Maoist rebels kidnap and indoctrinate children
Sixty children have been kidnapped. An educator said they "will be indoctrinated about Maoist ideology, about a cult of violence and use of arms". The rebels have kidnapped thus more than 200,000 children within 10 years.
Kathmandu (AsiaNews) Maoist rebels kidnapped a group of 60 children from two schools on Saturday to indoctrinate them with their ideology. The children, subjected to a series of education sessions by the rebels, come from Doti district in western Nepal. The region is so remote and isolated that news of the kidnapping only came out today, after four days. This is the first kidnapping after four months of ceasefire from 3 September 2005 to 2 January 2006.
"The children were busy preparing for their final school exams scheduled
for March," Rupendra Basyal, an educator in the rebel-dominated western district told AsiaNews. "Now they have been forcibly taken to unknown and remote mountainous Maoist camps, where they are tutored in the Maoist ideology, a cult of violence and handling weapons. This is very disastrous for their budding psyche and it is a rampant violation of the innocence of childhood. Maoists must be discouraged from perpetrating such acts."
Norbert Rai, a Christian lawyer and human rights activist, said that over the last 10 years, Maoist rebels "kidnapped more than 200,000 children from around 40 districts to indoctrinate them about their policies. Their modus operandi is that they suddenly reach a school during class hours and ask the teachers and students to follow them to their camps in jungles where the children, mostly middle and high school ones, aged between 8 to 14 years, are kept for five to six days for the sessions. Then they are allowed to return home.
"The Maoists claim that such sessions are part of their curriculum of 'people's education', which is anchored in their slogan, 'put the paper and pencil in the bag and target the palace with the gun'. The Maoists give children militia style training in utter violation of their rights. Using children under 15 in armed conflict is a war crime. But who cares? The Maoists certainly don't care despite their incessant parroting that they are fighting for the welfare of the people."
Basyal said the Maoists' political education program was "a big thorn into the throats of teachers who want to help the children, and who are not only forced to attend Maoist indoctrination sessions, but even have to cough up around 20% of their salary as 'people's tax' to the Maoists. Otherwise they must face execution or persecution. Above all, such teachers are also vulnerable to torture and harassment by security forces for their alleged collaboration with Maoists."
Teachers say almost 200 of their colleagues have fallen to bullets fired either by Maoists or by the security forces and nearly 4,000 have been rendered jobless as they could not cope with the stressful situation.
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