Saturday 28 June 2008

Jogging in Kathmandu

The United Nations Mission In Nepal (UNMIN) which has been monitoring and supporting the peace process in Nepal is due to wind down in a big way next month, but will maintain a reduced presence until the end of the year. Undoubtedly the Mission is to be congratulated upon achieving its aim but this has come at an unfortunate price. For to attract good staff the Mission offered salaries that were well above the local norms, stripping other aid organisations and the media of some of their best staff members. Now there are many former UNMIN staff looking for new jobs that cannot remotely offer the kind of salaries that these refugees had become used to. I was very aware of this yesterday as we interviewed 10 candidates (whittled down from 250 applicants) for two local jobs within the Trust. It would be all too easy to recruit a well qualified individual who would spend his time just feeling underpaid and undervalued to the detriment of their new-found aid organisations. I suppose this unfortunate risk is part of the price of peace.

Noting that I have put on a little weight recently I have resumed jogging - always a better alternative to abstention from food. This is quite an experience in the humidity of the monsoon but the most notable impediment is how the locals, either on foot or on bicycle, manage to get in the way so clumsily. I wonder if this is a feature of some of the locals:

  • Not understanding the subtleties of jogging and the value of a runner maintaining a constant rhythm
  • Lacking a sense of their awareness in space (as well as in time)
  • Having a perverse sense of humour

  • This morning I reflected on an earlier post in which I noted how the fuel crisis in the UK had led to less use of cars and speculated if Nepal (which has had similar price hikes) could enjoy some unexpected and much-needed environmental benefit. This came to mind as within the space of a few minutes three vehicles drove past me on my run, belching black smoke into the atmosphere. This could well be a consequence of the vehicles being driven using cheaper but adulterated fuel.

    Sometimes you never win in Nepal and if my running spares me some obesity-related illness maybe I will fall victim to a chronic respiratory disorder in its place.

    Friday 27 June 2008

    Interview of former circus girls

    I returned to Kathmandu last evening after a sobering visit to our branch office in Hetauda in the central south of Nepal. I had been in the company of Dean Nelson, South Asia correspondent with the UK's largest Sunday newspaper, The Sunday Times. Dean wanted to interview five of the girls who had been released from The Raj Mahal Circus (see my post of 16th June) and were now back home in the vicinity of Hetauda. The girls were more relaxed than at the time of their rescue and were now speaking freely. One girl told how she'd gone to the circus at the age of 5 and had spent 12 years inside. After her years of imprisonment the rural poverty of home seemed like a wondrous world to her. Another girl told us how they only received pocket money in return for their arduous and dangerous working routine - she guessed she'd been given a total of about £8 in the ten years that she'd been trapped inside the circus. The girls talked of their performances, the most frightening of which was the act in which they have their hands tied behind their back to be spun around the inside of the big top holding on by their teeth to a piece of cloth at the end of a rope. One of the girls had fallen and was lucky to survive. This accident literally grounded her for three months.

    Most sobering was the girls' descriptions of the deaths inside the circus. A girl had died from jaundice and her body had been buried somewhere. A few months later her mother turned up to see her daughter and was understandably distraught to learn of her daughter's fate. She refused to accept the circus' offer of financial "compensation". Two lads had died as a result of a trapeze fall. Their bodies were cremated and that was the end of them. They recounted how one boy had escaped from the circus to later return of his own volition. His punishment was a public beating (used as a deterrent for the rest of the troupe) that left his limbs broken. He was then removed from the circus. The girls believe he was left on a railway track.

    The face of modern day slavery is ugly in the extreme. I hope we can continue to break the hold of the circuses over the children that they abuse and I look forward to our next rescue in August. The coverage in The Sunday Times (expected to be on 6 July) will hopefully help us to raise the funds that we so desperately need to continue our fight.

    Returning home via Simra airport I was ready for some amusement after three hours' worth of very grim stories. There was some levity when I saw the garden outside the departure lounge. Tiny as it was, a huge and inappropriately-sited noticeboard proclaimed this (rather weed infested) garden's maintenance to be a joint venture between a soap manufacturer (Vatika) and the Civil Aviation Office. Obviously the scale of the task was too much for one of these to be able to fund it in isolation. And the ostentatious signboard guaranteed to undermine any aesthetic improvement that might have gained through the gardener's labours.

