Himalayan Heretic   

International journalism organizations rally to support Nepal’s embattled Maoist editor.

The taxi driver studied the address, then shook his head in bewilderment. Surely Nepal's largest weekly newspaper would not be located in such a place, he argued in a flurry of sign language.

An anonymous voice on the telephone had been quite specific about the place and time for a meeting with an editor who stands accused of practicing "terrorist journalism" on behalf of Maoist revolutionaries.

Krishna Sen and his 45,000-circulation weekly, Janadesh, have become a pivotal political force in this Himalayan kingdom situated in the shadow of majestic Mount Everest. His supporters and adversaries fall into two polarized camps.

Some view Sen's publication as the fearless "voice of the oppressed" in a country listed in the CIA World Factbook as one of the poorest and most underdeveloped on the planet. Mainstream organizations, including the Federation of Nepalese Journalists, have rallied to support the newspaper's right to exist.

Others define Janadesh as a mouthpiece for the Maoist Communist Party of Nepal, a grass-roots political movement that for the past six years has been waging a "people's war." Among its stated missions: to oust the monarchy and current government. Critics in this camp would like to see Sen tried for treason and his newspaper shut down.

Janadesh's predicament--a newspaper under fire for its Maoist views--has sparked support from media groups in capitalist superpowers like the United States.

Sen, 45, has paid a high price for his leftist leanings. He has spent a total of eight years in some of Nepal's filthiest and most violent prisons. His operation has been raided by police, copies of the newspaper seized off the street, members of his staff arrested. A former managing editor of Janadesh mysteriously disappeared two years ago.

High-profile international watchdogs, among them the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists and Paris' Reporters Sans Frontières, have protested to the Nepalese prime minister on Sen's behalf and joined local media groups to demand his release from prison (he was freed in March). The International Freedom of Expression Exchange in Toronto has kept his story alive on its "alerts" list.

CPJ maintains that the "ability to publish even the most controversial opinions without fear of reprisal is essential to maintaining a free press," says Deputy Director Joel Simon. The fact that the journalists may embrace Maoism makes no difference.

The interview with Sen took place three weeks before Crown Prince Dipendra murdered nine members of the royal family and turned a gun on himself June 1, thrusting the remote country into the international spotlight.

After studying a faded city map, the taxi driver wound through the back alleys of Kathmandu, past piles of fly-infested garbage and gangs of squealing schoolchildren. Past puddles of raw sewage and the carcasses of rats baking in the sweltering sun. Past ragged lepers displaying pitifully deformed limbs as they begged for rupees.

He pulled up to a sagging apartment building surrounded by rusty barbed wire. Inside the gate, a crudely handwritten sign taped to the crumbling exterior contained a single word: Janadesh. In English, the name translates to something like "people's mandate." An arrow pointed the way.

At the end of a deserted hallway, in a room the size of a walk-in closet, a thin man in wire-rimmed glasses sat at a barren table, looking more like a schoolteacher than an accused "enemy of the state."

A young reporter who spoke fractured English acted as translator for Sen, whose Communist activities began during his university days. The first time he was arrested, at age 25, he was a budding poet and a member of the central committee of the leftist student union.

There were no posters inside the claustrophobic, colorless "newsroom," no political slogans, no hammers and sickles on the paint-chipped walls. Even the most common comforts, a soft chair or a sturdy desk, were conspicuously absent. A befitting testimony, perhaps, to a political movement that scorns ownership of material possessions.

Sen's staff of 25 operates without cell phones, fax machines, laptops or digital cameras--and without access to the Internet, unless they go to one of Kathmandu's cybercafés.

Janadesh's lone computer has remained hidden since January 1999, when police raided the newspaper, confiscated equipment and seized 20,000 copies of an edition that carried an interview with a Maoist leader. The eight-page newspaper hit the streets 10 years ago.

Bartering services has become a mainstay for the tabloid-size weekly, which operates on a shoestring budget. Marketing managers, for instance, expand distribution by providing bus companies and local airlines with free advertising in exchange for transporting the newspaper beyond the city limits.

Typesetting is contracted out to cut down on the need for new equipment. The bulk of income is generated by street sales. There is a strict ban on liquor and tobacco ads.

"Nobody owns us, and we have no profit motives," Sen states proudly, explaining that the paper costs five rupees, the equivalent of about seven cents. "We want to earn just enough for us to live on and for the newspaper to survive." With a distribution of 45,000, the weekly income would be about $3,150 if all copies were sold.

Much of Janadesh's success depends on people power. A volunteer cadre of 45 grass-roots correspondents collects news in far-off villages and mountain hideaways in this land of sublime scenery and ancient temples.

