AWorld To Win News Service

30 October 2006. A World To Win News Service. By our correspondent Purna, a supporter of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), putting forward the party’s views.
On 25 October, the day following the end of Dipawali festival in Nepal, the Communist Part of Nepal (Maoist) called for a two-hour shutdown of all traffic in the Kathmandu valley. The call was issued on the evening of the 24th and the strike was observed on from 8 a.m-10 a.m. the next morning.
All vehicular traffic was halted. The Kathmandu valley remained almost completely cut off from the rest of the country during this period.
The shutdown was called against increasing crime and police involvement in this crime in the Kathmandu valley. On 24 October, a police DSP (divisional superintendent of police), along with a goon, attacked and seriously injured a local resident with a kukuri (a big knife) in the area of Bouddha, a northern suburb of Kathmandu. Local people arrested them both, the policeman and the goon, and handed them over to the local Maoist unit. The Maoists took them into custody and put them in a car to be taken to another area. But along the way, around 200 cops with advanced weapons stopped and encircled the vehicle. As local people found out about this, they in turn encircled the cops. A dispute took place. People demanded that the culprits should be put under the control of the new state. But the police tried to take them under their control. The circle of people around the police got bigger.  The police began a baton charge. People fought back with stones. Ultimately, the police took the culprits away. The home minister said that his state would punish the culprits.
Just like in other countries where the reactionary state makes use of and often protects the criminal underworld, this is the case in Nepal, too. This gang of local goons has been protected by the state as it looted business and caused suffering for the people.
This kind of underworld was wiped out in the countryside in the course of the ten years of people’s war. Now these culprits are concentrated in the cities. The revolutionary people’s power and social transformations in the countryside has made it difficult for them to carry out their activities there. But in the cities, including the capital, the old state is still functioning. On the other hand, a new revolutionary state is beginning to function, but overall state power has not yet been taken. Because of this transitional situation, the underworld protracted by the old state has not yet been broken.
In one attempt to this end, the CPN(M) carried out a campaign in which around 37 such people were arrested. Half dozen four-wheelers, two dozen motorbikes, a few pistols, mobile phones and other equipment were seized from them.
The moment these goons were arrested, the leaders of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), the Nepali Congress Democratic and even the home minister of the Nepali Congress Party begun to call the Maoists and asked them to release the criminals. These goons were produced before journalists. But some so-called human right activists who are harvesting dollars in the service of US imperialism and the feudal monarchy protested the arrest of these culprits.
The Nepali people are awaiting the day when the reactionary state will be wiped out and there will be no more such goons in the new Nepal.