    Wednesday 25 June 2008

    The sun in eclipse

    I was rather mystified to see a strange bird outside my window yesterday morning. Consulting my guide book I realised that it was my old friend the purple sunbird which feeds on nectar from the flowers in the hedge. Normally a lustrous purple he is now in so called "eclipse" plumage and looking rather dowdy. Just like my dogs have been as they changed their coats before the monsoon.

    Today I will entertain a two day visit from Dean Nelson, South Asia correspondent for The Sunday Times newspaper in the UK. Dean is following up our rescue at The Raj Mahal Circus (see my post
    of 16th June). Speaking to him by phone he expressed justifiable reservations in the antics of so many non-governmental organisations who grab headlines (and funds) through similar "raid and rescue" operations only to cut loose afterwards those that they have rescued. In this regard they do more harm than good.

    I will be proud to show him how we follow up our cases and give girls options that empower them and reduce the risk of their ever being trafficked again.

    Tuesday 24 June 2008

    The Gangetic Dolphin

    When I visited Bardia National Park in April (see my post of 4th April) I had hoped to see the Gangetic Dolphin that I had been fortunate to spot on a previous visit there four years ago. The river safari drew a blank with the guides stating that it had probably moved downstream into India. I suspected the truth was darker than that. My guess was somewhat confirmed by this picture that appeared in today's Kathmandu Post, an image that saddened me beyond words.

    The Gangetic Dolphin has been taken to the edge of extinction by the damming of rivers in hydroelectric projects and through illegal hunting. I am not sure what can be done, if anything, to save it. Mere "raising of awareness" through education is not going to be enough at this late stage, least of all in the poor communities that are home to its potential hunters. Perhaps the only raising of awareness that might work in the short term is some long prison sentences.

    Monday 23 June 2008

    Truth and untruth in Nepal

    Today my colleague Shailaja was telling me how a young lady that the Trust is about to assist has come up with three very differing stories regarding her background and predicament - no need to go into the details of her case and all the stories are probably rubbish anyway. I report this merely to illustrate how difficult it is to conduct field work in Nepal and get to the bottom of things.

    You could unkindly label this as being a problem of endemic lying but never make the mistake of calling a Nepali a liar. That's not culturally acceptable even if the evidence to that effect is crystal clear. This apparently dishonest behaviour seems to be more a case of a question posed receiving a number of different answers to see which is most palatable to the inquirer. Or a process of testing which reply is most likely to be suitable to get someone out of a tight spot even if his or her range of answers undermines belief in any of them. I think this all illustrates a kind of emotional immaturity that seems to be commonplace within Nepalese society and which is reflected in a range of other behavioural patterns (e.g. the rampant teasing of animals and children).

    Given this trend it is remarkable that anyone passes a school examination that requires straight answers to straight questions. But today I learn that 64% of Nepalese 16 year olds (ish) passed The School Leavers Certificate (SLC) examination that was sat in April. This examination is the passport to higher education; those who fail are condemned to a life of manual labour and low income jobs. Amongst their number this year was young Bina Paudel, the first of our refuge children to pass the examination, doing so at "second division" (passes are graded into four categories - distinction, first, second and third). Bina has been staying at our Bhairahawa refuge but in recognition of her success and through the generous support of an anonymous UK sponsor she'll now be transferring to Kathmandu to start college. Two years hence I expect she'll set an example to her younger brothers and sisters by progressing to university and the prospect of a profession. I am very proud of her indeed.

    Friday 20 June 2008

    The answer to Nepal's corruption

    In my post of 11th June I described Minister for Forest and Soil Conservation Matrika Prasad Yadav as being "controversial"; perhaps in the light of the latest news this was rather an uncharacteristic understatement on my part. For Yadav is now at the centre of a storm of protest.

