Unfair deal

The promise of 10 percent free energy to Nepal from the 750-megawatt West Seti hydroelectric project, awarded to Australia's Snowy Mountain Engineering Corp (SMEC) a decade ago, has turned out to be a hoax. Clauses in the agreement between the government and SMEC, which was kept a secret from the public, deprive the country of any free energy, and even give rise to a distinct possibility of no benefit to Nepal at all. The government put West Seti project on fast track stating the project would provide 75 megawatts of free energy to Nepal. That was the original arrangement with SMEC, and that was what the government as well as the project's developer had been saying in public. However, a renegotiated deal does not require SMEC to give Nepal any free power. Instead, SMEC is required to pay the country in cash, that too only in the event it has money after paying back its debt participants, and bearing its operational cost. This is sheer treason.

SMEC took a decade to bring the storage-type project to the construction stage since signing a project agreement in 1997 to develop and operate the project for thirty years. In other words, SMEC got hold of the project without having the ability to fund it. A decade down the line, SMEC has convinced four countries and two international banks in areas of investment, construction, insurance, and transmission. It has also made an arrangement to sell all power generated from the project to India through PTC India Ltd. If Nepal is getting no free energy, and if the cash benefit is also uncertain, why is the government hell-bent on re-awarding the project to SMEC, despite the length of time it has spent without laying even the foundation stone for the project. Signing an agreement that will put at risk any benefit Nepal might get from a project is totally unacceptable. Therefore, the agreement the government has with SMEC is totally unfair.

The government, therefore, should initiate an impartial investigation to figure out officials involved in signing and renewing such suicidal agreement with SMEC. When it comes to deals on big infrastructure projects, Nepali officials have always failed in the negotiating table. This has to be ended once and for all. The least that the country demands is that our negotiators uphold national interest. A mistake that will leave Nepal regretting for thirty years is the last thing we need now. There is no question of re-awarding the project to the developer if Nepal's rightful benefit from the project is not ensured. The best way to ensure that benefit is through an arrangement for free power, and not through the tricky course of cash benefit.

Source: The Kathmandu Post, June 5, 2007

Maoist mayhem: Nepal's image takes a beating

KATHMANDU: After the Asian Development Bank washed its hands of a major development project, Nepal's image took another beating in the eyes of the world with 15 foreign governments condemning a Maoist attack on the US ambassador to Nepal and expressing concern about diplomats' safety. "The diplomatic corps of Nepal is deeply concerned by an upsurge in recent weeks of security incidents that have threatened foreign diplomats or otherwise impeded their work in the country," a statement signed by 15 embassies in Nepal said. "We condemn any and all attempts to harm, threaten, or interfere with foreign diplomats working in Nepal."

The 15 embassies include some of Nepal's biggest donors, like India, the US, Japan and European Union countries. While Pakistan, that allied itself with Gyanendra in 2005, when the monarch seized total power with the backing of the army, also joined in the condemnation, China, another supporter of the 15-month royal regime, however was conspicuous by its absence. It was an acutely embarrassing situation for the Nepal government that claims an improvement in the security situation and announced elections in November, when cadres of the youth wing of the Maoists, which is now the third largest party in the coalition government, attacked the UN vehicle carrying the American ambassador to Nepal, James Francis Moriarty.

The incident occurred on May 25 when the envoy, accompanied by the UN High Commissioner for Nepal's representative Abraham, who was returning from Jhapa district in eastern Nepal after a meeting with the Bhutanese refugees living there. Nepal's Diplomatic Corps said it was the government's role to ensure security and safety for diplomats. "Targeting or threatening diplomats on their countries' official business is unacceptable," the statement said. Besides the statement, a US official, who winded up his four-day visit to Nepal Saturday, has also expressed concerns about the attack and the activities of the Young Communist League of the Maoists.

US assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labour, Barry R Lowenkron, who conveyed Washington's misgivings about the Maoists to Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, foreign minister Shahana Pradhan and speaker Subhash Chandra Nembang, said one can't have both bullets and ballots. The Maoists and their sister organisations are still banned as terrorist organisations in the US and recently, a senior Maoist leader was denied visa to travel to New York. The government has also come under attack at home for failing to protect its own citizens. Nepal's supreme court on Friday asked the state to pay an interim compensation of NRS 200,000 to the kin of people killed in the custody of security forces, and NRS100,000 to the families of those missing since their arrest. Judges Khilaraj Regmi and Kalyan Shrestha gave the collective judgement after hearing petitions about 83 people missing during the Maoist "people's war".

