Nepal: Maoist Leader’s Reiterate-PLA Won’t Be Dissolved, YCL Will Expand

The following was originally published on Nepal News , Saturday October 9th under the headline “PLA won’t be dissolved”

At a time when the UCPN (Maoist) is coming under increasing pressure to integrate its combatants, some Maoist leaders have said the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will not be dissolved.

Speaking at a picnic organised by Maoist youth wing, Young Communist League (YCL) , Maoist standing committee member and the military in-charge Barshaman Pun said other parties were trying to ‘finish off’ the Maoist party by dissolving the PLA.

Pun, who is a member of the Special Committee for supervision, integration and rehabilitation of the Maoist combatants, said the Maoists will not give up arms before they are sure of the future of the peace process and the constitution-drafting.

Speaking at the same function, PLA chief Nanda Kishor Pun said that the PLA “is ready to make whatever sacrifice people want”.

Nepal – PLA Slams Indian Allegation!

This article was published in Nepal News.

PLA Slams Indian Allegation of Naxalites Receiving Training in its Camps as ‘Propaganda’

Nepal News  12 October 2010

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on Tuesday refuted the news about Nepal’s Maoists imparting training to Indian Maoists on Nepali soil as ‘baseless and ficticious.”

Issuing a statement on today, PLA chief Pasang expressed regret at these kinds of “baseless and ficticious propaganda” and said he completely denounces it.

In a report that appeared in Monday’s edition of the Indian Express newspaper, the Indian government claimed that Indian Maoists sneak into Nepali territory to get training from the Maoists’ PLA fighters and international terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Toiba.

According to report, the Indian Home Ministry gave the details of the movement of Maoists from India to Nepal and vice-versa and requested the Maoist Naxalite-hit states “to stay on high alert in the fight against Naxalites.”

The report said that the Indian home ministry note says that on June 28, the Maoists from Andhra Pradesh who were led by Comrade Pankaj from Bihar, crossed over to Malangwa in Nepal  and joined 20 trainees undergoing training in the PLA camp.

In the statement Pasang said that these kinds of allegation has only raised suspicion whether some forces are conspiring to derail the ongoing peace process and constitution writing in Nepal in order to create a premise for greater intervention in the country’s internal affairs. nepalnews.com

Arundhati Roy – The Poverty of India’s Trickle-Down Revolution, Pt. 2

This is the second part of a two-part series.  The first part was posted here.  This was originally in Newstatesman.com

The Crisis of Indian Democracy (Part 2)

By Arundhati Roy

Newstatesman – September 11,2010

Over the past few months, the government has poured tens of thousands of heavily armed paramilitary troops into the forest. The Maoists responded with a series of aggressive attacks and ambushes. More than 200 policemen have been killed. The bodies keep coming out of the forest. Slain policemen wrapped in the national flag, slain Maoists, displayed like hunter’s trophies, their wrists and ankles lashed to bamboo poles; bullet-ridden bodies, bodies that don’t look human any more, mutilated in ambushes, beheadings and summary executions. Of the bodies being buried in the forest, we have no news. The theatre of war has been cordoned off, closed to activists and journalists. So there are no body counts.

On 6 April 2010, in its biggest strike ever, in Dantewada the Maoists’ People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) ambushed a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) company and killed 76 policemen. The party issued a coldly triumphant statement. Television milked the tragedy for everything it was worth. The nation was called upon to condemn the killing. Many of us were not prepared to – not because we celebrate killing, nor because we are all Maoists, but because we have thorny, knotty views about Operation Green Hunt. For refusing to buy shares in the rapidly growing condemnation industry, we were branded “terrorist sympathisers” and had our photographs flashed repeatedly on TV like wanted criminals.

What was a CRPF contingent doing, patrolling tribal villages with 21 AK-47 rifles, 38 Insas rifles, seven self-loading rifles, six light machine-guns, one Stengun and one two-inch mortar? To ask that question almost amounted to an act of treason.