Feature

By Angilee Shah

Nepalese Americans and the Coup

When the King of Nepal declared a state of emergency and ousted the democratically-elected government on Feb. 1, the story was not exactly big news for the American press.

"No one in the US outside the Indian and Nepalese community knows what is happening in Nepal," says Roger Adhikari, a Nepalese American in Northern California.

For Nepalis like Adhikari, King Gyanendra's coup meant much more than three inches on the world news page though. Adhikari, who came to the States from Nepal in the early 80s and now lives in Tracy, California, has a vested interest in the country of his birth. His parents live in the Kathmandu Valley and for one week after the coup he was unable to get in touch with them. "I was worried and I'm still worried," he says.

King Gyanendra's take-over was predicated on the fact that the democratically-elected government had, as yet, been unable to curb a violent conflict between Maoist communist rebels and the constitutional monarchy that has been going on since 1996. Gyanendra says his power-grab is about containing Maoist terrorism, even if he has to use Nepalese miltary might to put down uprisings and political agitation.

While Adhikari does not feel that his parents are in imminent danger because they are not politically active, he worries about where the country is headed. "The King taking power in his hand basically means he has cut political parties from the reconciliation," a move Adhikari says leaves the people, especially the middle class, out of the process.

Dr. Tara Niraula, a senior research fellow at Columbia University in New York and thirteen-year US resident, says he too could not get in touch with his parents and brothers who live rural areas in the northeast part of Nepal. "Communication was non-existent for some days," he says.

Niraula, who is the president of the America-Nepal Friendship Society, says Nepalese Americans always worry about their families back home. "We are always concerned about our families in Nepal -- not just because of the Feb. 1 coup, but because of the ongoing Maoist insurgencies," he says.

Since the Feb. 1 coup, the Nepalese army has been given permission to execute and detain political agitators. Many activists, including leaders of major political parties, have been detained or exiled. As security forces continue their violent containment campaign, Maoist violence has also increased in kind.

Nepalese media outlets are particularly restricted according to the King's directives -- all news reports have been filtered since King declared that the press not report on anything "that goes against the letter and spirit of the Royal Proclamation." News from Nepal has been scarce: "There is a lot of violence which most of us do not know about because of the restrictions on the media," says Niraula.

The concerns of Nepalese Americans are not unsubstantiated; Adhikari's brother, now a student in the US, spent one month in a Nepalese jail in the late 80s when security forces mistook him for a political activist. Niraula has been wanting to go home and see his family in Nepal for six or seven years, but has not been able to do so because of the dangers involved. "If you don't support the [Maoist] campaign, you become a target. If you come from America you become a clear target," he says.

A coup of information

The lack of awareness about Nepal is dangerous, says Adhikari, because of the violence that can occur while the world is looking away. He points to genocide in Rwanda and worries that, as violence in Nepal escalates, the world might not take notice.

Adhikari says over 11,000 people have been killed in six years of Maoist insurgencies while countless others are missing and in detention: "The situation is very grim, yet there is no exposure." Since the coup, Adhikari says, the Nepalese army has been committing the same sorts of violence that Maoist rebels committed for years. Adhikari hopes the he and members of his organization will be able to express these concerns in the media.

Internet newsgroups and weblogs have begun to fill the information void since the coup. Adhikari is a part of several Internet newsgroups and informal networks which include Nepalis from around the world. "I get all sorts of information," says Adhikari, including personal notes about missing or detained relatives, appeals from Nepalese parties and institutions and notices of events around the country. NANC, a non-political group for which Adhikari is the secretary, for example, is hosting a public affairs symposium called "Democrats, Maoists and the Monarchy: Nepal at the Crossroads," March 12 at UC Berkeley.

Like many others, Adhikari and Thapa rely on Indian newspapers and the BBC for information they used to be able to read in Nepalese newspapers, such as Nepalnews.com and The Kantipur Times. Adhikari reads a news aggregator based outside of Nepal, nepalnews.net, to surf international coverage of the coup.

While phone lines have been restored, he says that his parents do not really know what is happening throughout the country either because the news they get is censored by security forces. "In Kathmandu, they're not really hearing anything." Adhikari's parents only know what the government allows them to know -- which means they do not know about detentions and executions nor do they know that the situation is getting worse. "In Kathmandu," Adhikari says, "they say everything is fine."