    The problem began a few days ago when Yadav locked Lalitpur Local Development Officer Dandu Raj Ghimire in a Ministry toilet for one and a half hours. One might suspect that this bizarre behaviour could be a consequence of this Maoist minister still feeling flushed with his party's success in the recent elections. However in reality it was in response to Ghimire allowing an illegal quarry to continue to operate in a forest area in spite of a ban on the activity being imposed by Yadav. Ghimire has taken exception to the Minister's unorthodox action and civil servants have been on strike in his support, protesting Yadav's behaviour that has been described by some as being "harsh and unbecoming", by others as "inhuman and unlawful". The protestors have demanded a public apology (a popular outcry in this part of the world) or worse protests will follow. A defiant Yadav has responded by declaring that a toilet was the only right place for "corrupt and anti-environment persons".

    I do have to wonder if a large part of the indignation is due to Yadav being an ethnic Indian (Madhesi) having had the temerity to humiliate a true blue ethnic Nepali (and a Brahmin to boot) like Ghimire - the protesting civil servants will be by and large themselves also be ethnic Nepalis. I could never condone the denial of someone's freedom without the involvement of the police, but in Yadav's defence at least the unfortunate Ghimire's detention was not entirely "inhuman" as at it didn't risk putting him in a tight spot in respect of a call of nature. And it has inspired me to propose a totally original solution to the problem of Nepal's widespread corruption...

    Build bigger toilets.

    Thursday 19 June 2008

    Raid on the Raj Mahal Circus

    Here is the film I shot of last Friday's raid on The Raj Mahal Circus in Maharashtra State, southern India.

    Wednesday 18 June 2008

    Miss Nepal

    An advertisement and application form for the Miss Nepal 2008 competition appears on the back page of today's Himalayan Times newspaper. It states that candidates should be "attractive" (that seems to make some kind of sense) and of "good moral character". After advising that only women in the age range of 19-25 should apply there is a space for the parent's signature to indicate that they have no objection to their daughter participating in the competition. This strikes me as being arguably a little prissy while hundreds of Nepali girls whose parents couldn't care less are trafficked into the sex trade either across the border into India or to the tourist hotspots of Kathmandu.

    Equally surreal was my spotting at the weekend an anti child labour poster inside The Raj Mahal Circus (see my post of 16th June) in the midst of the Circus's gross abuse and exploitation of child performers. This was a cunning attempt to deceive their public, but then again perhaps those circus people are not quite so clever as they think they are. I learned last evening that through our efforts the Raj Mahal's manager is now in jail pending investigation of his use of child/bonded labour.

    Tuesday 17 June 2008

    Travel tips for India

    Or more accurately what to avoid...

    Let's start with Akola, Maharashtra State, in the south of India which is where the ill-fated Raj Mahal Circus was playing (see yesterday's post). I looked very hard when I was there to see anything that was remotely interesting either aesthetically or historically. To no avail. But if you happen to pass through by ill chance I would steer well clear of "The Venus International Hotel". You can spot it by the very grim concrete toadstools that are sprouting from flower beds outside its front windows. Even more tacky is the relief sculpture to be found behind reception. After you've checked in you'll find that the sculpture foreshadows even worse to come. In spite of the "International" name in its title the hotel doesn't offer international phone calls so when I was there I couldn't phone home to Nepal. The restaurant is geared for a vegan diet so cautious omnivores can't even opt for one of the safer dietary bets in India, the plain omelette for breakfast. The greatest horror though is that the hotel doesn't serve alcohol in spite of the wine glasses that appear enticingly in the aforementioned relief sculpture. The only consolation I could take from the long hours spent on the circus rescue at the end of last week was the small amount of residual time that was left to me to spend at the hotel.