Source: The Times of India, June 3, 2007

US Official Calls on Maoists in Nepal to Renounce Violent Ways

Liam Cochrane

Kathmandu,

A U.S. government official has called for an end to Maoist violence in Nepal, where the country's former rebels are making a jerky transition from armed insurgents to mainstream politicians. Liam Cochrane has more from Kathmandu. 2006 was a year of hope for Nepal, but Barry Lowenkron, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human Rights and labor, says the peace process is being undermined by the actions of some of the former Maoist rebels.
Lowenkron, who spent the past four days in Kathmandu assessing the political and human rights situation, was especially critical of actions by the Young Communist League, or YCL.

The YCL is led by former Maoist fighters, and has attacked several government offices in the countryside since the Maoist leadership signed a peace agreement and entered the government. Last week, YCL members threw stones at a United Nations vehicle carrying the U.S. ambassador to Nepal.

Lowenkron said Saturday that there is no room for violence in a democracy. "To me, their actions indicate they have yet to make the strategic decision to abandon violence, to abandon coercion, to abandon intimidation and to seek their success in a political arena that is peaceful," he said.

Lowenkron congratulated Nepal's Prime Minister, G.P. Koirala, for his leadership in securing an approximate date for constituent assembly elections. The elections are now scheduled some time in late November or early December, and the winners will write a new constitution and decide on the fate of Nepal's monarchy. But Lowenkron warned that there was still much work yet to be done before Nepal's transition, from a decade-long civil war that killed 13,000 people to a peaceful and inclusive democracy, is complete.

"The message of my government is clear: one cannot have ballots and bullets in a democratic process," he said. Lowenkron also called for full investigations into the 937 people who disappeared during Nepal's conflict and remain unaccounted for.

Source: Global Security, June 2, 2007

NEPAL:KOIRALA SAYS, MONARCHY A VITAL PART OF THE SOCIETY

Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala was expected any day to disseminate words for the rescue of the Monarchy in Nepal. He visited the eastern region twice within two-month period but both the time he had bitter words for Monarchy. Third time Girija said what he really had in his mind, he said “Monarchy can exist within a republican order”. He said this in Birtamod, Jhapa District in Nepal amid a party mass meet.

In our endeavor to transform the society and the country as a whole, the monarchy can take a new form too, Koirala added. “The Monarchy too is a vital part of this society”, PM Koirala said.
He said if a republican order is established, the King may not be abdicated.
He said, but to declare Nepal a republic needs a process, we all have to follow. He however, confused the mass when he said the “Monarchy will slowly transform itself into a republic”; it’s just a matter of time.

Violence may not establish monarchy, even if it is established through violent means it may not last long, PM said further.
He said in the process of taking responsibility of the country he can take any bold decisions. He almost in a threatening tone targeting other political parties said they must now remain prepared to face such decisions. “Without creating favorable atmosphere, CA polls can’t be held”, he added. Prime Minister said further, to conduct the CA polls I can go to any extent. He alleged the rest of the parties in the alliance for creating hullabaloo in the name of CA polls. Making unnecessary noise won’t transform the society, a CA poll is the only legitimate way to do it, he continued.

He said, now other leaders in the alliance are treating me like an old tree that does not give fruits, thus they are trying to cut it. I know what I am, so I am not afraid of any one, I talk what my heart says. “After I successfully conduct the CA polls my importance will be finished” PM concluded. June 3, 2007

Source: The Telegraph, June 4, 2007

Maoist Homophobia?

Gary Leupp

The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), leading what many have considered the most advanced Maoist movement in the world for the last decade, has recently been accused of attacks on gay people and of indulging in anti-gay rhetoric. Unfortunately, the reports seem valid. In January, a senior party leader, Dev Gurung, now Minister of Local Development in Nepal’s transitional government, was quoted in the press as stating: “Under Soviet rule and when China was still very much a communist state, there were no homosexuals in the Soviet Union or China. Now [that] they are moving towards capitalism, homosexuals may have arisen there as well. So homosexuality is a product of capitalism. Under socialism this kind of problem does not exist.”

The statement seems quite un-Maoist in its description of any twentieth-century socialist experiment as truly “communist.” Mao broke from Stalin in emphasizing the long-term nature and fragility of the construction of socialism as a transitional stage between capitalism and the classless society of communism theoretically posited for the human future. And it seems oblivious to historical reality in denying the existence of homosexuality anywhere, anytime in human history. Dangerously foolish (if I can assume that it was indeed said), it was made in the context of reported abuses of gay men and lesbians by Maoists in areas under their control.

