Shocking article;
Nepal monasteries face Maoist threat
Sudeshna Sarkar
[ 20 Mar, 2007 2324hrs IST TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
KATHMANDU: Besides Mt Everest, Nepal's other best loved national icon is the Buddha, the apostle of peace and tolerance.
However, Nepal's Buddhists, who have lived in harmony with Hindus, Muslims and animists for centuries, are now facing a serious threat from a different quarter — the Maoist guerrillas.
On Tuesday, Nepal's prime minister, Girija Prasad Koirala, met an unusual delegation. Clad in bright yellow and purple robes, nearly three dozen Buddhist heads of different monasteries told the premier how Maoists were visiting Buddhist gumbas and demanding money, crops and food.
"They threatened us that they would take action if we did not listen to them," an elderly lama said after the meeting. "We are forced to give them paddy and money."
A total of 38 lamas, who returned to Kathmandu this week after touring the country, told the PM they had been told about Maoist harassment at different monasteries.
The meeting by the Buddhist priests came even as Nepal reeled under an indefinite strike called by the business and industrial sector from Monday to protest against growing Maoist attacks on businessmen.
"I was kicked and beaten like an animal," 59-year-old hotelier Hari Lal Shrestha, who runs the Woodland Hotel in the capital, recounted his ordeal.
Shrestha was abducted for resisting the Maoist demand for NRS 20 lakh and was released only after he signed a paper agreeing to pay them NRS 1 crore and allow them the use of 10 rooms in the hotel free.
