Land-grab rampage

Sometimes we wish we didn´t have to churn out as many editorials as we do criticizing the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-M). But, then, how can we not criticize violence, intimidation, land grabs, seizures of harvests, unilateral declaration of autonomous states, attacks on journalists and cadres of other political parties... the list can go on. Post-Kailali incident, where four squatters and a policeman were killed in a clash, the Maoists have intensified their land grab. Maoist cadres and self-declared squatters have seized thousands of hectares across the country in the last few days in what seems to be a planned and centrally coordinated land-grab rampage by the Maoist party. The captured land ranges from private to community to state property. Maoist leaders are actively encouraging the land grab, arguing that landless people have a right to land.



Theoretically, no one can deny that every citizen of this country has the right to food and shelter, and it´s perhaps the state´s responsibility to arrange for these basic needs of its citizens. But that doesn´t mean anyone can just go and capture produce from a field, seize someone else´s land or barge into anyone´s house and claim that it belongs to him/her. Initially, when Maoist cadres/sympathizers seized harvested crops the Maoist leadership tried to distance itself, arguing that it was an issue between landlords and landless peasants. Granted that the looters were landless peasants, does that give them the right to seize other people’s harvests and has the state no responsibility to stop it? We want to ask Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal if a cart-pusher in Kathmandu has the right to seize his luxury Prado car because the poor man doesn´t have one himself. What kind of society are the Maoists trying to create and what kind of social value are they trying to promote?



We are more and more convinced that the ongoing land-grab drive is simply Maoist strategy to stoke anarchy and bring the present government to its knees. If the Maoist party was sincere about the plight of landless people, why didn´t it take serious measures to solve the problem when it was in government or alternatively why didn´t it arrange to settle the landless, even if temporarily, on public property as it is now encouraging them to do? If all the 10,000 plus people, who claimed to be squatters and went to capture Dudejhadi Forest in Kailali a few weeks ago, were indeed landless peasants where have they all gone now? It´s not possible that over 10,000 squatters appear at a certain place from nowhere and then disappear overnight unless they have been systematically mobilized by a political party. We urge the UCPN to stop exploiting people´s poverty for its own vested interests.

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