WHAT NEXT ? Eager Nepali Congress workers thronging the party office at Teku, when the party President Girija Prasad Koirala was holding informal consultation with the MPs Tuesday morning.

Refugee talks continue

By a Post Reporter

KATHMANDU, March 14 - The Nepal-Bhutan secretarial level meeting, which is trying to "concretise" the issues worked out during the last ministerial level meeting, continued until well after midnight. No details of the day’s proceedings were available at the time the paper went to the press.

According to initial reports, the two sides took breaks to hold separate talks with their own delegation during the day’s meeting. The two countries have been disagreeing on verification modalities and terms of reference.

"Bhutanese side was ready for further talks even after dinner", said a reporter awaiting the outcome of the talks, claiming that "something concrete would come out in an hour’s time".

Today’s meeting focused on terms of reference, composition of the verification team, pro forma and the verification modalities.

Meanwhile, 37 Bhutanese refugee activists staged a sit-in protest in front of the Sital Niwas from 3 p.m today demanding that no time be wasted to find a lasting solution to the issue.

In a press release issued today, Appeal Movement Coordination Council (AMCC) demanded to drop the categorisation of the refugees, participation of Bhutanese leader Tek Nath Rizal in bilateral talks and halting of resettlement of the northern Bhutanese in southern Bhutan from where the refugees were forcibly evicted.

"The refugee activists would like to request the secretary level delegation of Nepal and Bhutan to invite representatives of the Bhutanese refugees to participate in the present round of discussion as demanded by the United Nations Human Rights Sub-Commission’s chairperson’s statement adopted at Geneva in August of 1998 and 1999," the press release states.

The activists flashed banner, placards and flyers bearing messages above a photograph of Rizal. The sit-in will continue even tomorrow, states the press release.

The 7th round of Joint Ministerial Level Committee (JMLC) meeting had ended in an impasse. While Nepal has been demanding camp to camp interviewing of family heads for identification, Bhutan has been demanding that every member of the family be interviewed.

‘No-confidence’ moved against PM again in NC

By Binaj Gurubacharya

KATHMANDU, March 14 - Prime Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai once against faces dismissal from office today after 69 lawmakers of his Nepali Congress today rebelled against him and filed a proposal seeking his ouster from office.

A proposal signed by the rebels was filed at the parliamentary party office this afternoon expressing no confidence in the prime minister.

"We had tried to settle the issue through consensus and agreements but the prime minister failed to keep his word. This time we will settle for nothing less than his resignation," said Suresh Malla, who leads the pack of rebels.

Last month, a similar proposal was filed by the rebels and 11 ministers quit the Bhattarai government. Following days of marathon negotiation and meetings, the prime minister and NC president Girija Prasad Koirala finally reached an agreement on February 25 that defused the turmoil in the party.

Though the terms and details of the agreement were kept confined to the two leaders, people close to Koirala claimed that the prime minster had promised to step down by Monday, the last day of the month of Falgun.

With no indications of Bhattarai stepping down and instead bargaining for Koirala’s removal from party presidentship, Koirala quickly called a meeting of his lawmakers at the party central office at Teku this morning.

"From this day I am free from any agreement and you too are free to act as per your will," Koirala told the party lawmakers.

Following that, members lined to sign a fresh proposal seeking the removal of prime minister from the office he has held for the past nine months.

"Since we were released from any bonds, we decided to once again file the proposal," another rebel member Shiv Kumar Basnet said, adding that Koirala did not ask them to move the proposal.

All day long, the rebels hustled their colleagues to come up and sign the document and finally at 4:15 p.m. the proposal was registered with Parliamentary Party Secretary Benup Raj Prasai.

Prasai told reporters that he would call the parliamentary party meeting where the fate of the prime minister will be decided only after following the set procedure.

The rebels claimed that besides the 69 lawmakers who have already signed the petition, there are at least seven others who are out of Kathmandu but have already endorsed the proposal on the phone and a few more who are willing to cross over to their camp.

This time, however, the rebels are not going to settle the issue through agreement and consensus in the party as they did last month.

"NC is a democratic party and in democracy the majority will rule. This time we are not going to shy away from voting for a leader," NC’s Devendra Raj Kadel said.

Besides the 113 members in the House of Representatives, NC has 24 members in the National Assembly, the Upper House of Parliament. The rebels claim that they have support of 16 of them.

The rebels are accusing Prime Minister Bhattarai of failing to show any leadership qualities and turning out to be a weak leader leading a government that has not made any progress.

Survey of afflux bund over

By a Post Reporter

NEPALGUNJ, March 14 - The Nepal-India joint committee formed to study the magnitude of the inundation in Nepalgunj due to the construction of afflux bund (embankment) in Laxmanpur Barrage, have completed the survey.

