By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS,
Kathmandu : As over 70 countries in the world Thursday begin observing the Global Week of Action Against Gun Violence, peace activists rue that even five years after the end of an armed insurrection, Nepal is still wracked by gunfire, thanks to the 1,800-km open border with India.
“There have been 1,013 incidents of violence caused by small arms in the last 17 months,” says Subodh Pyakurel, chief of Informal Sector Service Center (Insec), Nepal’s largest NGO that began monitoring small arms related violence from 2009.
“They left 745 people injured and 268 dead. We can’t be free of the terror of small arms and bombs unless we can create cross-border awareness.”
According to Insec’s surveillance report, a whopping 52 percent of the casualties occurred in Nepal’s turbulent Terai plains where armed groups have mushroomed since the fall of King Gyanendra’s army-backed government in 2006.
The reason: close proximity to two of India’s states reported to have the highest number of criminal gangs — Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
Of the 10 districts of Nepal that saw the highest incidence of small arms violence, one was capital city Kathmandu while the remaining 11 shared a border with India.
“Pistols have become a fashion statement in the Terai,” says Krishna Subedi, Insec coordinator. “They can be bought easily in the plains and as cheaply as for NRS 2,000-3,000 a piece. Even educated, well-to-do families, while wishing to have a son become an engineer and a second a doctor, would like the third to be a gun-wielder. The gun commands fear, money and even security for the family.”
Besides country-made guns, American, Chinese, Italian and German firearms are freely available in Nepal, coming from India through the main trade and transit routes of Birgunj and Nepalgunj towns.
A gun smuggled from Bihar can find its target as afar as Kathmandu, once Nepal’s most fortified city.
Satyamaya Maharjan breaks down weeping while trying to narrate how her 23-year-old son Prem Krishna was gunned down in a public place in the capital only three months ago.
Prem Krishna worked for Sipradi Trading, the sole dealers of Tata vehicles in Nepal. He was shot dead in a second-storey hall by a group of three people.
“People have been killed in public places, their own homes and in markets in the presence of hundreds of people,” says Subedi. “There is no safety anywhere.”
While personal enmity is the main reason for the violence, the second is domestic violence.
At least 169 women have been targets of the violence as well as 22 girls below 18 years and even seven children below the age of five years.
Most incidents occurred among ethnic communities where near zero-literacy rate prevails and incomes are low.
The main “season of violence” is September-October, when ironically Nepal celebrates its biggest festival Dashain, corresponding to India’s Dussehra.
In a country that pledged to eradicate violence against women last year, a most alarming thing is the rise of the armed woman attacker.
“Now 18 percent of the perpetrators are women,” says Subedi. “Though most of these attacks are retaliation in domestic violence, yet there are women wielding arms in underground groups.
“During their 10-year People’s War, the Maoists recruited women as soldiers and gave them arms training. Now some of the mushrooming armed groups too have women with guns.”
(Sudeshna Sarkar can be contacted at [email protected])