The accidental revolution tourist…

…is what I should have called this blog, if I’d thought of it.

I set off here knowing that there were ongoing political problems and that a few day’s strike was planned from the 4th April. But these didn’t seem that out of the ordinary. Everything I’d read on the Thorntree (O, oracle of backpackers!) suggested that strikes caused a certain amount of inconvenience (like cancelled buses) but were no big deal.

Maybe if I knew a lot more about Nepalese politics I’d have realised that this one was different, but I’m not and I didn’t. Although it has to be said, I’m learning a lot more about them now. I don’t think I have EVER read local papers so avidly while abroad. In fact except for around the UK election in ’97 I don’t think I’ve ever read any papers so avidly at all. And to be honest, the British Embassy didn’t know.

And all the backpackers are doing it. The cafes have English language newspapers and you’ll see backpackers in all of them hoovering up the news. Maybe it’s a handy social prop because they’ve got no-one to talk to, but normally travellers would be using their copies of The Alchemist (or The Da Vinci Code for the less spiritual).

No-one knows what’s going to happen, of course. Certainly not me with my formerly demonstrated lack of expertise. But it really is starting to look as if this one is going to the finish. The Bandh, or general strike, originally planned for a few days, is now in its 14th day, with no end in sight. There have been huge demonstrations all over the country. Daily. There have been women’s demonstrations, doctors’ demonstrations, lawyers’ demonstrations. I mean LAWYERS, for fuck’s sake. They are not a bunch of people known as radical political firebrands.

It’s just building more and more momentum. The finance workers came out and demonstrated. The doctors and nurses came out and demonstrated. The tourism workers came out and demonstrated. The police and army responded from the beginning with ‘unreasonable force’. But then that’s par for the course for the Nepalese security forces. They’ve been arresting and beating demonstrators, shooting at the crowds, beating up journalists for taking pictures. Foreigners are supposedly safe, but they’re not immune. The police arrested and beat up an American doctor who’d set up a clinic to treat the wounded.

There’s even been a demonstration of families of security personnel, with the families walking at the front of the demonstration, going, ‘Come on, beat US up then.’ At a rally yesterday the father (Sobhat Raj Basnet) of a senior police official spoke out against the police.

On Monday government and parliament staff staged a walk out and demonstration. And the staff of the Supreme Court. Now 25 of the civil servants have been arrested. They are from the Home Ministry (Like the Home Office) One’s a secretary of the department. They are arresting former congressmen. Bank staff were arrested when as a piece of direct action staff refused to cash a cheque for a government minister. Now the banks have all joined the strike.

I’m no expert on revolutions. How much longer is this sustainable?

It seems like the ‘seven political parties’ think the end is in sight and are determined to get there. And people now are talking about a republic, when before they wanted a democracy with a constitutional monarchy. Either I’m going to be watching a revolution take place, or god knows what is going to happen. In fact, that’s exactly what the Indian envoy to Nepal said to the Kathmandu Post. They asked him what he thought was going to happen and he said ‘God knows’.

The US, the UN, India and China have all told the King that democracy must be restored and that the repression will have to stop. But he seems to carry on oblivious. The only things that can happen now are the King has an unimaginable change of heart, the security forces decide to switch sides in an unusual sort of military coup, or somehow international pressure forces change. I get the impression people here are kind of expecting the middle one.

For those of you who, like me, are not experts on Nepalese politics, here’s a bit of background.

A Nepal history Primer

I advise you right now to get your heads round the idea that it’s all very grand guignol.. Particularly as we get up to the present day. If this was the plot of a book everyone would say it was too ridiculous.

Nepal became a unified kingdom in 1769 (before that it was millions of little mountain fiefdoms). That King then founded the Shah dynasty, who have sort of ruled Nepal ever since.

I say sort of, because in 1846 a noble called Jung Bahadur massacred all the other nobles (apart from the King) and seized power. For reasons best known to himself, young Jung kept the King as a figurehead but established himself as the ‘hereditary Prime Minister’. An interesting wheeze and frankly I’m sure we all pray that old Tony knows less about Nepalese history than I do.

Jung changed his surname to Rana, ‘cos he thought it sounded more classy. And the Ranas ruled over their kingdom of serfs for 100 years. They kept the country isolated (not too difficult to be honest, when you’ve got the highest mountains in the world as your bouncers) and lived like, well, Kings.

In 1950, the forgotten official Shah ruler of the country, King Tribhuvan escaped from his palace. You’ve got to wonder what these ‘Kings’ were doing for 100 years. Just haunting the palace shadows, being Kingly but utterly pointless? Muttering to themselves and tending roses in the palace gardens? A bit like Prince Charles I suppose. They’ve named an airport after him now.