According to Rishiram Sharma, Divisional Engineer at the District Irrigation Office and coordinator of the team, the team has completed the field work.

"After a report about the delay in submitting the report appeared on Kantipur daily, the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation Department pressured us," says Sharma. The report was published on March 9. "We are expecting to submit the report by April," he said.

He said a topographical map will be prepared after plotting is complete. The 10th meeting of the Joint Standing Committee on Inundation had delegated the bilateral survey team to submit a report on the recommendations for solutions by January 31 but the team started its work only on January 17.

Sharma said the reason for the delay in completing the survey was due to bad weather condition. "After the weather got better we worked at a breakneck speed due to which some of our colleagues even fell sick," said Sharma. "Earlier, we had the problem of resource crunch as well."

India, in the meantime, has already finished the construction of the 22-kilometre embankment. It is estimated that the embankment will inundate thousands of bighas of land in Bethani, Holiya, Fattehpur, Gangapur, Matehiya, Narainapur, Kalakot, Laxmanpur and Katkuinya VDCs of Banke.

Meanwhile, villagers of nine VDCs in the south-east Banke, are seeking help from different quarters fearing inundation. Red Cross has also agreed to finance a boat on their request.

According to Ishwori Regmi, Coordinator of Red Cross Natural Calamities Preparation Committee, the Red Cross will provide Rs 25,000 to Holiya VDC to make the boat. The villagers will raise the rest of the amount themselves.

India has already resettled people from 52 villages that could be inundated.

Rebels’ bid to take airport foiled

By a Post Reporter

RUKUM, March 14 - After repeated unsuccessful attempts to capture Salle airport, Maoist rebels for the third time tried to capture the airport last night.

According to Deputy Inspector General of Police, Rajendra Bahadur Singh, the cross-fire that started around 8.30 p.m. continued until 2 a.m this morning.

The glasses at airport tower were broken and the security beat of the police damaged, Chief District Officer at Rukum Parashuram Aryal told The Kathmandu Post over the phone. "However, nobody was injured in the incident."

Maoists had tried to capture the airport earlier on January 24 and February 13, according to a local resident. The airport lies north-west of the district headquarters Musikot.

The flights to Salle airport have not been hindered by last night’s attack, said an official of Royal Nepal Airlines Corporation (RNAC) at Nepalgunj. "The regular flights have not been stopped," said Nirjalanand Vaidya, station manager of RNAC at Nepalgunj.

Meanwhile, the team which went to distribute the relief material to the families affected by fire in Khara has reached Tharmare of Salyan. Likewise, a relief team of around 100 persons from CPN-UML has already left for Khara from Musikot, according to Aryal.

On February 22, police looking for Maoist rebels had torched about 100 houses and cowsheds in and around Khara VDC.

Stones fly at oppn sit-in

By a Post Reporter

LALITPUR, March 14 - Violence marked the protest programme staged by the main opposition CPN-UML as the party activists and the police pelted stones at each other here today.

It all started after the police intervened and arrested the Chairperson of Association of District Development Committees, Madhav Poudel at about 9:15 a.m. Poudel and other UML activists were staging a sit-in in front of the Ministry of Local Development.

The tension eased after police released him immediately. Most of the senior UML leaders and lawmakers including the party second man KP Sharma Oli was present at the programme. No one was injured in the ensuing fracas.

As part of the protest programme, the party staged the sit-in from 9:00 to 11:30 am in a bid to pressurise the government to scrap the "contradictory" clauses of the Local Autonomy Act.

"The ruling Nepali congress is feeding the national revenue to its activists in the name of programmes like BP with the poor, Ganeshman Shanti campaign and Women empowerment programme," said Rajan Bhattarai, Co-coordinator of UML’s Valley Movement Mobilisation Committee. "We also demand an immediate halt on the misuse of national revenues."

The agitation was part of the ongoing nationwide protest programmes initiated by the main opposition party since March 4.

Activists highlight children's plight

By Subina Shrestha

KATHMANDU, March 14 - In the past few years, a number of controversies regarding the ill-treatment of children in the child care homes have surfaced, both inside Kathmandu and outside.

But official bodies that are supposed to protect the interest of these children are almost non-functional, leaving the minors who are without any custodians, extremely vulnerable, say experts.

"There are monitoring criteria for these shelter homes and the District Child Welfare Board is the responsible body," says Raghubir Samsher Rana, Under Secretary at the Ministry of Women and Social Welfare, Child Welfare Department. "But the performance of most of these district Boards has been lacklustre as they depends largely on the individuals who are in the Board, rather than an established system."

The board is headed by the Chief District Officer.