Such mistreatment has not been particularly associated with the Maoists in recent years but indeed more with the old security apparatus of King Gyanendra. It’s not clear that it represents a clear party line; Hisila Yami, a Maoist member of parliament, Minister of Physical Planning and Work and wife of party leader Baburam Bhattarai told a Nepali gay organization, the Blue Diamond Society, in January that the party’s policy was “not to encourage homosexual behavior but not to punish homosexuals either.” But plainly there is cause for the sort of concern recently expressed by Human Rights Watch in a letter to Khadga Bahadur Biswokarma, a CPN(M) member and now Minister of Women, Children and Social Welfare. The letter claims that in December 2006, Maoists in Katmandu ordered homeowners not to rent rooms to gays or lesbians, and that Amrita Thapa, general secretary of the Maoist women’s association, told participants at a national conference in March 2006 that homosexuals were unnatural and were “polluting” society.

I’ve sometimes been critical of Human Rights Watch, which has little sympathy for revolutionary movements and has sometimes sided overtly with repressive regimes. (It congratulated the government of Alberto Fujimori in Peru for capturing Maoist leader Abimael Guzman in 1992 and has done little to protect the human rights of Maoists imprisoned under successive Peruvian regimes.) But here HRW seems to be on target in its criticism.

The communist movement of course has a long sordid history of homophobia — just as does bourgeois liberalism. Up to 1962, homosexual sex was punishable by lengthy jail terms everywhere in the U.S., and it was only in 2003 that the Supreme Court invalidated the “anti-sodomy” laws operative in Texas and several other states. The sentiments expressed by Gurung and Biswokarma are obviously not unique to communists but part of an historical continuum of intolerance that crosses all kinds of ideological lines.

Marx and Engels themselves were, as their private correspondence clearly establishes, distinctly hostile to homosexuality, which they viewed as “unnatural.” On the other hand, in the 1890s, the German Social Democratic Party leaders Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky, and the socialist Reichstag deputy August Bebel, called for the repeal of the German statute criminalizing sex between consenting adult males. Bernstein called for “a scientific approach” to sexuality rather than one based on “more or less arbitrary moral concepts.” (Meanwhile the British socialist Edward Carpenter, influenced by the work of German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, argued that “uranians” — or members the “intermediate sex” — served in a positive role as a bridge between [heterosexual] men and women.) Adolf Thiele, a socialist deputy in the German parliament in 1905, declared that he “wouldn’t even admit that [homosexuality] is something sick.” It was, he opined, “simply a deviation from the usual pattern nature produces.”

Between 1917 and 1933, the USSR pioneered in sexual legal reform. The Bolsheviks in power rescinded all the anti-homosexual statutes in the czarist legal code and sent Soviet delegations to international sexual reform congresses in Europe. The early Soviet state officially declared “the absolute non-interference of the state and society into sexual matters, so long as nobody is injured, and no one’s interests are encroached upon.” Soviet law regarded homosexual intercourse as the same as “so-called natural intercourse” and was far ahead of (for example) U.S. law at the time.

All this changed in 1933, when the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party introduced a statute penalizing consensual homosexual activity (muzhelozhstvo or sodomy) between men; thereafter Soviet writers increasingly conflated male homosexuality as indeed “unnatural,” and associated it with German fascism. Not all Marxist theorists followed the Soviet lead in castigating homosexual activity, but the most prestigious of Marxist psychoanalysts, Sigmund Freud’s student William Reich, wrote in 1934 that men of a “homosexual tendency” were easily “drawn toward the right.”

Gurung’s association of homosexuality with capitalism echoes the Stalinist line that homosexuality represents “bourgeois decadence.” But Gurung should realize that Maoists outside Nepal have largely abandoned the Stalinist legacy on this issue. The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, a close ally of the Nepali Maoists, up until 2001 stated in its program that under socialism “struggle will be waged to eliminate [homosexuality] and reform homosexuals.” But the RCP now accepts homosexuality and renounces its past position on the issue (if without adequate self-criticism or explanation for why a bankrupt line was held so long). The Communist Party of the Philippines, another Maoist party with cordial ties to the CPN(M), officially recognized gay relationships among its members in 1998 and has been conducting same-sex marriages since 2005. The Nepali party lags embarrassingly behind.

Many have derived inspiration from the People’s War in Nepal, which in a mere decade acquired control over about 80% of Nepali territory and proved to the world that revolutionary communism remains the hope of the hopeless. I myself was happy to endorse Li Onesto’s first-person and very sympathetic account of her Maoist-sponsored visit to Nepal, Dispatches from the People’s War in Nepal (Pluto Press, 2005). The party now shares power with its former foes, heading six ministries in the provisional government. Some who have supported the CPN(M) are expressing grave concern that the party is abandoning its commitment to socialist revolution by its deal with the seven mainstream parties and its abandonment of the People’s War.

The Nepali Maoists deny that that’s the case, and I’d just as soon withhold judgment on that issue. But if the sentiments of Comrades Gurung and Biswokarma are at all representative of party sentiment, and if measures against gays are part of the party’s agenda, the outlook for a new revolutionary model in Nepal is looking worrisome.

Source: Krantikari Nepal, June 3, 2007