Dang displaced continue to suffer as petty politics persists in Kathmandu

By Anand Gurung

While the political parties continue to bicker over plum ministerial portfolios in the capital city and causing delay in giving 'full shape' to the new government, Nepali citizens in Dang district of mid-western Nepal are paying a painful price for the criminal neglect of their own government.

Reports say that hundreds of Nepali families - around 6,000 of them - living along 22 bordering villages of Dang district have been driven out by the Indian border security force, the Seema Surakchya Bal (SSB).

Some 2,000 displaced people, who are currently living in make-shifts tents at Satbariya VDC-2 in Deukhuri region, recount gross atrocities of Indian armed forces and criminal outfits including torching of houses, robbery, even abductions and rape.

They say they have fled their homes fearing further persecution from SSB and other Indian criminal outfits.

"They (SSB personnel) torched our houses saying you can't live here," Purna Kumari Bista, 70, of Rajpur, Dang told a leading Kathmandu daily that broke this news Tuesday. "We had to leave with the family to protect our lives."

Begaram Pun, another displaced, alleged that SSB personnel assaulted and raped women.

"We are forced to become mute spectators when they rape our women," he said. "More than 15 girls have already gone missing."

Reports also said that Nepali girls and women regularly get abducted in the bordering areas of the district by Indian criminal outfits and sexually abused.

Kantipur Daily reported that Sima Thapa, 19, a resident of Rajapur VDC-9, was abducted by a criminal group on May 18. Since then the villagers have not heard of her or know about her whereabouts.

"We have information that she has been kept in a house across the border and is being sexually abused, but we can't go in search for her there," Chandra Prakash Khadka of Dagmara, Rajpur said. He also fled his home to come to the community forest in Satbariya after he could no longer tolerate atrocities of SSB personnel.

Altogether 17 girls are said to have disappeared from bordering areas in the last three years.

According to Kathmandu Post, even going to bordering Indian villages to buy foodstuff and essentials has now become a horror.

"In the name of interrogation, SSB men keep our women captive for months and abuse them," Krishna Gharti of bordering Gobardiha village told the Post. "Men are usually freed after some roughing up, but they keep the women."

.The displaced villagers have demanded that the government set up border security camps in their villages to check these sort of vicious crimes.

Absence of border security

There are SSB units along the Nepal-India border at close distances, but there is no mechanism to look after border security on the Nepali side, according to reports.

This is the reason why the local authorities have no clear data on the number of abducted women and fail to keep tab on other instances of crime and atrocities that take place in the bordering areas of Dang district.

Similarly, the absence of any security provisions in the bordering areas has also led to encroachment of Nepali land in Dang, according to Kantipur Daily.

Reports also quoted locals as saying that the SSB has moved border pillars some 35 meters inside Nepali land and displacing residents claiming the land to be India's.

The Indian border force is said to have ready encroached Bhousahi, Sunpathri, Khangra of Rajpur VDC and Baruwa, Patauli, Siriya, Sukouli, Gurung, Koilabas of Bela VDC.

Similar encroachment has been reported in Bara district also, where farmers have claimed that Indian villagers have been encroaching upon Nepali land for farming purposes.

Chief District Officer Rishiram Dhakal told Nepalnews that they are currently in an emergency meeting and that a probe team will soon be sent to the affected areas to prepare a detailed report.

He said he has some information about encroachment of Nepali land and with it rise in atrocities against Nepali citizens living in bordering areas, but said he can't validate all the report appearing in media at the moment.

"We have to inspect the affected areas first before we take any action," he said.

Navin Kumar Ghimire, spokesperson at the Ministry of Home Affairs, said that they have 'primary information' about 500 to 600 Nepalis being displaced in Dang district, but have not received any information about SSB personnel and other armed Indian groups involved in atrocities against Nepali citizens in the region.

"We can't proceed on the basis of what has appeared in media," Ghimire said,” We have ordered the District Administration Office to send us a detail report on the matter and only after that we will have a clear picture."

Asked if the government should in the mean time act to provide security to the displaced, send relief to them and make arrangements for their shelter, he said those things will be taken care of once they know for sure that the people were indeed driven out of their homes.

"We can't just act on assumptions," he said.

The home ministry spokesperson also said that border disputes are bilateral matters and clearly fall under the jurisdiction of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and that Home Ministry can't act on the issue alone.

However, Foreign Ministry officials said since they haven't received any report from the home ministry on the incident, they can't really comment on the issue.

"We are waiting for a Home Ministry report on the incident in Dang. I assure you after we receive it, the Nepal government will do what needs to be done," said Dhananjay Jha, joint-secretary (India division) at the Foreign Ministry.

Similarly, the Indian embassy in Kathmandu said their attention has been drawn to the reports appearing in Nepalis media, but said they are yet to receive any information on it from the government.

"We have not received any information on this from the Nepalese government. So I am not in a position to make any comments on it," said Tshering Sherpa, Press Secretary at the Indian embassy.

Petty politics

Meanwhile, the Unified CPN (Maoist) has decided to generate national consensus against encroachment of Nepali territory by the Indian side.

A meeting of the party's parliamentary board held Wednesday also decided to call a joint meeting with other political parties to discuss the matter.

On Tuesday, the Maoists had demanded that the Indian government end encroachment of Nepali land on the border and immediately return all seized land of Nepal to create an environment of peace.

"India has time and again encroached Nepal's land, forcing locals to flee from their homes which is an open challenge to Nepal's national territorial integrity," Maoist Spokesman Dinanath Sharma said in a press release issued by the party to protest the encroachment and atrocities against Nepalis citizens living in border areas.

The press statement said that even International Relations and Human Rights Committee of the Parliament had in its report stated that border pillars of that area had gone missing and the land has been encroached.

It should be recalled here that Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal had while announcing resignation from the post of prime minister said his party won't bow down before "foreign lords" and tolerate interference in Nepal's internal affairs, in what was clearly a tirade against the Indian hegemony in Nepal.

Political observers are also saying that Maoists may ramp up nationalistic feelings to garner sympathy for themselves, and the party may have seen the latest incident in Dang as an opportunity for this.

But it is also true that the Unified CPN (Maoist) is the only party that is openly voicing its concern over the encroachment of Nepalese territories by SSB forces and the atrocities committed by them against Nepalese citizens.

Apparently other political parties, far from expressing concern over the serious matter, are treating the issue as if it is not even happening. Observers say that even the new government will mostly ignore the issue as it will not want to annoy India and risk losing its support that is so crucial for it to stay in power.

Nevertheless, the Nepali media has registered its strong opposition on the matter, with one Kathmandu based English daily calling for permanent mechanism to monitor and negotiate border disputes.

In its editorial titled 'Perennial Problem' , the Kathmandu Post on Wednesday said such incidents "naturally arouse nationalist sentiment, anger and resentment towards India".

"But what is deeply unfortunate is that although such instances of encroachment have been ongoing for years, there is still no governmental authority or security agency on the Nepal side that can negotiate boundaries on behalf of displaced Nepali villagers," the Post said. nepalnews.com June 02 09

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