    I suppose there's not much chance of you passing through Akola (and I expect less so now after reading this post) however if you travel to India it's hard to avoid visiting Delhi airport. It is a real mess at the moment as the airport is being rebuilt to a grandiose design. Signboards everywhere request the visitor's understanding of any inconvenience with the promise of a better tomorrow. I remain unconvinced by this prospect as in spite of an improvement in airport infrastructure the problem will remain of the facilities being continued to be used by Air India. The ineptitude of Air India beggars belief. On the return trip from Akola I took a domestic flight with them from Nagpur to Delhi before connecting with the onward flight to Kathmandu. My suitcase was delivered to me absolutely soaked through. When I complained to the head of the baggage handlers (the highly indifferent, unblinking Ms Sangeeta Bawa) she told me that this was a result of heavy rain. It's not as if the monsoon is an unexpected arrival in this part of the world, but aside from that point of detail, I asserted that the state of my luggage was because Air India had failed to care for it properly in the inclement weather. She refused to accept this, but the picture I took shortly afterwards (right) of Air India baggage handlers operating in the pouring rain shows who was right and who was being downright dishonest.

    I can't get too upset about damage to material things - although you will be relieved to learn that my suitcase seemed to dry out satisfactorily in the end. What bothers me is the indifference shown by people like the baggage handlers and Ms Bawa to their fellows. While I have come across many fantastic people in India (some were with me on the rescue mission) there seem at times to be many more who don't give two hoots about anyone else in that populous society. That is not far removed from the mentality of the trafficker and for that matter of those who elect to do nothing to right the wrongs of society. While this mentality remains extant those of us who are fighting trafficking will continue to do so as part of an uphill battle.

    Monday 16 June 2008

    Raid on The Raj Mahal Circus

    I have a confession and apology to make. In my posts of last week I wrote that I would be going to a circus rescue operation near Calcutta. This was a deliberate piece of misinformation, just in the (albeit unlikely) eventuality that someone with links to the Indian circus industry might be numbered amongst my readers. Instead the plan was to go to The Raj Mahal Circus which was playing at Akola, near Nagpur in central southern India. We wanted to be sure of total suprise so we didn't inform the child performers' families beforehand (often in the past someone from the families has tipped off the circus) and I decided to mislead through this Blog if I possibly could. Sorry about that...

    We had a score to settle with this particular circus as a previous rescue attempt last year had failed (see my posts of 19th/20th August) due to indifference - and most likely the corruption - of the local authorities in the region in which it had been playing at the time. Moreover the Raj Mahal Circus is one of the four circuses owned by Fateh Khan who is the most exploitative of all the circus owners. His son, Raza, is currently facing rape charges for offences at one of his other circuses. Fateh Khan is a very dangerous man and recently he has further empowered himself by taking a leading role in North Indian politics.

    I left on Thursday lunchtime, accompanied by journalist Pranaya Rana and photographer Min Ratna Bajracharya of the Nepali Times. We flew to Nagpur via Delhi, and in the end also via Hyderabad as monsoon weather in Nagpur prevented us from landing there initially. Eventually we got to Nagpur and drove through the night to join the rest of the team in Akola at 5.30 a.m. on Friday morning. Meeting Kelvin Symon of ChildLine India Foundation I was told that we would be going to the police at 6.30, one hour later; the police would raid the circus at 7.00 a.m. He was quietly confident of success, following the clear cooperation that the advance party had received from the authorities over the previous few days. Kelvin was already beaming with pleasure as he had been part of the team that had been rebuffed last August and revenge would be sweet.

    The raid went like a dream with 20 performers being released without any resistance. Of these 17 were female. One of the males was 43 years old; he had gone to the circus to find work and they wouldn't let him leave again so we readily agreed that he could walk out through the gates with us as well. Of the 20 releasees, 13 were minors (under 18). Six releasees were from Nepal itself and the remainder were (mainly ethnic Nepali) Indian nationals from West Bengal.

    Raids always throw up surprises in what one finds and this time a big surprise came in the form of the presence of two foreign female performers, one American the other Italian, who were on short contracts. When I chatted to them it was clear that they had no idea of what was going on around them. They were kept largely separate from the rest of the troupe and allowed to leave the circus to go into town. They didn't know of the rape and violence of the Kahn circuses and never heard of Fateh Khan. Nor did they realise that the other girls weren't being paid. One of them asked me what the attraction of Nepalese girls was and when I said it was their fair skin I could see the penny drop with her. A white girl in a leotard is a great crowd puller for all the wrong reasons.

