Truth obscured

Nepal’s ‘watchdog’ journalists became toothless pets on the night of November 26 last year, when the government declared a State of Emergency. With their constitutional rights suspended and a hundred reporters arrested over the following three months, the Nepalese media have had no alternative but base their reports on news bulletins provided by the Defence Ministry and the Royal Nepalese Army. These bulletins, little more than psychosocial tools of war for boosting the moral of security forces, raise more questions than they answer.

On November 26 and 27 two allegedly Maoist newspapers in Kathmandu were raided. Ten journalists and supporting staff were arrested. A day later the Minister of Information, Jayaprakash Prasad Gupta asked the media ‘not to publish or disseminate interviews, articles, news or reading materials or audio-visual or commentaries encouraging the path taken by Maoist terrorists or promoting or intended to support related activities like physical assault, loots, abduction, arson, murder and violent, disruptive and terrorist activities’. A day later it became clear that Gupta’s request was an order: his Department of Information had formed two news monitoring cells, both print and electronic, ‘to keep track of news related to the army and police operation against Maoist terrorists and other related news’. On December 29, Defence Secretary Padma Kumar Acharya announced that journalists who want to travel to troubled areas require permission from the Defence Ministry. That day, some forty journalists were arrested in Rupandehi district. In March, Reporters Sans Frontiers disclosed that more than one hundred Nepalese journalists had been arrested since November 26.

These four developments (the Ministry’s list of do’s and don’t; the monitoring bodies; the restrictions of travel to the Maoist heartlands without permission; and the large numbers of journalists who have been taken into custody) have resulted in a heavy dependency on the authorities’ news bulletins. They can be heard every hour on Radio Nepal, and on private FM stations. They are repeated in the news columns of newspapers, and on TV in the evening. They invariably start with the sentence: “Today, in security operations across the nation, ... [x number of] terrorists have been killed.” At first the bulletins appeared on front pages, or as a headline, particularly when security personnel were killed. Soon, however, these repetitive sum-ups were being moved to page three, or condensed into one or two lines.

How reliable are the bulletins on which the Nepalese media (and in their wake the international media*) base their reporting? The general impression among media-watchers is that they cannot be trusted, yet neither can they be regarded as totally baseless. Usually the numbers are right, as is the name of the district, but there is so little background information that such bulletins can barely be interpreted, even if they could be verified by other sources. The authorities’ concern for the morale of the army is clear in guidelines released by the Ministry of Information: no news can be given which ‘will demoralise the Royal Nepal Army, the Nepal Police, and civil servants, spread negative feelings, and which will damage their prestige’. The majority of those killed are called ‘terrorists’ or are ‘suspected of being terrorists’; unless they cannot be Maoist insurgents anyone’s standards, as in the case of children. The location and manner of deaths are usually obscured, stating the victim was killed during ‘an encounter’. The bulletins seldom mention innocents being killed, and when they do it is said people died ‘in the crossfire’. Devoid of any background information about the person and the circumstances, these bulletins leave the readers and listeners guessing what really happened. Was the person killed a hardcore fighter; somebody forced to carry out manual tasks by the insurgents; or an innocent villager? Was the deceased killed during an encounter, or purposely shot after being detained? Did the victim die of instant killing or as the result of torture? How are so few innocent people killed? Why are so few people detained and so many killed? In short, the bulletins raise more questions than they answer.

Often the bulletins make little sense. An example being a report published by The Kathmandu Post on July 4: “One suspected terrorist is believed to have died after he ran away from the security forces, the Defence Ministry said today. The suspect, Dal Bhakta Tamang, was arrested in Burtibang of Baglung. Tamang was being taken to the Security Forces' base camp when he ran away and jumped into the Badi River. As his hands were tied, the forces believed that Tamang could have drowned to death. The security forces have launched a search for him.”

A reader knowing nothing about Tamang, his village, the strategies of the insurgents, or the general fears of villagers in this Maoist heartland, may be easily tricked into thinking that Dal Bhakta was a fool when he jumped to his death. But did he have good reason? Possibly, if one takes the following into account.

Burtibang is as remote as it gets in the Nepalese mid-hills. From the district headquarters, Baglung, it is a tough three-day walk to the village. Baglung district, in the Mid-West, borders Maoist heartland: Rukum to the North, Rolpa to the west, Myagdi to the east. The heavily forested Royal Dorpatan Hunting Reserve to the north acts as an arc between the districts: hard to penetrate for soldiers with heavy packs and an ideal escape route for insurgents moving to bordering districts. Perhaps that was why the Royal Nepalese Army set up a base camp in nearby Bhimgithe, in December last year. As the markets of Burtibang and other VDCs are no longer functioning, Bhimgithe has become the main bazaar of the area. People visiting the market must present themselves first at the army camp. As the records of all households of Burtibang’s fourteen VDCs are with the army, details about every individual can be checked easily. The army has introduced a ration system, to ensure that no food goes to the insurgents. Per family, only 35 kg rice can be obtained weekly.

