It has been nearly six months since 17 young men from Jogimara were killed while working on an airport runway at Kalikot in western Nepal. Their families don’t have any tears left, but grief stillsears their hearts. Almost every family has lost a breadwinner, but no bodies were ever returned. There are 10 widows, 18 orphans and 14 bereaved parents at Jogimara.

Today, they are trapped between the need to come to terms with the deaths of their loved ones, a future of destitution and despair, and a government that calls them relatives of terrorists.

On 24 Feburary, 800 km away from home, the young men found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Piecing together information from survivors, it is clear that the killing was a tragic combination of mistaken identity and other errors. And half-a-year later, this Dhading village is proof of the senselessness of the violence that has been unleashed on the Nepali people in the name of Maoism, and the callousness of officialdom.

“More than the cold and the hardships, we were afraid of the Maoists,” recalls Bel Bahadur BK from the original group. He returned home with two other villagers after a helicopter fired at the workers on 3 January. “We didn’t want to die out there.”

A month later, the Maoists attacked Mangalsen and Sanfebagar, killing 137 soldiers and policemen. The security forces went on a three-pronged hot pursuit northwards. The fleeing Maoists infiltrated the construction workers in Kalikot, and fired on an army helicopter flying overhead. Fearing army retaliation, the contractor told his men not to come to work and everyone had their identity papers ready in case the security forces came looking for Maoists.

On 24 February, an army attack force stormed the quarters, thinking the workers were Maoists. According to eye-witness reports given to the National Human Rights Commission, 17 workers from Dhading, seven from Sindhupalchok, and 11 local villagers were killed. Among the villagers were the ward chairman from the Nepali Congress, two Sherpas from Solukhumbu who were working in Kalikot and two minors. Two workers from Sindhupalchok managed to survive. All the Maoists had fled by the time the soldiers arrived. That week, the Defence Ministry statement said 67 Maoists had been killed in encounters in Kalikot.

A senior army source told us that the security forces had reliable reports that the Kalikot area was where many of the Maoists who took part in the Mangalsen attack were hiding. “The Maoists had infiltrated the workers,” he said. “But in hindsight, it is clear that the Maoists were provoking us to attack the workers and make it look like we were killing civilians.” The survivors say that the Maoists had been coming around regularly to threaten them to stop work on the airport. They would refuse, but the Maoists would demand a meal, after which they would leave.

The fact that the Maoists shot at the helicopter using the workers as human shields bolsters the argument that the rebels were trying to trap the army into attacking civilians. But all this is of little consolation to the families, and it is clear that the attack in Kalikot was a colossal blunder. For the families of the dead in Dhading and Sindhupalchok, the wounds haven’t healed with time. This is mainly because they never got the bodies of their loved ones. No one ever came to apologise or tell them that it was a mistake. And to make matters even worse, as far as the government is concerned, their sons and fathers were all “terrorists”.

Dambar Bahadur Thapa lost his 17-year-old son. He says, “They were quiet kids, they never got into any trouble, they were just working hard to make some money to send back to their families.” Gyan Bahadur Biswokarma lost two sons aged 30 and 25, and has only now decided to hold a funeral service for them. Shankha Bahadur Gurung lost two of his five sons, one 21 and the other 19. He had decided to go to Kalikot to see for himself after hearing the news, but the other villagers stopped him. Most other villagers have by now given up on their sons being alive, and are carrying out funerals on ritual pyres.

As the priest makes final preparations for Raj Kumar Shrestha’s funeral, his mother is weeping loudly inside the house. Raj Kumar’s wife Gita gave birth to a girl a month ago, but the baby died. His father Bel Bahadur is assisting the priest. “Console yourself,” the priest mutters in between chants. “The dead don’t come back no matter how much we want them to.” That makes things worse, and the weeping is louder. Raj Kumar’s five-year old son Amrit and his younger brother are playing marbles with a friend nearby, oblivious of what is going on.

“Three weeks after the incident there were rumours that they had been killed, another three months later the contractor called us to Kathmandu and gave us their wages,” recalls Bel Bahadur. “It was then that we finally believed our son was dead.” The private contractor also gave them Rs 3,300 each for funeral expenses. The government hasn’t shown any such concern.

Eight of the dead are Praja families, and they still don’t accept the deaths of their loved ones. They refuse to carry out the funeral rites, and hope against hope that their sons will one day appear. “Kumle had promised to come back by the mid-April, in time to help with sowing corn,” says his mother Ninna Praja, tears welling up in her eyes. “We will wait for him forever, there was no reason for him to die.”

