एउटा नेपाली नागरिक, जो आफु
नेपाली हुनुमा गर्व गर्छ र नेपाल र
नेपालिको सदैव हित चाहन्छ ।
मेरो देश मेरो, नेपाल म आफु झुक्छु
तर देशले झुक्न नपरोस । (खोज पत्रकारिताको एउटा बिध्यार्थी )
Market prospects for allo-based products have expanded in
Rolpa as there is a growing trend of giving products made of this hemp
fibre as gifts.
Allo-based products in rolpa
Makers of allo products have been earning a good income. Bags, caps,
mobile purses, coats and jackets made of this natural fibre are produced
in the district.
Workers at the Rolpa Community Allo and Garment Industry in Liwang, the
district headquarters, always appear to be busy with the growing number
of people coming to buy their products. The factory which produces allo
products was established six years ago.
People of Rolpa have been increasingly involved in producing
handicrafts made of allo as they can use their own skills to produce
them. The standard of living of many of them has been boosted due to the
popularity of the handicrafts.
Among the 17 investors who have put money in the Rolpa Community Allo
and Garment Industry, 16 are women. The proprietors and workers can be
seen at work from early in the morning until evening.
“If we can get enough raw materials on time, we can produce more and
generate more revenue,” said Srimaya Roka, one of the proprietors of the
enterprise. She is also its treasurer.
Allo is produced in large quantities in Rolpa, Rukum, Pyuthan and
Salyan districts, but its commercial use has been limited. However,
things are changing. The District Cottage and Small Industry Development
Committee has been assisting those who are involved in allo production.
“We have programmes to promote handicrafts made of allo,” said Bal
Krishna Acharya, chief of the committee. The committee has been
providing training in allo production and its commercial use.
Tul Bahadur Gharti Magar, another proprietor and chairman of the
company, received training from the committee and started the factory.
Magar, who participated in the Maoist insurgency, went into business
with a few partners after the peace process began.
According to the Cottage and Small Industry Development Committee,
allo-based enterprises were registered only after the peace process
began.
Since then, about a dozen factories have been registered in the
district. They have been set up with investments ranging from Rs50,000
to Rs2 million.
There are more allo-based factories in the villages because it easier to get the fibre there.
Krishni Budha, proprietor of Liwan Allo and Thread Industry based in
Homagaun, said they were producing raw materials by themselves. “Most of
the women in the village have bought shares in the company,” she said.
Source by kathmandupost.ekantipur.com
LIFE
IN LIBANG: Grade 10 students of Gauri Shankar Secondary School of Thulo
Namja Village in Rolpa know about the Maoists from their history books
only as a political party, and not their violent past.
Grade 10 student Taman Khadka of Gauri
Shankar Secondary School of Thulo Namja village was not even born when
the Maoist war started near here in February 1996.
He only knows the date 13 February 1996
from memorising it for his school’s general knowledge quiz. “My parents
sometimes talk about the battles, but I can’t follow their
conversation,” Khadka, now 16, tells us. His classmate, Begum Gharti
Magar, pipes in: “I don’t want to know about the war, I am afraid of
death.”
Both are now preparing for their SLC
exams, which were delayed due to the earthquake. The students don’t seem
to be very curious about the conflict, and know about the Maoists from
their history books only as a political party, and not their violent
past.
Rolpa was the cradle of the Maoist
revolution in the mid-1990s, and became their ‘base area’ for the next
decade where they experimented with setting up communes, farming
cooperatives and revolutionary education in some schools.
The barbed wires have long been removed
from the district capital of Libang, and the bazar is bustling with
activity, especially around the IME office where families come to
receive cash from migrant workers in the Gulf. Remittances have now
replaced agriculture as the mainstay of the economy here.
Shiva Prasad KC was a student of Maoist
leader Krishna Bahadur Mahara, who introduced him to the books of Nepali
communist founder Mohan Bikram Singh in school in Libang. He was
arrested and tortured by the police several times.
PICS: SEULKI LEE Shiva
Prasad KC was a student of Maoist leader Krishna Bahadur Mahara. He was
arrested and tortured by the police several times during the war.
“They abolished the monarchy, but they
failed to deliver development,” Shiva Prasad said, “ten years of armed
struggle was not enough to bring about real change in society.”
The victims of Maoist violence, however,
say that the use of violence was wrong and counter-productive. Gaumati
Gharti Magar’s husband was a construction worker who was shot and killed
a few months after the start of the conflict in August 1996. Her
daughter Sarita was also injured in the incident and hasn’t been able to
complete her education.
aumati
Gharti Magar’s husband was killed by the Maoists few months after the
start of the conflict. Her daughter also sustained injuries in the
incident and couldn’t complete her education.
