Nepali Times: Defying Maoist threats and official indifference (September 2005) Nepali Times: People power (August 2005) Nepali Times: Kathmandu to Kakarbitta and back (August 2005) Nepali Times: Dailekh: Helpless and hopeless (July 2005) Nepali Times: "Keep us out of it" (July 2005) BBC: Tough questions for Nepal's Maoists (June 2005) Nepal map

September 2005

Fear does not seem to move 85-year old Ram Bahadur Rai anymore. "We're just too exhausted. There is nothing we can say to make them leave us alone," he fumes, referring to the Maoists.

As the oldest member of Yafu village, five hours from Khandbari, Ram Bahadur tries to convince the young people to focus on developing their village instead of running away. "Who's left to take care of our village?" he asks.

But Yafu (pictured) has become a beacon of hope in these lush green hills of eastern Nepal because despite fear of Maoists, every household is involved in community service. Fifty villagers contributed Rs 200,000 and their labour to complete an irrigation canal with support from the British aid ministry DfID and technical help from the NGO Rural Reconstruction Nepal.

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Nepali Times: Defying Maoist threats and official indifference (September 2005) - no link

August 2005

Thousands attended the huge sit-in for peace and democracy on Tuesday afternoon that filled up Basantapur.

The square was festooned with banners, placards and even cartoons. Poets, writers and academics spoke and there was even a 12-minute silence to mourn those who have died in the past nine years of conflict. On stage, women held 36 peace lanterns "to show the way back to democracy" and others dressed as widows sat cross-legged amidst a performance depicting grief and bereavement.

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Nepali Times: People power (August 2005) - no link

August 2005

No Maoist was waving a party flag, no landmines were going off, no militants surfaced to wave assault rifles at travellers. The deserted look of the 600-km stretch of highway from Kathmandu to Kakarbitta is a sign that Maoist fear has taken its toll but highway travel is not as treacherous as it is made out to be.

Because of curfews along the way, night buses have stopped services and instead ply only in daytime. Up until the dusty eastern border town of Kakarbitta recent visitors counted hardly 20 long-range buses.

'Rumours and speculations spread unnecessary fear. People from Kathmandu should be told not to believe everything they hear about how dangerous road travel is,' says Hari Lama, a truck driver, as he helps right a bus that went off the road.

Many drivers and residents along the highway believe that rumours, rather than actual Maoist attacks, are responsible for the empty highway. 'Such fear is natural but does this mean we totally stop using the roads altogether?' asks Lama.

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Nepali Times: Kathmandu to Kakarbitta and back (August 2005) - no link

July 2005

For those living in Kathmandu Valley the rest of the country may as well be on another planet. All they care about is that things are ok inside the Ring Road since February First.

There may be an indefinite banda in Doti, all schools may be closed in Kailali, healthposts in Bajura may be without medicine, there may be a food shortage in Humla. But who cares? The people of western Nepal stopped expecting anything from Kathmandu long ago.

The women in Dailekh defiantly stood up against the Maoists when the rebels stopped them from celebrating Dasain and tried to recruit their children. But when the rebels hunted down six members of a family they thought were ringleaders of the Dullu resistance, the other villagers fled in panic with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

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Nepali Times: Helpless and hopeless (July 2005) - no link

July 2005

Nima Dorje Lama was in bed when a security patrol banged on his door in Ryale of Kabhre district on the night of 4 November 2003.

Thinking they could be Maoists, he didn't go to open the door right away. When he did, the soldiers arrested him on suspicion of being a Maoist. They found a pressure cooker in his kitchen and some wires. That was all the evidence they needed.

Lama, 38, was taken to a security camp in Malpi and Rosi Khola and then to Singha Nath Gan in Bhaktapur. He was stripped naked and beaten mercilessly. He was ordered to admit that he had a role in the murder of the Ryale VDC Chairman Krishna Prasad Sapkota three years ago. "They put a gun to my head, stood me before a hole in the ground and told me to admit that I had committed Sapkota's murder,' he recalls. Both his ankles were severely injured as a result of the torture and Nima Dorje was taken to the Birendra Sainik Hospital in Chhauni where he spent 45 days recuperating.

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Nepali Times: "Keep us out of it" (July 2005) - no link

June 2005

They have staged two widely condemned attacks on civilians in buses, there has been a public split in their ranks and their wooing of mainstream parties has largely gone unheeded.

Kanak Dixit, publisher of Himal magazine, was in the southern district of Chitwan hours after a bus landmine there killed nearly 40 people last week - in Dixit's words, "mass murder".

"Despite the Maoists' reasonable social agenda," he says, "this focuses the mind on their atrocities."

"They increasingly rely on brutal methods of control: hitherto, one-on-one attacks and mutilations, and now this."

Near him under a mat was the headless body of an eight-year-old boy unearthed from the sand.

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Tough questions for Nepal's Maoists (June 2005) - no link