Fourteen-year-old Govinda Praja lost his 60-year-old father Chitra Bahadur. “I still hope my father escaped, maybe he could have been delayed because of the difficulties of coming back,” Govinda told us. “We had tried to discourage him from going so far away.” However, Chitra Bahadur, decided to go because there was no work, his debt was piling up and he had no more cattle, goats or crops to sell. Govinda’s mother Sukmaya is so torn by grief and worry that she hasn’t spoken to anyone for months. In addition to his four little borthers and sisters, Govinda now also has to take care of his mother.

It was only after the news of the death of innocents rocked parliament in March that Singha Darbar took notice. Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba told parliament on 6 March that the government was taking care to ensure that the innocent were not killed, and that if that happened, they would be adequately compensated. The Prime Minister’s Office also set up a special committee headed by Rishikesh Gautam to hear and investigate complaints. When we contacted the committee for comment, its members were still unaware of the men from Jogimara who were killed in Kalikot.

Shree Kanta Regmi, secretary of the committee, told us that his office had not received any application from the families of the deceased. The bureaucracy’s wheels don’t start turning until a formal application is received, and Regmi told us that newspaper reports were not enough. “We will look into the cases as soon as we receive complaints,” he assured us.

However, two former MPs, Prem Bahadur Singh and Rajendra Pandey, said that they have handed over the claims from the families of the dead to Gautam. The two also say that they personally informed the prime minister about the incident. The contractor who hired the workers, Subha Karki Nirman Sewa took the matter up with the National Human Rights Commission and the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal. But even the NHRC was not able to get help for the families, nor did it deem it necessary to conduct an independent investigation into the issue.
Shocking as the tragedy is, what is even more appalling for the families in Jogimara is the government’s indifference to their plight. As we prepared to leave, one villager told us: “We’ve not just lost our children, but the government has branded them terrorists. Where is justice?”
(With additional reporting by Bhup Raj Khadka)

• Of the 17 killed in Jogimara, nine were under 21.    The dead left 10 widows, 18 orphans, and 14    bereaved parents.

• Of the nine workers from Sindhupalchok, two    survived.

• Eight villagers were killed, including the Nepali    Congress ward chairman and two Sherpas from    Solu Khumbu.

• Three others, including the sub-contractor, also    died.

Names of the Jogimara dead, 17 from 15 families.
Chitra Bahadur Praja, Budha Bahadur Praja, Kumle Praja, Sher Bahadur Praja, Dilli Praja, Ram Bahadur Praja, Bikas Praja, Kanchha Praja, Gokarna Gurung, Tek Bahadur Gurung, Gokarna Thapa, Manju Thapa, Bhim Bahadur Thapa, Gyan Bahadur Thapa, Jhakka Bahadur Balchhane, Raj Kumar Shrestha, Raj Kumar Biswokarma, Tek Bahadur Biswokarma, Sanu Biswokarma and Bel Bahadur Biswokarma.
(Nepali Times)

Unfriendly fire
The powerful article by Mohan Mainali (“Unfriendly fire”, #106) moved many of us. Whoever was responsible for the original massacre—whether it was the Maoists for provoking the army attack, or the army for not making an effort to distinguish guerrillas from civilians—it is clear that even six months later, there has been no effort by the state to redress the misery and loss of the families of the dead. When will those in power in Kathmandu ever understand that it is exactly this heartlessness and indifference to the suffering of citizens that gave birth to the Maoist insurgency in the first place?
G Lamsal,
Kathmandu

• Thank you, Mohan Mainali, for doing what few Nepali journalists have done to investigate the tragedy of the villagers from Dhading in Kalikot. Being far away from Nepal, the story of the bereaved villagers brought tears to my eyes. The story is today’s Nepal in a microcosm—the violence and brutality, the apathy, revolutionaries gone berserk, and an unfeeling government.
Bhim B Thapa,
Hong Kong

• A few days ago the body of a young man was brought in to the Teaching Hospital. He had been beaten to death. History was he was arrested and then jumped or fell from a vehicle. Sorry, he did not get those injuries that way. The security forces requested that we not “write about the injuries”. You can imagine how far that went. They would also not provide information about identification—apparently wanting to dispose of the body without the family ever being aware of what had happened to the man. Until the rule of law is restored to some degree at least in this country, there is little hope for anything. As your story “Unfriendly fire” shows, poor people in the villages are caught squarely between the Maoists and the security forces—each one as bad and ruthless as the other, both guilty of torture and atrocities. Several victims have been brought into the Emergency Room at the hospital with legs crushed by heavy rocks as punishment for whatever perceived infractions.