Though deemed an important international visit, the real purpose of this junket seems to have been quite trivial -- to participate in the general assembly of the People´s Progressive Forum, an organization of UCPN (Maoist) party workers living in Belgium.[break]
During his stay here, Dahal did make an attempt to paint a rosy picture of things back home, pretending that everything was fine even as Nepal gets deeper into political turmoil.
The hastily organized appearance at a "Discussion Debate" at the invitation of Nirj Deva, Member of European Parliament (MEP) from the UK, was not pre-planned. Rather, the talk program was organized at the very short notice of a couple of weeks and clearly as an afterthought. Deva represents the Conservatives, a party at odds with the principles the UCPN (Maoist) espouses.
Deva explained this intriguing union as a show of goodwill. It was a demonstration of support for development in Nepal, especially as "Dahal has arrived here after fighting an autocratic regime," he confided.
Deva, along with UK Green Party MEP Jean Lambert, who chaired the talk program, expressed hope that Nepal was all set to look towards development.
Lambert, who chairs the EU delegation to South Asia, opened the talk program with a short introduction followed by Deva´s speech and a short speech by Dahal. That was followed by an open floor for questions and answers. The program closed earlier than anticipated and lasted less than an hour and half.
Dahal´s trip comes against a backdrop of skepticism at home emphasized by a letter to Dr. Alexander Spachis, European Union Head of Delegation to Nepal, from Accountability Watch, a human rights NGO in Nepal. The letter categorically alleges impunity on the part of the UCPN (Maoist)-led government, for withdrawing criminal charges pending against hundreds of the party´s members. Most recently, on October 4, the cabinet withdrew a further 30 cases pending against senior leaders, including Prime Minister Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, Dahal himself and senior UCPN (Maoist) leaders Agni Sapkota and Suryaman Dong.
In his speech, Dahal dismissed the allegations and said that until the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) decided on acts committed during the conflict period, there was no reason for Nepal´s Supreme Court to get involved. He claimed that the current TRC Bill pushed through as an ordinance was a work of consensus among all the parties. However, he confused the job of the Apex Court with that of the proposed TRC, which is not meant to be an alternative judicial body.
Asked why the government tried to stop the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) from publishing the Nepal Conflict Report, Dahal said it opposed it as OHCHR did not include the incumbent government in the report-writing process. He, however, conveniently forgot how his party lapped up reports brought out by the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) and the OHCHR itself in the past, although those certainly did not involve the then governments either.
As Dahal said that he would like to attract foreign investment and assistance in nation-building, he was asked about the recently-announced ´Guerilla Trail´. Asked if the so-called romanticized ´Trail´ did not add insult to injury by trivializing the sufferings of people residing in remote mountains who were further isolated from the world after the destruction of bridges, schools and other infrastructure by Maoist guerillas, he distanced himself, saying such a trail was not his party´s idea.
Although Dahal repeatedly said that he wanted to create a positive atmosphere to forget the past and tried very hard to project himself as a ´transformed´ Prachanda, he failed to impress with his all too predictable rhetoric.
While answering the anomalies in his current statements and his statement in the Shaktikhor video, wherein he confessed to the deceit exercised by the Maoist leadership in inflating the number of combatants during the army integration process, Dahal called that statement a page from ´history´.
He admitted to having pacified the cadres by lying but his defense was that it was a ´period of conflict´, recalling the adage all is fair in love and war. During the discussions, Dahal came across as very feeble and on the defensive, arguing that the world should look on him favorably now.
But it was difficult to judge whether he was lying to the cadres then or lying now, whether the Maoist war had actually ended or was in a lull before the ´promised´ actual revolution and ´power capture´ just as the Maoist leadership often claims.
(Ila is a lawyer and journalist currently based in Brussels. She is pursuing her PhD at the Centre of International European Law, Vrije Universiteit Brussels)
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