    A key element to the success of the operation was the presence of a barrister, Nandita Rao, on the team. She ensured that everything was done by the book and in accordance with Indian law which is crystal clear on the definition and management of child labour and bonded labour. All of the releasees were modern day slaves and now that the paperwork to that effect has been completed meticulously under Nandita's supervision I am quite confident that the circus owner, Fateh Khan, will go to prison for his crimes.

    The circus had been taken entirely by surprise which is perhaps why the raid was so unopposed. But later on in the day one of Khan's brothers turned up on a motor bike outside the police station and threatened some of the team members. The feisty Nandita Rao chased him off telling him that he'd better leave quickly or she would report him to the police for attempting to interrupt a police investigation. For the remainder of the day circus people watched us from jeeps and motor bikes in a continued attempt to intimidate us. In their number was one guy whom my colleague Shailaja (who was on the August 2007 rescue) remembered as having threatened to kill her if she returned to the circus. In spite of all this posturing we knew that we were safe as the police were on our side. Instead we were rather amused that the circus had been so unsettled by our success and no doubt also by the prospect of criminal convictions.

    This week all of the releasees will be returned home with a police escort the whole way to their final destination to prevent circus retaliation or abduction. Then we'll help them to rejoin the human race. One girl showed us the marks on her hands which followed cuts received from the trapeze act having been cauterised by the ringmaster using molten wax so that the show could go on. His sordid show is now doomed to close forever.

    I feel very proud to have been part of this operation, especially seeing the dedication and commitment of my colleagues. Over those couple of days the team members ate little or no food and worked around the clock. I have an abiding memory of seeing Nandita sleeping in the open in the midst of all the girls in a police courtyard. She told me afterwards that she is immune to the mosquitoes that were devouring the rest of us. Below I publish some film that I shot of the girls leaving the circus for good. I will edit my film footage over the next few days and publish a fuller version towards the end of the week.


    Wednesday 11 June 2008

    Farewell to Holly

    Today I invited volunteer Holly Wheaton, who is due to leave the team on Friday, for a farewell lunch. Holly is a gap year student who has been taking a year out prior to going to Warwick University in the UK this September. Many gap year students elect to travel around the world enjoying a prolonged holiday after school. Personally though, I think that this crucial time is better spent in character-forming activities if appropriate challenges can be found. Holly has had just such an experience in that we placed her for several months in a remote part of Nepal (Bhairahawa) and asked her to help teach deaf school leavers mosaic art. She rose to that challenge and has been outstanding; she's enjoyed herself immensely as well.

    Everyone will miss Holly over here and we look forward to her keeping her promise to come back to Nepal next Summer.

    Circus visit

    I am leaving Kathmandu first thing tomorrow morning to join the team in India for a circus rescue operation. The target circus, which is in the area of Calcutta, has minors within its troupe. Hopefully we'll enjoy good cooperation from the local authorities and bring all of them home to Nepal and to the possibility of a real future.

    Chances are I won't be posting for a few days.

    Pollution and protest

    Faced with a growing fuel crisis in Nepal the Government has allowed the State-owned Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) to increase the price of petroleum products - petrol, diesel and kerosene - as of yesterday. The price hikes have been substantial, with increases of up to 28%. However so heavily have the prices been capped by the Government in the past (well below the import price) these increases are still not going to be enough to allow the debt-ridden NOC to even come close to breaking even. The problem is that in the past when prices have been raised street protests have erupted compelling the Government has had to back down and reverse the decision. I think this time around the Government is hoping to increase the cost by stages and hope that no one will notice.

    There were protests in Kathmandu yesterday but fairly minor ones and I suspect these will soon blow over as everyone knows that prices can't be held so artificially low. The problem of course is that there is a huge knock-on effect in terms of general price rises which will be felt acutely in a country that is already so poor. The only consolation I can see is that in the UK where there have also been huge price rises at the pumps and long queues apparently petrol sales have dropped by 20% as people make less use of their cars. That has to have a huge benefit for the environment and polluted Kathmandu would certainly benefit from fewer vehicles on the road.

