In the village of Dolcinge, Kemala Budahthoki, aged 11, behind one of the windows of her house. Kemala lives with her mother Dili Budahthoki, aged 32, and her elder brother, Prem, aged 15. In 1998, her father, Singh Budahthoki, who was then aged 21, returned from India, for the seasonal festivities. It was his first trip back in three years. As he was dancing with other villagers, a military police patrol arrived on the esplanade, captured him as well as five other people and took him into a field a few hundred metres from there, where all them were executed. As for all the other victims of this raid, her husband was not a Maoist, neither was he commiserate to the rebellion. Twelve days after the assassination, the policemen came back, visiting every family, threatening them; if they supported the rebellion. Since 1998, no family member has ever been to Khalanga, the district’s county town, where the government forces recluse. Dili Budahthoki lives alone with her children. Family relatives and neighbours help her in providing for the family’s needs. In the presence of a leader of the party, this reserved woman convincingly held up that the Maoist were of considerable support to her, material and psychological wise. A fact later denied by her relatives. Moreover her family’s day-to-day survival, Dili Budahthoki is aware that her children are an easy target for the guerrilla and she deploys a considerable energy so as to keep them far from the armed groups. Both of them still attend school.
Since the insurrection in 1996, the victims from the exactions committed either by the Maoist or the royal army are numbered in hundreds of thousands and a third of the 12.000 deaths caused by the conflict (estimation generally retained) are civilians.
November - December 2005 - Rukum - Nepal.
© Pierre-Yves GINET