Nepal: Maoist revolutionaries (“Hardliners”) fire salvo at Dahal, PM Bhattarai

KAMAL DEV BHATTARAI, Kathmandu Post

KATHMANDU, DEC 28 –

The barb between the hardliners and the party establishment within the UCPN (Maoist) saw a new level of intensity on Wednesday as hardliners hurled personal broadside against party Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, calling him a “comprador” and a “sell-out”. During the ongoing Central Committee (CC) meeting of the party on Wednesday, not even Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai was spared from personal attacks. According to some leaders, the attack was one of fiercest in the party’s internal deliberation since the party entered peaceful politics in 2006.

“Dahal and PM Bhattarai are working under the guidance of expansionist and imperialistic forces, the signing of BIPPA is a classic example of it,” said Ram Bahadur Thapa, party general secretary and leader of the hard-line camp, in the meeting. He also accused Dahal of compromising with other parties on the core issues of constitution drafting in the dispute resolution subcommittee formed under the Constitutional Committee.

The group of four in the hard-line camp—Thapa, CP Gajurel, Dev Gurung and Netra Bikram Chand ‘Biplav’—used words such as “comprador”, “rightist”, “reformist”, “individualistic” and “feudal” to describe Dahal and Bhattarai during the deliberation. The leaders threatened to split the party, arguing that there was no point in staying together if the party leadership didn’t change itself. They said ideology and people were more worthy for them than the party.

Nepal: Revolutionary Maoists say, we will defend the landless peasants’ land reform

[The Revolutionary Maoists led by Vice Chairman Mohan Baidya are leading the fight against the “establishment ‘Maoists'” (Bhattarai and Dahal/’Prachanda’) who have reneged on their revolutionary oath to landless peasants and Dalits and agreed to return the lands which had been seized from vicious, abusive, and absent landlords during the People’s War and were redistributed to peasant farmers. — Frontlines ed.]

———————————————————-

Kathmandu Post:  “Maoist row over returning property”

Revolutionary Maoists burning 7-point Agreement to return lands seized by landless peasants

KATHMANDU, NOV 07 – The Maoist hardline faction led by Vice-chairman Mohan Baidya and party establishment camp are at odds over returning property seized or occupied by the party.

Return of property seized or occupied by the Maoists was one of the key points agreed to in the seven-point deal signed on November 1. The Baidya faction has, however, said it will resist every effort that is made to take away the land from the poor farmers and the landless.

A day after UCPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal issued a circular to the party’s lower organisations directing cadres to assist in the process of returning seized property, a gathering of the Baidya camp in the Capital on Sunday directed its activists to thwart the ‘takeover’.

“We will retaliate if anyone tries to take over the land from the farmers,” said Maheshwor Dahal, the Maoist central committee member of the Baidya faction.

Nepal: An encounter in Ghorahi

PLA (2005)

by Aditya Adhikari

The Kathmandu Post, 05-10-2011

After the end of the war, Saraswati Magar (name changed), a Maoist activist from Rolpa, built a single-story, two-room brick house on a small plot of land on the outskirts of Ghorahi, Dang.

The responsibilities given to her by the party require her to spend much of her time in Rolpa, but she has a nine-year old daughter in Ghorahi, and it is to be with her that Saraswati built the house. Having joined the movement when she was sixteen, even before the formal announcement of the People’s War, her primary life-experience has been of great strain and hardship.

On the run from the state authorities for many years, she abandoned her daughter to the care of relatives when she was only 21 months of age and was reunited with her only after the peace process began. Most of her friends and relatives from Rolpa joined the party. Her husband died during the conflict, as did two of her brothers.

Life is easier now for Saraswati. She looks back at amazement at the level of physical hardship and deprivation she endured so willingly during the war. Yet, she is restless. Political work does not offer her the satisfaction that it did before; yet it still obsesses her.