Thapa says it is likely that the international community is also not getting the full story. "Normally bad news travels fast," he says, "so [the situation] seems scarier than what it is. Only certain places and certain things get covered." Thapa says more coverage would have been useful, though, in the days after the coup. For one week Thapa, who has lived in the US for ten years, had no contact with his family in Nepal and had little idea of what was really happening.

Community stances

The Nepalese American community, which is 70,000 to 80,000 strong according to some estimates, is politically diverse and thus has not taken a clear stance against the coup; Adhikari, who is the co-founder and president of Nepalese for Peace, Democracy and Economic Development -- a Northern California group organized in response to the Feb. 1 coup -- says, "There is no united front -- the community is very divided."

He says he knows of some Nepalese Americans in the San Francisco area who are raising funds for the Maoists and others in various online newsgroups who support the coup; those Nepalis, he says, are disillusioned with the idea of democracy because of how corrupt the democratic forces in Nepal had become. Most Nepalese Americans who actively speak out, however, support democracy and civil liberties in Nepal. They write to US elected officials, support organizations like Adhikari's and send money to the ousted political parties in Nepal.

Niraula says there were several small protest rallies in New York and Washington, DC following the coup where Nepalese Americans urged the international community to take action to restore democracy. While he has heard that there are Nepalese Americans who support the King, he has yet to actually meet anyone who openly voices that opinion.

"The majority of the Nepalese people here disagree with the King taking over," says Niraula. He too disagrees with the coup: "I personally feel that sidelining democracy is a mistake." Instead, he says, the King should work with democratic forces to negotiate with the Maoists.

Sujit Thapa is the former president of the Nepal Association of Northern California (NANC) and founder of Society for Open Nepal, a group that hopes to create educational opportunities in Nepal through the introduction of technology. While NANC does not take a side politically, Thapa says Nepalese Americans have reacted with various degrees or support for and dissent against the coup. Some Nepalese Americans want to give King Gyanendra a chance to stop the Maoist insurgency. "Personally, I don't really support this," says Thapa. "Ideally, I would want democracy, probably through international mediation."

Change from within the country would be difficult to accomplish because of the restrictions placed on activism since the coup. While Society for Open Nepal conducts educational programs, political organizations with ties to Nepal are conducting themselves conservatively, says Thapa. Nepalese Americans, by and large, cannot travel to Nepal because of the instability and Nepalese cannot speak out for themselves. In the face of detentions and executions, "I don't think a lot of people would want to be politically active," says Thapa.

Thapa worries that the coup will pull efforts away from making peace with the Maoists. "How is the King's move going to be sustained?" he asks. Government resources are being shifted away from creating peace to other things such as detentions, threats and army control of the media. Like Adhikari, he worries about the future of Nepal and the uncertainty of the current situation.

Adhikari has fond childhood memories of the King in Nepal, but he also believes that the days of totalitarian regimes working are long gone. "I am absolutely against the coup," he says. "I believe in peace and democracy and national reconciliation."

Adhikari's organization, Nepalese for Peace, Democracy and Economic Development, hopes to help accomplish just that: "Part of our agenda is to speak with [California] Representative Tom Lantos," a meeting expected to happen mid-March. The group, whose membership includes students from UC Berkeley and concerned US citizens from Nepal, seeks to influence the State Department to take an interest in the coup and "also to bring awareness of the Nepal situation" to Americans, says Adhikari.

Niraula says that the international community, however, is between a rock and a hard place. The King, he says, has created a "with us or against us" situation; if the international community -- namely the US, the UK and India -- takes action against King Gyanendra, they would be indirectly helping the Maoist cause. If they do not take action, they indirectly support the coup.

Niraula says that he does not believe there is a military solution to Nepal's troubles or the Maoist problem. He advocates international intervention to negotiate with the King and allow discussions to resume between all three parties -- the King, democratically-elected officials and Maoists. "I think it's high-time the international community came together and worked with democratic forces in Nepal," Niraula says.

Angilee Shah is a freelance journalist in Southern California and Editor of ABCDlady.

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