    The Maoists as the leading party in the country have always said that they will turn Nepal into a prosperous nation. They have to be given the benefit of the doubt over this pledge, as this is their first time in power and every other party in the past has failed the nation. However these soaring costs of fuel won't help them to achieve their goals. That's but one of the challenges. The major one is to somehow engineer a sea change in people's attitudes to reform society along a healthy socialist agenda. To show concern for others many in the Nepali public have to escape from a "compound wall" mentality where so commonly people keep the confines of the compound wall that surrounds their house neat and tidy, while happily throwing rubbish over the other side. A reflection of this is the pollution of the "sacred" Bagmati river that runs through Kathmandu. Crossing the Bagmati bridge yesterday (I had to abandon my vehicle which had been caught in a traffic jam because of street protests) I took the picture on the right of the rubbish that is blatantly tipped into the stinking river. The Maoist leader, Prachanda, has said that he will clean up the Bagmati but this is a Herculean task which reflects in microcosm the difficulties his party will experience throughout Nepal purely as a result of people's inconsiderate attitudes.

    It's not just the Nepalis who need to get real about our obligations to save the planet. Recently I saw a grant application form from a UK Trust that invites applicant charities to state what they are doing to reduce their carbon footprint. Immediately I could think of how The Esther Benjamins Trust has established a biogas facility at the school for deaf children in Bhairahawa and how we are embracing Skype technology (webcam-based internet communication) that may allow us to hold Trustee meetings without travelling from home or my having to return from Nepal. Not all organisations within the sector are giving a due amount of thought to such issues. I was impressed to read that the Absolute Return for Kids (ARK) charity held a fundraising gala dinner in London at the weekend that raised £25 million. Then upon further reading I noted that one of the auction prizes was a private jet flight to a vineyard in France to pick up some cases of wine. There's something worthy of protest.

    Sunday 8 June 2008

    Shiva reincarnated

    Passing the shop sign in Kathmandu today I was reminded of a story that appeared in The Himalayan Times of last week:











    Even more shocking was a report in today's Himalayan Times that states the central zoo is looking to relocate to an area that will allow it room for expansion. The locals out in lovely Godawari are pitching to provide a suitable site, the argument being that Godawari is already home to such a fabulous range of flora and fauna (which it is). So what better case can there be to concrete over a lot of it and turn it into a haven for moronic day trippers to come and tease - or as I have personally witnessed in the past throw stones at - caged animals? So often I have heard dewy-eyed Nepalis wax lyrical about the beauties of their nation. But I think in many ways it takes an outsider who has seen around a bit to appreciate just what a special place this is with its rich ecology. And maybe it needs an outsider to help educate the locals who see it as their birthright to do what they will in the midst of Nepal's beautiful fragility.

    Thursday 5 June 2008

    In the Nepal news today

    Further to my "Heroes" post of last month, this appeared on the cover of today's Kathmandu Post:

    Some light reading in Nepal

    Some time ago a friend in the development sector, who had lived for many years in Nepal, offered me his secret for preserving sanity and staying calm. That was to always have a good book readily to hand, given the amount of time that one can spend sitting around outside people's offices. Others can waste your time here with alacrity in what can become a little game of status and power play. So I have decided to use my "spare time" here productively by working through some of the classics of literature. Recent reads have included Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" (which provided a template for one of my film favourites of all time, "Apocalypse Now"), Virginia Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway" (that inspired another outstanding film "The Hours") and the one that I finished last evening, F Scott Fitzgerald's staggering book "The Great Gatsby". It is intriguing to note the influence that Conrad's work must have had on early 2oth Century literature. For Conrad (whose first language was Polish) wrote so well and was in style so ahead of his times that there are clear echoes of his writing in the other two novels that I mention.

    At the end of Heart of Darkness, the central character, Kurtz, who has been living amidst the surreal savagery (most of which has originated from cruel and exploitative European colonial influences) of the eldritch Congo jungle exclaims in his dying breath "The horror, the horror!" The same cri de coeur could justifiably be uttered in Nepal when you see what those who masquerade as human beings inflict upon others whom they perceive as lesser beings. As an example, I need look no further than today's Himalayan Times newspaper report on how the police have bust a human trafficking ring that was sending vulnerable Nepalese girls into India. There the girls would have a kidney stolen from them, then enter sham marriages with the traffickers only to be subsequently dumped in brothels. Can it get much worse?

