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What you will see in the Nepal Pavilion..

A visitor to the Nepal pavilion at the EXPO will see a temple made entirely of wood carvings. Inside is a Buddhist Gumba with two eyes for Justice. The message of the Nepali pavilion by the government and their business partners is: "Living together in tolerance on the roof of the world and universality." Nepal presents itself as an advertisement for the promotion of tourism.

Nepal seems destined for tourism. A beautiful landscape in which the highest magical mountains of the world are based and a rich cultural variety makes Nepal a place worth visiting. In fact tourism has already become a big part of Nepal's economy. 17 % of the state budget comes from tourism – and the government wants the number of tourists to increase. Cultural attractions of the country, Hindu and Buddhist temples are used to advertise for tourism as you can see in the Expo2000.

Now the question arises, are what they are showing true and common? What kinds of tolerance and universality is there in reality? "Nepal is the only Kingdom in the world to have a Hindu monarch by tradition" (source)

Behind the colourful facade...
 

Nepal, one of the richest countries in natural resources, is at the same time known as the second poorest country in the world, where more than 72% of the people living in absolute poverty. How is such a contradiction possible?

It is possible because the rich and corrupt elite in power in Nepal amass wealth while keeping the majority of the people in poverty. And what is advertised for the tourists as 'exotic Hindu culture and tradition' is for the majority of the people of Nepal medieval and barbaric practises which maintains the power and the rule of the elite. These practises provide the rights to landlords to keep slaves, constitute women as the property of men and the slaves of husbands, a culture which oppresses nationalities and constitute the caste system which humiliates the 'lower castes'.

The projection of Nepal as a multi-national, multi-religious, multi-lingual country at the Expo is to add insult to injury to the more than twenty national minorities who are suppressed and to those who are at the receiving end of the enforced Hinduisation of all other religions and cultures. The EXPO makes a mockery of the sad reality that Nepal, which may be the only Kingdom in the world where the monarch defines as a tradition his divine right to enslave a whole people.
 
 

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Brief background

Historically, in 1816 the British East India company forced the Sugauli Treaty upon Nepal which started the process of turning Nepal into a semi colony and captured more than half of Nepalese territory which has since then been under the control of India. Henceforth Nepal's attempt to pursue independent and self-reliant development was blocked and a process of socio-economic retardation and under-development (i.e. distorted and dependent development) was initiated. The Nepalese monarchy was to fulfil Sugauli Treaty in the game of divide and rule by the colonising power. The feudal and bureaucratic class got even more rich and powerful, while they allowed the imperialists to plunder the country and to destroy the source of independent development.

If one is to compare the socio-economic development indices immediately before and after Sugauli-Treaty, this becomes very clear. For example, prior to that period Nepal was self-sufficient in basic industrial production, e.g., cotton fabrics, copper and brass utensils, domestic instruments, military armaments (including modern rifles), sugar, etc., and food grains. But after this, with the penetration of factory-made goods from India and concomitant decline of Nepalese industries, Nepal has now been reduced to a total dependency.

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Official German Technical Co-operation (GTZ) issues an open invitation to private plunder

If you ask inside the Nepal-Temple on the EXPO about economic conditions of the country, they might give you a little brochure written by the German GTZ with the headline:

Who pays the price?

The price of these offers is paid by the poorest people whose social conditions are constantly deteriorating. Western countries are pushing conditions to privatise all public enterprises and the communal land and natural resources on which the majority of poor people’s lives depend.

At the peak of food scarcity the government was pressurised to remove food subsidies. The water tax, petroleum price, transportation fair, telephone fair, and all the market price is increased about 70% last year, to make sure the foreign investment will be more profitable.

It may be a "non-bureaucratic administration", for the GTZ, but for the Nepalese people it is brutality. The GTZ goes so far as to give a guarantee for all the special discriminatory privileges for foreign investment, they give a guarantee against nationalisation. But how can they give this guarentee? The people of Nepal is not willing to accept their poverty while their wealth is going to the few families (royal family, top bureaucrats and Indian compradors) and the western countries. In fact there is only one way how to guarantee the extra profits for the investors:

• Human rights violations are institutionalised and encouraged by the state.
• Thousands of women were raped and gang-raped, hundreds of thousand of people's property looted or destroyed by police commandos and ruling party’s goons.
• Houses were burnt by police under the direction of high-command. More than 50 thousand people were arrested, tortured, and trapped in forged charges during past 3 years.
• More than 200 citizens including political activists, teachers, students, journalists, women "disappeared" some even after the supreme court ordered their release from illegal imprisonment.
• More than 4000 people are still in prison on forged charges only because of their belief in a more just society.

In 1990's a peoples movement overthrew the partyless Panchayati system, which had been used by the Monarchy, feudal and bureaucratic classes to curtail the rights of the people. Within a year the state power struck back to suppress this democratic movement. During this period for non-violent parliamentary reform from 1990 to 1995, the so-called democratic government killed more than hundred people, including children, who were peacefully demanding for basic rights necessary for normal life.