Officials at the Ministry claim "some districts have a very good monitoring facility," and the inaction in places like Kathmandu could be because there are other organisations--NGOs and INGOs-- that are shouldering the responsibilities of children welfare.

To be fair, the government does seem to realise the gravity of the problem. Last May a committee, headed by the Social Welfare Council, was formed to look into the problem and in August it concluded that the shelter homes "do not meet the necessary prerequisites".

The committee, among other things, suggested that the shelter homes need to have enough rooms, maintain a profile of all the children, conduct regular health check-ups, including psychological counselling.

The suggestions, however, have remained confined to paper. News reports have continuously pointed out that the children are deprived of the basic minimum at these homes and that there have been gross misappropriation of funds by their caretakers. Worse, in some cases children have been made to beg, sexually harassed and physically abused.

The Social Welfare Council is authorized to de-register any organization under it but no single shelter home has yet been dissolved.

"We need options before we decide to shut them down," says Dr. Tika Pokhrel, Member Secretary of SWC. "We do not have transit homes for the children. If we take the children out, where to we put them?"

One case particularly stands out. Referring to the infamous case of Shobha Bhagwati Children’s Home, Pokhrel says, "An activist team came to us and we delegated them to look into the case. But they did not conduct follow up on it," says Pokharel.

The caretaker of the orphanage at Shobha Bhagwati was accused of making children beg on the street.

"There wasn’t much we could do because there was hardly any evidence to establish the case," says Sashi Adhikari, advocate at the Legal Aid Counselling Center, LACC. "The government could easily transfer the children to a more reputed home or into Bal Mandir (the government run children’s home) itself," she suggests.

According to activists at LACC and SAATHI, an NGO working on domestic violence, the case against the organization is still on.

Concerned citizens are seeking assistance from NGOs. "We do not have legal protection for children against verbal and physical abuses," says advocate Chattra Kumari Gurung from LAAC. According to Gurung, the current Child Act does not even incorporate police intervention except in cases of danger to security and peace. "In cases of abuse at the homes, the legal provision is to appeal straight to the court," says she.

Such cases can also be appealed under the Public Offense Act say the lawyers which will make the Chief District Officer responsible for hearing such cases.

The Women’s Cell at the Kathmandu District Police Office has been investigating the complaints. Inspector Geeta Upreti from the police office says that she herself has appealed to the SWC to dissolve some of organizations. "In some cases, we have taken strict and immediate action through the Cell and shifted the children to more reputed organizations," she claims.

Black eye for bad handwriting

By a Post Reporter

POKHARA, March 14 - A four-year-old nursery student in a private school here nearly lost one of her eyes when her teacher allegedly beat her up with stick. Parents of Anjali Baral claimed that teacher, Urmila Rai, hit her after the little girl failed to improve her handwriting.

"We came to know what exactly had led to the eye injury only after she spoke out the reality in front of doctors," said Anjali’s father, Siromani Baral, at Himalayan Eye Hospital today. "But the teachers (of Tarapunja English School, Patanbesi) were saying that she herself injured her eyes with a sharp pencil."

Doctors attending Anjali said her left eye lid as well as the pupil have been scratched and that she is out of danger. "It’s her good fortune that nothing untoward happened to her," said a health worker, Sabitri GC. "She might recover by next week."

Meanwhile, the teachers have corrected their earlier version. "Now we have come to know that the eye was injured by stick," said the school principal, Ganesh Timilsina. The school management has assured to bear all medical expenses.

A few months back, a six-year-old girl studying in Tribeni Boarding School in Lekhnath municipality, had been hanged upside down by the school principal, Kamal Ranabhat. But no action was taken against the teacher except that he was taken into police custody for a few days.

Medical conference kick off

By a Post Reporter

KATHMANDU, March 14 - In an effort to share the knowledge of traditional healing methods and modern medical techniques between the doctors, the Fourth Nepal German International Medical Conference kicked off here today.

"Western medical technology is unable to incorporate all the aspects of medicine," Dr Reimers Andreas, a participant from Germany told The Kathmandu Post. "If we could bring together our (eastern and western) medical knowledge and technologies it would definitely lead to much success in the field of healing."

According to the doctors, the European society is attracted to the traditional healing methods like Ayurveda, in the recent times.

"There is a lot western society can learn from the traditional medical techniques of the east," said Dr Pollan Antonias, an anaesthetist participant. "The eastern technology is very useful for pain therapy."

"European doctors are attracted to our traditional ways of curing the patients," said Dr BN Rana, chairperson of the organising committee. "We will basically try and integrate our methods of healing with theirs."

More than 20 doctors from Nepal and around 130 European doctors are participating in the conference. The other countries include Austria, Germany, Switzerland and USA.