Burtibang is a constituency of the Rastrya Jana Morchan, the National People’s Front (NPF). This Marxist-Leninist party has officially denounced the Communist Party Nepal (Maoist) and follows the government’s line in calling these insurgents ‘terrorists’. The local NPF leaders regularly warn the locals against supporting or joining the insurgents, as a result of which they receive threats, including a death threat in one case. The security forces, apparently unable to differentiate between different shades of red, have come down heavily on party workers. A few days after the State of Emergency was called, a NPF party worker, 42-year old Ram Bahadur Shahi was arrested while carrying his father to a Gurkha pension payment office in Syangje. After taking him to a makeshift army camp and covering his face, soldiers shot Shahi execution-style. On February 28 Tulsi Aryal, Burtibang’s VDC chairman, was called to the Bhimgithe army camp to claim the bodies of three persons from a nearby VDC. He was shocked to find the lifeless, mangled bodies of three young students, Tham Bahadur Bishwokarma, Mitthum Mahat and Hik Mahat, the latter only eighteen years old.

On March 11 VDC chairman Aryal received yet another order from the local security forces, telling him to take ten NPF party workers to the mobile camp. Five days later Aryal was called to the camp to receive seven of the ten detainees. They had been tortured, and were compelled to report every to the barracks every other day. At least they were alive. Roshan Dhoj Malla, Dor Bahadur Chhantyal and Tika Chhantyal had been taken away by helicopter, to an unknown destination. It took Aryal another week to find out what had happened to them. Roshan, Dor Bahadur and Tika had been taken to Argal, a village known to be pro-Maoist. While local villagers were forced to watch, the blindfolded party workers, their hands tied at the back, were severely beaten. The men could be heard weeping by onlookers, who were told to walk away. Roshan Malla, the oldest of the three, is reported to have shouted: “Don’t harm the others just kill me.” Instantly, the three men were shot. They were buried haphazardly, with some body parts sticking out of the earth. Ten days later Aryal and a group of other party workers reached the scene and managed to rebury their friends in a proper manner.

I interviewed a sad looking Aryal a few weeks later in Baglung headquarters. He phrased his sentences with care, and with attention to the daughter of Roshan Malla, who had come to Baglung for her SLC exam (which she failed). “The hardest part has been to inform the families. Dor Bahadur’s wife was heavily pregnant when I came to her house, and she fainted when I told her the news. Ram Bahadur’s 85-year old father kept on saying: ‘I should have died, not him.” The loss of Roshan Malla however has affected me most. He was a very cultured and politically conscious man, always concerned about others He left a wife and ten young children behind with almost no resources.” Aryal showed us a photograph of his friend, a tall, poorly dressed, serious looking man, standing in a boat on Phewa Lake. The VDC chairman took some time answering when asked for his opinion about the security forces. “It is as if the State machinery does not think as if it is only able to carry out orders and is unable to make distinctions. During my visits to the camp I got to see the standard torture inflicted on detainees which has shocked me greatly. The detainees are blindfolded and beaten for hours with boots or pipes. They are put in a pit and water is poured on them, so they fear they will drown. A gun is put against their forehead and prisoners are asked to make a last wish. Witnessing these atrocities has been mental torture for me. In the name of fighting terrorists cruel things are being done to innocent people.”

The evening after the interview, Aryal received news that his office had been burned down and his wife and children threatened by Maoists. He left for Burtibang the next day, ready to face the two forces that slowly but surely erode his belief in justice and a truly democratic society: the Maoists insurgents and the security forces.

In a village where atrocities such as these have taken place it is understandable that Dal Bhakta did not trust the security forces when they led him away. Other reports confirm that people fearing cruel treatment by the security forces have taken desperate actions. A Kathmandu-based development worker was told by women in Sindhupalchowk how a Maoist fighter who found himself injured when a bomb accidentally exploded, cut his own throat and died. According to the women, the man did this because he expected to be tortured by the army and would die anyway.

What if Dal Bhakta was a Maoist fighter who had been instructed to commit suicide? Until now, Maoist insurgents have not followed the path of groups such as the LTTE to operate suicide squats. However, during police actions ‘Romeo’ and ‘Kilo Sierra ll’ incidents took place in which detained Maoist fighters leapt into rivers. As they were usually handcuffed to a cop, they took a ‘class enemy’ with them. The level of fear and cruelty among both parties, army and insurgents, has reached such a level that it would not be surprising if detainees from either side felt encouraged to commit suicide rather than wait for the inevitable torture and/or death carried out by the enemy.