    The date for our forthcoming circus rescue has been slipping each day but now it's looking good for Wednesday of next week, most likely in Calcutta area. Hopefully we'll be successful in retrieving scores of trafficked Nepalese girls from a different kind of horror.

    I must remember to pack a good book.

    Tuesday 3 June 2008

    Land of the Tiger

    The girls at our Himalayan Mosaics workshop are now producing smaller and more detailed mosaics. This makes these exquisite mosaics easier to sell to tourists, who might have limited packing space, and cheaper to export. The latest designs of Nepali flora and fauna by my wife Bev seem to have developed along a tiger theme. Pictured right (awaiting grouting) is a tiger orchid, a common tiger and plain tiger butterfly and, er, a tiger. All mosaics are a mere 18 cm by 15 cm. Most excitingly we are now producing our own hand made tiles which are cut up to make the mosaics. This will increase the range of colours that are available. If anyone would like to order a mosaic or mosaics (and give a survivor of child trafficking employment) then just drop me a line.

    Recently a supporter in the UK tested what I consider to be a fairly unreliable postal service by sending us a modest consignment of clothes for the children at our refuges. Yesterday the clothes were received in Kathmandu and they were put straight away to good use by the boys in the picture below. This means so much to us as the quality of locally available clothes is poor and the need is great given the 170 kids that we are looking after at the moment. If you'd like to follow this supporter's example (and are prepared to risk the loss of second hand clothes that would be subsequently untraceable) then please post what you've got to:

    The Esther Benjamins Memorial Foundation
    PO Box 26050
    Sundhara
    Kathmandu
    Nepal

    Thanks!

    Monday 2 June 2008

    Red on Red

    Now that the Constituent Assembly has been elected the political process in Nepal can now move forward. Right? Wrong...
    The Nepali political tradition of wrangling over top government posts continues. The largest party, the Maoists, are claiming the moral right to the appointments of both President and Prime Minister, while the other mainstream parties are saying that it should be one or the other. The Maoists have responded by saying that if they don't get their way within a couple of days they'll withdraw from government and take to the streets. And today the conservative Nepali Congress party has retaliated by calling a rally next week. And so it goes on. With all this infighting going on it is quite remarkable that anyone in the Constituent Assembly can manage some sleep, but the newly-elected highly-paid member pictured right managed to grab forty winks against the odds.

    Meanwhile, over the weekend Maoist Chairman Prachanda warned the press - specifically The Kathmandu Post - to refrain from criticising his party or to face the consequences. Needless to say this sent a huge shiver through the media. I have to write that I fully support press freedom, however over the years I have found myself on the receiving end of inaccurate and vicious press reporting that has been baseless. In Nepal this has been the result of disgruntled former staff members making unsubstantiated allegations in a bid to get "revenge" and the papers love to print sensational stories here without risk of penalty. For me it's a case of liberty yes, license no.

    It remains to be seen how the Maoists manage power in whatever manifestation that takes. I am hopeful that once things settle down the good relationships we have enjoyed with Maoist commanders at local level will extend to the centre. Last week Shailaja at our Kathmandu refuge received a threatening call from someone in the home district of a girl trafficking agent that we were involved in apprehending in March. Purporting to be a Maoist area commander, essentially his message was that the agent (who to escape justice claims to have senior Maoist connections) wished to apologise and be given a chance to amend her ways. Perhaps her enlightenment could be the result of her being currently in jail pending trial and facing the prospect of a conviction that could mean a 20 year sentence. When he followed up his call with a visit to Shailaja he was very unsettled to be introduced to pukka local Maoist personnel. After an exchange of opinions he returned home to carry out "further investigations". I doubt if he will be back again.

    If the Maoists nationally can support our anti trafficking work - as their mainstream predecessors have failed to do in the past - then maybe we can begin to win the "fight" that I have referred to in previous posts.