... leads to people's war

Amidst the so called "Romio operation", a great wave of oppression launched by the police in 1996, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) started the people's war. Since then police killings, extra-judicial arrests and torture reached new levels, but at the same time the people's war under Maoist leadership grew stronger, as it gained in popular support.

Now some districts in western Nepal have begun to exercise new forms of democratic control by initiating co-operative farming and banking, people's courts, peoples participating administrative and political units and the election of united peoples committees etc.

This has brought the country's elite and their old state in a crisis.

The former prime-minister and Nepali Congress (NC) Party leader, Sher Bahadur Deuba, speaking at the meeting of human rights organisations, said that if the Maoist insurgency will not be solved, the government will stop all the development budgets to buy weapons and for the war.

Whose government?

Recently the Government of Nepal announced the "one door integrated development system" which means every thing through the armed forces and security measures. The government refusing the dialogue by not creating the conducive atmosphere forwarding by the international community and human rights organisation including UN.

Corruption

Not only people are disappeared by the regime 'more than $700 million of state money is missing in Nepal, and the government is doing nothing to recover it', the country's chief anti-corruption official reported on 7^th September 2000 in Kathmandu.

Auditor General Bishnu Bahadur reported: "$100 million in government funds were unaccounted for last year alone in one of the world's poorest countries".

The prime minister himself said there are increasing numbers smugglers in Parliament and government and in every parliamentary parties. There is corruption but he could not able to control.

Germany and Human Rights violations in Nepal

At the end of her visit to Nepal, Asma Jahangir, UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions reported:

France had invited the former prime minister KP Bhattarai the ousted leader of the same party who wanted to initiate peace dialogue. But it refused to invite Nepal's actual prime minister Girija who announced military way instead of political solution of Maoist insurgency because of the heavy human rights violations.

The EU issued a appeal Nepal government to end the civil war through the dialogue and political way which is disturbing the countries development.

The US president Clinton refused to meet him during his recent visit in US.

While the other powerful industrial countries are criticising the Nepali regime because of its terrible record on human rights the German government is doing the opposite. At the Expo in Hanover the German government has provided the basis for a massive propaganda exercise to be launched by the Nepali regime with possibly the most striking pavilion. At this pavilion, the German GTZ is working closely with the Nepali regime to sell the poverty and oppression of the Nepali people as great investment opportunities to German and other business people visiting the Expo. The feudal royalty using barbaric practises to keep the people enslaved while it enjoys the incredible wealth it has stolen is sold to the tourists as fascinating Hindu culture. While other western countries are putting pressure on the Nepali government to find a political solution the GTZ effectively celebrates the terrible violence imposed on the people by the government of Nepal for resisting the robbery of public wealth because it is a ‘guarantee against nationalisation’.

What Tourism has to do with the war in Nepal

The most likely success of the Nepal presentation will be an increase of German tourism to Nepal. Germans are already the biggest group in total number of all tourists to Nepal.

You may think that tourism might present a chance for poor people to find employment and might be a base of sustainable development. But only a small elite benefits from this tourism. Most of the money spent by tourists in Nepal goes directly to the royal family, the governmental budget and to foreign investors. Foreign investors are seldom in Nepal for development purposes. For example, German investors have 100% ownership of anti-development projects like the Casinos of Nepal and are fully involved in the corruption of the Girija government, just as they benefited from past dictatorships such as the notorious Dhamija kanda.

Tourists will not see the lived reality of Nepal’s people. They will only be allowed to see the regions of the war-torn country which are under special control of the government. Tourist guides have special instructions about what they may say and what they must hide. Getting in touch with the common people is already difficult because of the language barrier. But even when this barrier is crossed, people who live in Nepal will find it impossible to tell you their real political opinions, because they know the consequences about speaking the truth about their country.

There have been attacks on tourists by the police and ruling party’s goons who have then tried to put the blame on guerrillas. For instance in May 2000 in Gorkha district, treckers were attacked by youth wing members of the ruling Nepali congress party, who looted cash and cameras. Guerrillas, on the other hand, have been known to capture rifles from American hunters but they have not inflicted physical harm on civilians.

Oppression of nationalities marketed as tourism to the West

Oppressed nations like "Khambuwan Mukti Morcha" appeal not to visit their area because the tax to visit area is using to exploit them and to restrict their cultural, lingual, religious, political rights and development where the most visited Himalayan ranges also comes. Similarly, there has been massive popular participation in Maoist guerrilla raids denouncing some NGO centres run in collaboration with western governments which are de facto helping the corrupt ruling classes to exploit and repress the people, through technical projects, survey and research, etc.

What you can do

We have tried to show you glimpses of what the Expo pavilions hides from tourists: There is a war going on in Nepal, which involves massive human rights violations. The money you pay as a visitor to the Expo, or as a tourist to Nepal, in exchange for a few moments of entertainment and adventure, this money is being used to violate our basic rights and human aspirations.

Nepal is a beautiful country with magical natural beauty and warm hearts to welcome you. But as long as the State wages a war against its people and violates human rights, we request you not to take the side of our killers, through tourism and financial aid.
 
 

We ask you to take part in our campaign to stop tourism to Nepal until the human rights situation improves qualitatively.