The six-day conference will have 31 scientific papers and 20 demonstrations of the various healing techniques. The papers and demonstrations will be concentrated on ayurveda, pain, hypnosis, orthopaedics and rehabilitation.

The conference is being jointly organised by Forderkries - Help for Nepal, Milton Erickson Society, Germany and Maryknoll Nepal.

RPP rally against graft

By a Post Reporter

KATHMANDU, March 14 - Leaders and supporters of Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) today rallied through the heart of the capital protesting corruption and price hike, even as a Central Working Committee (CWC) meeting held earlier announced a nation-wide party organization consolidation programme.

Leaders of the parliament’s third largest political force like Chairman Surya Bahadur Thapa, Vice Chairman Prakash Chandra Lohani, leaders Jog Mehar Shrestha and the likes demonstrated against what it termed "rampant corruption and skyrocketing commodity prices".

Around 200 activists, waiving RPP flag and placards, started what the party termed Daud Julus (race procession) from Sundhara, chanting anti-government slogans. The slow-moving procession, organized by the party’s youth wing, formally ended at Ratna Park, around one kilometre west from Sundhara.

Earlier in the day, the party endorsed a "RPP among people" programme following a CWC meeting. The party organization consolidation programme, which will see most RPP workers mobilized in all the 75 districts, will formally start on May 17.

"The main objective of the programme is to make RPP’s relationships with people more intimate and smooth, up date them with current developments, and to consolidate the party’s organization," said a press release issued after the meeting. The main highlights of the programme, among others, include, door-to-door campaign, women awareness programme, farmers meet, elderly citizen and youth student festivals and interaction with intellectuals.

"The meeting also expressed concerns over the on-going feud within the ruling Nepali Congress (NC) party," RPP Vice Chairman Prakash Chandra Lohani told The Kathmandu Post after the meeting. "NC with its constant in-fighting for power and wealth is going to sink the nation..."

Detainees missing while in custody

By a Post Reporter

NEPALGUNJ, March 14 - Taken into custody by the police a year ago, the whereabouts of Jagbir Pun of Masuriketh remains unknown.

"The police now tell us that they had never taken him into custody," says his wife despondently, holding both their 2-year and 4-year old sons on her lap.

Twenty three year old Rita Oli of Dhakeri too shares the same fate. Her husband has disappeared for 2 and a half years. "8 to 9 policemen took him away in a blue van right in front of my eyes," she says. She has called on intellectuals, human rights activists and journalists to make, as she calls it, the "injustice by the police" known.

Kaushila Dharti relates how the police took her 20 year old daughter away from her lodgings while she was still studying at campus last year. She says, "I’m sure I remember her taking her SLC exams from prison. The police made her stand holding guns and bullets in a photograph."

It is reported that throughout last year, 7 individuals disappeared while in police custody. Banke’s NPC-ML Secretary, Surya Parajuli, allegedly says, "I have seen many taken into custody. Later the police denied arresting them, saying also that some had been released."

The Informal Service Sector Centre has released a book, Where Are They?, where it mentions the alleged disappearances in Banke. It also mentions that last year, there were 83 disappearances linked to police custody.

But the police deny taking people into custody on the suspicion that they are Maoists. The SP of the District Police Headquarters in Banke, Dhan Bahadur Thapa says "we have no records of the 10 who have allegedly disappeared. We only have records of those who have been specifically charged. We do not release anybody just like that."

But the Vice President of the Bar Unit of the Appeals Court, Hariprasad Gyawali says that " there is written evidence of a Habeus Corpus being filed in September last year in the case of Gyanbahadur Oli straight after his arrest."

Amnesty International had declared in 1992 that it is an offence to keep people in custody without recourse to the law.

Fear reigns along border

By a Post Reporter

BIRGUNJ, March 14 - Locals hold both the Nepalese and Indian police responsible for the cross-border abduction cases which are mounting by the day in the villages at the Nepal-India border.

The situation in villages on both sides of the border--Jhowagari, Kehuniya, Worwa, Itiyahi, Amarpatti and Madhawal Village Development Committees on the Nepalese side and Bhaluwaha, Bharatmahi, Sisawa, Ekdarewa, Haraiya and Dhapuwa on the Indian side -- is getting tenser and more hostile with each side pointing fingers at the other.

"Incompetence of the police is encouraging the kidnappers," said Dinesh Shah of Jhowagari VDC. "Earlier the locals used to move freely across the border even till late-night but now they have become enemies." Now, most of the villagers are scared to venture out of their homes after seven in the evening.

After the failure of the police administration to curb crime and tension, local politicians of both countries are now taking necessary initiatives.