Gopal Sharma, aged 52 and his wife, Bishnu Sharma, aged 40. Parents to eight children, they have left their native region, the district of Rukum, seven years ago, after having been harassed by members of the Maoist party. Gopal Sharma, who was president, for his village, of the Nepalese congress party, refused to leave his political establishment, despite the increasingly pressurising threats. A party’s delegation, with armed men, came to his home, held up his entire family and began beating him declaring that they were going to kill him. While he was unconscious, the Maoist poured alkali over his open eyes and left the house, after having reiterated their beatings, thinking he was dead. On the morrow, Gopal Sharma was evacuated by helicopter towards Nepalganj’s hospital, where he regained consciousness a week later. Blind, he depends upon his wife. The family survives from the income generated from their little hotel in Nepalganj, held by Bishnu Sharma and one of their daughter’s in law.
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. Today in Nepal, the populations find themselves clamped between two camps.
November - December 2005 - Nepalganj - Nepal.
© Pierre-Yves GINET