“They killed a lot of people, but didn’t change anything in Rolpa,” Magar said in her rented room in Libang.
Some NC supporters who were targeted by
the Maoists formed a resistance movement, and Srikumari Roka Magar was a
member. Her father was killed by the Maoists when she was 15, and said:
“The Maoist slogans for equality were good, but killing people was
wrong. Their words and action didn’t match.”
The spark that lit the revolution
The Maoist raid on Holeri on 13 February 1996 marked the beginning of the decade-long war
It was a cold dark night in the forest on
13 February 1996, as 35 hand-picked guerrillas gathered their gear to
climb down the hill and raid the police station at Holeri of Rolpa
district — launching the Maoist insurgency that would last ten years and
result in the death of 17,000 Nepalis.
In the attacking Maoist unit were four
women, among them Onsari Gharti Magar, now Speaker of Parliament, and
Jayapuri Gharti, former minister. Also in the group was Dipendra Pun
(pic, above), who was 25 at the time. “It was the first a ttack of our
armed revolution, the party entrusted us with the responsibility and we
were highly disciplined,” Pun recounted, “but we were so nervous we
initially lost our way in the forest.”
Twenty years later, Pun is a central
committee member of the UCPN-M and remembers the idealism of young
guerrillas like him who were proud to be selected for the mission. They
had just one rifle, 15 home-made guns and some explosives.
The attackers had camped in the forest of
Gadilekh for three days before D-Day. They had been trained and
selected on the basis of physical fitness and courage by Ram Bahadur
Thapa (Badal) who was thenMaoist chief of western Nepal and went on to
become Defence Minister in the first elected Maoist government in 2008.
Dipendra Pun and the 34 attackers
encircled the police station just before midnight, and reminded
themselves of Prachanda’s instruction not to kill any police, just
capture their weapons.
The Maoists first seized all the radios
and then locked up the policemen. There was firefight, and the police
soon ran out of bullets for their .303 rifles. But contrary to reports
at the time, no one was killed, and they could not capture any of the
rifles.
By 4AM they had retreated back to their
forest camp at Gadilekh, and from there to their bases in Rolpa,Dang,
and Bardia. That night the Maoists made simultaneous raids on police
stations in Gorkha, Kavre, Rukum and Sindhuli. Holeri had been chosen
because of its strategic location connecting Dang to the Maoist base
area of Rolpa.
“At that time we were not very sure we
would win the war, and we didn’t know how long would last, but we wanted
to win,” Pun told us in an interview this week.
School teacher Dirgha Bahadur Khadka, 64,
has nothing but horrifying memories of that first attack. His house is
just 100m away from the old Holeri police post, and remembers thinking
neighbours were shooting to scare away wild animals.
When the gunfire stopped after 20
minutes, he went out to see what was happening and saw the police
station on fire. Hiding inside his house, he heard the guerrillas
shouting victory slogans: “Long live the Maoist revolution.”
Throughout the next 10 years of conflict,
Khadka and his neighbours fed Maoist guerrillas and gave them shelter.
“Today, there is peace but we are upset and disappointed about the
Maoists,” Khadka said.
Maoist activist Shiva Prasad KC of Namja
village in Rolpa was 18 when he joined the Maoist party one month before
the Holeri attack. He remembers being proud and happy when he heard
about the attack over the radio. But KC withdrew his party membership in
2008 after feeling let down by the leadership.
Karna Batha Magar of the RPP was the
elected VDC chairman of Gairigaun of Rolpa in 1996. He had been working
to develop his village for three years when the conflict started, and
believes the revolution set the country back.
“They didn’t allow us to go to office,
they stopped all development activities and established their own
government,” recalls Magar, who won the 1994 local election in Libang.
Magar now heads a community-based
organisation and left politics for good, but says he is still working to
lift the living standards of the people of Rolpa. Tulsi BK was just 15
and had got married when the Holeri attack happened. But it marked the
beginning of a decade-long conflict that claimed the life of her
husband. He had just come back from working in India when police shot
him dead for shaking the hand of a local Maoist.
BK feels abandoned, and feels the
sacrifice of people like her husband have been in vain. She says
ruefully: “I don’t believe anyone. All the parties are selfish and
working for their own sake.”
The Holeri police station has now been
rebuilt, and inspector Ramesh Panthi, 50, says the Maoists had
legitimate demands, and they could have achieved them peacefully. “There
was no need to kill so many people,” said Panthi, “the real reason for
the revolution was the lack of education and jobs.”