Anyway, Nepal is obviously a buffer zone between India and China, the two Asian superpowers, which is presumably why it still exists. The Indians decided to stick their oar in, helped King Trib to escape and returned him to the country the next year as head of an unelected mixed-bag government of Ranas and members of the Nepal Congress Party.

There’s then a bit of shilly-shallying around, King Trib dies and in 1959 new King Mahendra is obliged to hold elections for a new parliament. You’d think these Shahs would be used to not actually running anything, but maybe that 100 years of impotence still rankles. The King didn’t seem to quite get the point of democracy and a year later he decides he doesn’t like the new government. So, naturally he arrests the cabinet, bans political parties and installs himself as absolute monarch.

After a bit he introduces a semi-democratic panchayat system, with local councils electing representatives for district councils, who choose half the people in the National Panchayat. Obviously the King chooses the other half and political parties are still banned.

Mahendra dies after a bit and his son Birendra takes the throne. A few years after that riots strong-arm Birendra into a public vote on whether to keep the Panchayats or have political parties ‘n’ stuff. People narrowly voted for keeping the Panchayats. This seems like a strange decision to me, but on paper at least it wasn’t a terrible system. And it’s not like our first-past-the-post two party system is the best system of democracy imaginable.

Sadly none of it worked on the ground the way it was supposed to on paper. There was a total lack of public accountability, strict censorship and arrest and torture of political opponents. In 1990 things came to a head. Non-violent demonstrations for democracy were teargassed and shot at. Thousands were arrested. Curfews, riots, strikes. Pressure from foreign governments. All sounding pretty familiar actually.

On 16th April 1990 King Birendra announced that they could have a proper democracy and he’d be the constitutional monarch. Back to being the old Shah in the closet. And two weeks later I arrived in Nepal for the first time, completely oblivious to the whole thing. Spotting a pattern yet? Although in my defence I did know a lot about the political situation in India, which is where I’d just been.

We then got a somewhat volatile democracy for a few years but in the late ‘90s, the Communist Party, fed up with it not delivering improvements for the people, declared a people’s war. This is still going on, with occasional ceasefires, and the Maoists now control about 50% of the land area of the country, especially in the West and away from the cities.

A Ridiculous plot twist

Now the Shahs must have been pretty easy going chaps to have put up with being the Ranas puppets all those years. But then as part of consolidating their power the Ranas were always intermarrying with them. Even Karan Singh, the Indian Envoy, is related to the king by being married to a Rana. The Ranas have their fingers in many pies. They must have mixed quite a bit of their massacring genes in there by this time. Or maybe it’s the mountain air. Or our monarchy has just run out of steam, and this is what younger monarchies are like. I mean look at Richard III!

In 2001 Crown Prince Dipendra went postal at a family do. He killed nearly every member of the royal family, including the King and Queen, and then turned the gun on himself. He survived, in a coma, and was declared King, but then died a few days later without regaining consciousness.

I mean how mad is that? Where do you start? It would be weird enough for anyone to massacre 10 members of their family at once. If some everyday person did that in the UK, or the States, it would be big news. But the Crown Prince killing the Royal family? It’s like Hamlet played by Arnold Schwarzeneger.

BUT, that’s only the official version of what happened. Obviously there are competing versions of events. The Himalayas must have been gossip central for weeks… Rumours blamed the Maoists, or other political opponents, or Gyanendra, the new King.

One persistent theory is that it was the new Crown Prince, Paras Shah. He has a bit of history of this sort of thing. And becoming heir to the throne could seem like a motive. When I say a bit of a history, he once ran over and killed a popular Nepalese singer in his car. And beat a night-club bouncer to death with a gun. And these are just the ones we know about. He’s not been investigated or prosecuted for any of this.

Some people think two homicidal maniac Crown Princes seems like a bit too much of a coincidence. But then maybe that’s how those bloodthirsty genes turn out. But it does explain why no-one has tried assassination as a way of solving the present situation.

The unconstitutional King

So, the Maoists are still uprising. And in October 2002 King Gyanendra dissolved parliament, saying that they’d failed to sort out the ‘terrorist threat’.. This was labelled unconstitutional and was met with protests, etc. Limited democracy returned eventually and then he did it again in February 2005. People here are now sick of the arbitrary suppression of democracy, which hasn’t done anything to stop the Maoists (in fact their attacks have increased) and the word autocracy is bandied around a lot.

As I said before, people have been protesting and demonstrating, despite curfews, bullets and beatings for 13 days now. The front page of the Kathmandu Post (sadly you can’t get up to date issues online) has a picture of a sea of people. 100,000 demonstrators in Nepalganj.

The police, in their strange blue camouflage, are everywhere in the streets. For the past two days there’s even been police in Thamel, which I hadn’t seen before today. Official reports say 11 have been killed by police so far. Unofficially people say that after one recent demonstration, the police carried many bodies out of the square and put them in police vans, and then who knows where? 15-37 people disappeared after that demonstration.

