Posted on 05/29/2004 5:38:49 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Maoist guerrillas in Nepal have abducted over 1,000 people, including teachers and students, officials said Saturday.
The Maoists have abducted 300 teachers and 500 students from 270 schools in Jajarkot district, apart from several locals, in the past three days, according to state-run Radio Nepal.
They were picked up by the Maoists to make them attend organisational programmes conducted by them, the radio quoted local security officials as saying.
The Maoists forced the teachers to close schools to attend the programmes, which are held in remote areas of western Nepal.
The Maoists have been fighting to establish a republic state since 1996.
They are demanding free education and syllabi that “serve the interests of the workers, peasants and other oppressed classes of society”.
The rebels have introduced their own school calendar that includes annual holidays like Martyrs Day and Lenin’s Day.
They want to scrap existing public holidays like the King’s birthday, Constitution Day and Durga pooja.
The Maoists have declared a ban on subjects like Sanskrit, history and social studies in remote rural areas, most of which they control. The national anthem and other patriotic songs have also been forbidden, and the Maoists want these replaced with paeans to their martyrs.
Abducted teachers are trained to extol the virtues of the guerrillas, whose attacks over the past few years have scared away the economy’s one-time mainstay, tourists, and destroyed infrastructure worth thousands of dollars.
Due to the intimidation, several teachers in rural areas have fled, leaving the hapless students rudderless.
The Nepal Teachers’ Association estimates that the Maoists have burnt 89 schools, 27 of them through bomb blasts, and killed 274 children.
“The Maoists have been maiming and brutally beating teachers and ordinary people with stones and hammers in a flamboyant display of medieval barbarism,” says association president, Mr Keshav Prasad Bhattarai.
“The Maoists are more interested in disrupting the existing process than introducing alternative curriculum or education systems,” he charged.
Countered Bipin, a Maoist leader in Rautahat district: “We are taking teachers to train them in the People’s Education System that caters to oppressed people. The existing system is reactionary and feudalistic.”
Mr Bhattarai complained that teachers who attended the Maoist “training camps” were ordered to stop teaching the existing curricula, and because of the threats, some schools are complying with the insurgents’ orders. - Navhind Times
Just Damn!
ping
I don't see any substantive difference between these commie terrorists and the Islamic kind. Their creeds are just the means to satisfy their lusts for power.
They would feel right at home with the NEA.
We must combat the spread of Communism from China to nepal
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