What if Dal Bhakta did not jump but was pushed? In Melamchi, on April 17, a youngster called Shiva Lal Ghale was pushed down a landslide by security forces. When he managed to grab hold of a tree, a few soldiers climbed down towards him and shot Shiva Lal at gunpoint. It is possible the soldiers acted out of anger. That same morning a bomb had exploded further along the road, damaging a vehicle of the Indrawatti Micro-Hydro project, which was heavily protected by an army battalion. The soldiers captured two people, one of whom escaped, the other a carpenter who said he had nothing to do with the explosion. (The army was only ready to believe him after the man had been beaten by them with boots and PVC pipes for nine long hours). None of the people in Shiva Lal’s village had be able to give given any useful information and by the time soldiers met 22-year old Shiva Lal, washing clothes in a stream, they were angry, frustrated and ready to kill.

The following morning, at the boy’s cremation on the banks of the Melamchi river, most of the village was present; expressing their anger with the security forces. Shiva Lal was a popular boy, haasne khel, the kind that laughs a lot. He used to play volleyball in the river bed every afternoon and was known to be a caring youngest son, spending most of his time on the farm, helping his parents with daily chores. His death was announced on Radio Nepal in the evening: “In Melamchi, during an encounter, an armed terrorist has been killed.” Shiva Lal’s sister-in-law was shocked when she heard the bulletin. “It is sad enough that our youngest brother has been killed, but the fact that he is called a ‘terrorist’ makes it so much worse”, she said. Adding, “I will never be able to believe those news bulletins anymore. Who knows on what grounds and how these people have really been killed?”

From the little we know about Dal Bhakta we can safely conclude that Tamang, like Shiva Lal Ghale, was not a Maoist fighter. He was the owner of a small hotel that was occasionally visited by insurgents who requested or forced him to provide food and shelter. Pari Thapa, a member of parliament who hails from a nearby VDC, knew him and is convinced that Dal Bhakta was pushed to his death. “The security forces are in for the kill and rarely keep people in detention. They wanted to get rid of Dal Bhakta, but it would look bad if his body were found with a bullet. So they pushed him.” How can the Thapa be so sure of this? He is the Burtibang representative of the National People’s Front and has seen worse.

How do district-based journalists feature in all this? Do they not send reports and interviews which help to interpret the government’s news bulletins? Ram Saran Acharya, the Gurkha based correspondent for the Space Times Daily and Radio Nepal, explained his position with a catchy one-liner: “Mero kalam banda chha,” “my pen is closed.” I interviewed the Baglung journalist Hira KC, managing director of the New Daulaghiri Daily, after one of his staff had gone to view the bodies of the three NPF party workers in Argal. His colleague, Baglung editor Badri Prasad Sharma, had been arrested in December and was still in jail. “We published a small write-up on the bodies, not mentioning the security forces. We basically cannot write about the army. If there is any news which might anger the security forces we simply keep quiet. We have to follow the rules laid out by the army and local authorities, otherwise our lives are in danger.” The Nepalese media, and civil society more generally, has been compromised by what publisher/journalist Kanak Mani Dixit calls an ‘unwilling[ness] to test the limit of the government’s restriction on press freedom.’ The least to blame are district journalists and correspondents, who bear the brunt of the authorities’ harsh means of obscuring the ground reality in rural Nepal.

The truth about Dal Bhakta remains hidden. Was he a Maoist sympathizer who provided food and shelter willingly? Was he an innocent villager, detained for the wrong reasons? Did he jump or was he pushed? Every day the news brings more bulletins. The number of people killed during the past seven months has reached 3,500, 75 percent of them by security forces in ‘encounters’ and ‘crossfire’. In a country where footage of dead bodies acts to de-sensitize the viewers, in which killing (suspected) insurgents is described as ‘wiping out’, ‘eliminating’ and ‘taking out’, and in which truth is obscured by sterilised, faceless reporting, the story behind these cruel numbers might never be told.

Lucia de Vries

De Vries is a freelance journalist based in Kathmandu..

* The Dutch and Belgium papers I report for regularly carry sterile statistics of those killed in Nepal, taken from international press agencies. I have not been able convince the editors that these reports do not convey much and are not necessarily true (such as in the case of the Lisne Lake operations, when the army, in order to strengthen Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s quest for foreign support, claimed 550 Maoist fighters were killed, while in fact, according to the findings of freelance journalist Shobha Gautam, only 20 bodies were found.)