People say the King has 1.5bn US dollars in cash hidden in the palace. Enough to keep paying the army and police for one year. Pretty much everyone else has stopped supporting him anyway. Or he could just run away to the Cayman Islands with it.

What it’s like today

The shops and businesses catering to tourists are still functioning. Still have their food and drink available. Although today Thamel was almost shut and very quiet. And the police just standing around. It’s very strange to walk along the road and pass them. Apart from the paradoxical blue camo, and the big sticks they are holding, they just look like any old lads standing around. Bumming fags off each other and looking sheepish. Even as you step round the riot shield they’ve leaned against the wall. You know how when you get old, policemen start to look young? They all look about seventeen to me.

Of course the banks are on strike now. The ATMs are still working – but we don’t know for how long. And not everyone has an ATM card. There’s a guy who visits the hotel, a friend of the owner, who works for a small NGO here. They run a children’s home. They don’t have an ATM card for their bank account. Yesterday he went and got a load of cash out to tide them over and left it in the hotel safe here. He was telling the hotel owner about this earlier. ‘But hey,’ said the owner, ‘if there’s a problem, if you can’t get your money, come to me, I can lend you some.’ ‘OK, thanks, I’m sure we’ll be OK’ ‘But, my God!’ he cried, ‘I’ll lend you money if you need it, don’t let the children starve!’ and everyone fell about laughing.

We then spent the next twenty minutes discussing how if it came to it they could put the orphans up in the hotel. And actually they could make themselves useful – miniature waiters, everywhere! They could bring cool towels to the guests. Roll them joints. And hey, he’s trying to build an extension – how long can it take to learn bricklaying? Kids learn quick, right? There’s a lot of gallows humour.

But back to what it’s like in the streets. The businesses serving the tourist market are unusual. They’ve got lots of money because we’re already paying top prices. You can still get everything you need. Although even here it is starting to bite, and will do more as time goes on. But what you realise is that for the ordinary people, what unrest is about is shortages of basic stuff. The buses that normally bring supplies can’t get through. The Kathmandu valley is facing shortages of vegetables, oil and salt. Salt is now selling for five times it’s normal price.
Salt! It’s seems like such a medieval product shortage. I suppose it comes down to the daily basics of life, in the short term. But people here are used to the economics of it. Yesterday in the Kathmandu Post a migrant worker from the countryside was saying he would return there if the price of salt got above a certain figure.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow there will apparently be massive demonstrations all over the country. The biggest ones yet. Maybe this is what the Western anti-war rallies didn’t understand. If they don’t listen the first time you need to keep protesting and keep protesting. How committed would we need to have been to strike for fourteen days, and keep on striking, about the war? To put up with shortages and teargas. To turn round and refuse to serve a government minister?

How strong these people must be. And what a keen belief in their right to self-determination. And their actual ability to exercise it. I’d have happily struck for two weeks if it could have stopped the Iraq War, but I never thought it could.

Thursday

Well, I wrote all that stuff yesterday afternoon. At five yesterday they announced that today’s curfew would start at 2am – obviously trying to stop anyone getting to the demonstrations. We’re all just sitting around in the hotel wondering what’s going on.

Two tourists went out earlier but got stopped by the army and sent back. Usually tourists have been semi-immune to the curfew but this is obviously mega-curfew time. Normally people like emergency workers and press can get curfew passes – emergency workers, press, etc, but this time they’ve been refused them. The government don’t want any observers. One girl at the hotel, her boyfriend works for a peace NGO – he went out earlier with a video camera to try to document what happens. He’s not come back yet.

I don’t know what this sounds like to you lot reading, but it’s pretty weird. We’re still sitting here with our leafy garden and our cups of tea, talking endlessly about it, trying to guess what’s going to happen, but totally insulated. It’s kind of how I imagine the end of the British Empire.

I’m sure there’s a Carry On film set in India during the end of empire where in one scene they are having a dinner party while the Ambassador’s residence is under attack. Everyone carries on chatting politely and passing the butter, as the building shakes and bombs explode around them and the butler tries to carry on as if nothing is happening.

I wonder what’s going on in the King’s palace right now?

Now in the internet caff

I got fed up of the hotel and wanted to see if there was internet anywhere, so I've come out of the hotel. The streets are very quiet, but not completely deserted. I haven't seen any army. Everywhere is shuttered up, but this internet cafe has got it's side door open and several people inside - mostly foreigners. I've had a look but it doesn't seem like there's much news anywhere on the internet - the journalists can't get out I suppose.

I'm going to go now, see if any shops are open to buy stuff and then go back to the hotel. Needless to say, I've now succumbed to the dreaded diarrhea (sp?), so quite apart from military curfews I don't want to spend too long away from the toilet! Sorry if that's too much information everyone!