World People's Resistance
Movement (WPRM) adds its voice to the international condemnation of the vicious
and reactionary actions imposed by King Gyanendra on Feb. 1, 2005 and demands
that these measures be withdrawn immediately. In addition we call upon all our
local chapters and supporters to join with all those in Nepal and around the
world who are opposed to these actions to wage a determined struggle to achieve
this aim and in general to broaden and deepen support for the people of Nepal
who are fighting to free themselves from the bondage of the feudal monarchy in
Kathmandu and the forces of foreign imperialism and expansionism it serves.
News reports have claimed that the US, the UK and other EU countries and India
have "condemned" King Gyanendra's actions. This is not true. These foreign
powers have been providing increasing amounts of political and diplomatic
support along with 100's of millions of Euros of aid to keep the monarchy in
Kathmandu afloat and its boot placed firmly on the neck of the Nepalese people,
including huge amounts of weapons and hundreds of military "advisors". While
they all expressed their "concern" in order to distance themselves from the now
open dictatorship in Kathmandu, none of them even mentioned reviewing, let
alone suspending or stopping, their massive military aid to the Kathmandu
regime. The failure to do so expresses their true position and role in these
events. While some of them may have preferred that the king unite with the
parliamentary parties to crush the people's struggle and thus worry that the
king's latest move may backfire, the fact that none of them even hinted at a
suspension of arms shipments speaks volumes about the depth of their "concern"
and the real meaning behind their use of the word "democracy".
King Gyanendra has absurdly tried to justify the re-imposition of the absolute
monarchy by claiming that the prime ministers he himself appointed "failed" to
reopen peace talks with the Maoists. But this "failure" was a result of his own
instructions. In fact it was the king himself who sabotaged the last round of
talks by refusing to allow his representatives to even discuss the main demands
being put forth by the CPN (M): round table talks with all major sections of
society, an interim government, and free elections for a constitutional
assembly. Demands which the vast majority of the Nepalese people support. The
Economist magazine wrote that the king will never agree to an election for a
constitutional assembly because "he realises that the likely outcome would be a
republic". Instead, the Economist wrote, "the king announced a new cabinet of
cronies, chancers and nobodies, giving the impression that he intends to call
the shots. He seems to think he can defeat the rebels
militarily?"
Thus it is clear that the re-imposition of the absolute monarchy is not a
prelude to peace, but the necessary preparations for carrying out a brutal
offensive in the countryside aimed at crushing the liberated base areas and
drowning the people's struggle in blood. The AFP reported that, "A diplomat in
Kathmandu called the king's takeover last week a 'quasi-military coup d'etat?
the army now has a free hand.'" The New York Times wrote that, "Analysts and
diplomats express concern that with a news blackout, the army, which already
has a poor human rights record, will be free to pursue a reign of terror in the
countryside." According to the NYT the British ambassador to Nepal, Keith
Bloomfield, openly stated that in this offensive it is likely that "anybody
who's anti-king will be called a Maoist and treated like a Maoist", i.e.
tortured and murdered.
It is no accident that the king has taken these actions at this time. After
dismissing the government and dissolving parliament in 2002 Gyanendra, who is
also supreme commander of the Royal Nepal Army, has essentially been running
the government from behind the thin veil of cabinets headed by prime ministers
appointed by royal decree. Since then these "multi-party governments", which
could do nothing without the king's approval, have served as a fig leaf of
deception for those within Nepal and internationally who have continued to
claim that Nepal is a "constitutional monarchy". Desperate to save itself and
with the approval of the foreign powers who are keeping his rule alive, the
king was forced to take these actions in 2002 because his regime was becoming
completely isolated within the country and the People's War led by the CPN (M)
had established liberated base areas encompassing the majority of Nepal's
people and territory.
In the 2 years since, Nepal has led the world in the number of "disappearances"
at the hands of government forces, overtaking even the countries of Latin
America for this gruesome distinction. But all this brutality and bloodletting
has not prevented the continued advance of the revolution. Today, over 80% of
the country is being administrated by the United Revolutionary People's Council
and the locally elected People's Committees which it unites. The People's
Liberation Army has expanded to 3 divisions supported by a local militia of
over 100,000 women and men. The CPN (M) has declared that the People's War has
entered the stage of what it describes as the strategic offensive, meaning that
it is now striving to win countrywide victory over the Kathmandu regime.
Desperate to stave off final doom, the king has now been forced to take actions
which rip away the last bit of "multi-party" camouflage from his despotic rule
and fully reveal what Chairman Prachanda has described as its true
face of "feudal fascist brutality".
Some analysts claim that there is a danger that Nepal may become "a failed
state" and thus the king's measures, extreme as they are, are nonetheless
justified. Such statements stand reality completely on its head: Nepal is
already a "failed state". One of the world's poorest countries, over decades
and even centuries it has completely failed to provide the vast majority of its
people with a decent life and enable them to advance beyond the bondage and
degradation of medieval subjugation. Only a struggle aimed at not only removing
the monarchist mummies clinging to power in Kathmandu, but also seeking to
completely tear out the roots of feudal social and production relations in the
countryside and the domination of big foreign capital in the country as a whole
can provide the basis for putting an end to Nepal's current condition of a
"failed state". This is exactly what the revolution and People's War being led
by the CPN (M) has declared that it intends to do. Today this struggle
enjoys the support of the vast majority of the people of Nepal and is
advancing toward victory. In its article the Economist wrote that this prospect
of victory and the example it is setting for the millions of desperately
oppressed people throughout South Asia means that India "might be tempted to
borrow George Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive invasion" and send its army into
Nepal.
Without the massive support of foreign powers the Gyanendra regime would have
collapsed long ago. The Provisional Organizing Committee (Europe) of the World
People's Resistance Movement calls on people everywhere to stand with the
people of Nepal in their struggle to throw off centuries of brutal exploitation
and oppression, to demand that all foreign aid to the Gyanendra dictatorship be
stopped immediately and to oppose any and all efforts by the US, the EU
countries, India or any other foreign power to intervene directly on behalf of
King Gyanendra and his regime. People's Liberation is Not Terrorism:
Imperialists and Reactionaries, Hands Off Nepal! North, South, East, and West:
Unite the People's Struggles!
POC (Europe)
World People's Resistance Movement
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