The stories are filed by mail, or by bus, or on the back of a water buffalo. The final product, produced by 5 a.m. each Tuesday, contains fuzzy photographs and butting headlines and is printed on cheap, grainy stock. Yet, according to its editor, the newspaper is accomplishing an important mission.

"We believe in the revolution--in total change," says Sen, who is married and has an 8-year-old daughter. "The movement is based on justice and truth to benefit the lower classes and the suppressed in our society."

When AJR asked mainstream journalists in Nepal about Janadesh, there was agreement that the weekly is an important source of information on a guerrilla movement that continues to gain support.

"They don't incite violence," says Bharat D. Koirala, general secretary of the Nepal Press Institute. "They do print statements from leaders of the Maoist movement. They are sympathizers."

Koirala's assessment was shared by other media professionals, who view Janadesh as a conduit for stories and issues that other media outlets ignore.

While there are regular doses of Maoist doctrine, there also is coverage of official corruption--an obstacle to progress for the poor, the journalists believe--and of human-rights violations. There might be a story about the need for safe, uncontaminated drinking water or for a road into isolated mountain villages. There also are sections for international news, sports and culture.

"We cover every subject that is beneficial to the oppressed in our society," says Dipak Sapkota, the translator who doubles as a self-taught reporter. "We try to mold public opinion in favor of the poor." The 20-year-old, neatly groomed in a green denim suit, began writing for Janadesh earlier this year. He says he is "mentally prepared" to pay a price for his beliefs as a government crackdown appears more likely in the wake of recent events.

The palace massacre on June 1 cast a grim shadow over Nepal. The new king, brother of the late monarch, is regarded as a hard-liner more prone to advocate sending the army to fight Maoist rebels, who have been gaining support among the rural population.

In mid-June, three journalists from the Nepali-language daily Kantipur, a mainstream publication, were arrested and released a few days later. Their sin: publishing an article by a Maoist rebel leader who challenged the official accounts of the royal murders.

Political reforms in 1990 established a parliamentary democracy within the framework of a constitutional monarchy. The king remains the supreme military commander and has the title "chief of state."

In recent months, some factions within the Maoist movement have begun raising the level of violence. Since the "people's war" began five-and-a-half years ago, about 1,670 have been killed. In April, there was a spurt of brutality, including a series of raids on police posts in the outlying areas that left 70 officers dead.

There is speculation in Kathmandu that the "peasant revolt" will move from the countryside into the main cities of Nepal within the year.

In May, a group of journalists-turned-educators gathered at the Nepal Press Institute to explore questions about press freedom in a country of 25 million with a 27 percent literacy rate, a life expectancy of 58 years and an average annual income of $210. They talked about the lack of information in rural areas, where farmers till the soil with hand-hewn tools and children walk miles each day to collect firewood. It is common to see women outside the major cities beating wet clothes on rocks and climbing steep slopes with jugs of water balanced on their heads.

In these backward regions, news is delivered via a primitive media network that includes "wall newspapers," large posters tacked up in isolated villages; "barefoot journalists," housewives, farmers and schoolchildren who provide stories to small local papers; and "audio towers," loudspeakers blaring rebroadcasts of radio reports from the tops of trees.

There was a general consensus that, even though Nepal had been a democracy since 1990, the majority of the population has not yet developed a "free press mind-set."

The journalists at NPI describe a tight-lipped government staunchly opposed to providing access to information. "The journalists and the people [in Nepal] do not demand it," says Koirala, who was a pioneer back in the mid-1960s on the staff of Rising Nepal, a state newspaper. "They do not yet realize that it is their right."

The Maoist insurgents, on the other hand, are described as "crack public relationists" and "highly media- conscious." They regularly bombard newsrooms with press releases, e-mail messages and photos depicting aspects of their movement, including gun-toting women and children.

Maoist leaders invite reporters to visit their secret mountain hideouts and thriving underground networks. Of 75 districts in Nepal, five are known to have "parallel governments" run by the Maoist Communist Party.

The Maoists focus their slogans on social equality, justice and an end to exploitation of the masses. Recent international news reports document their progress in attracting the poorest Nepalis to their cause.

On May 1, a headline in the Washington Post read: "Maoist Insurgency Gains Strength in Nepal; Rebels 'Welcomed at Every House' in Remote Area." Reporter Pamela Constable explored the divergent points of view about the Maoists.

"We were afraid of [Maoists] at first, but now they are welcome at every house," a 43-year-old farmer told Constable. "They drove out the evil people who lend money and force us to work for nothing. They are helping build latrines and repair paths. The police insult us," he said, but the Maoists "treat us with respect."

Constable also wrote about Nepalis who were appalled at the Maoists' violent methods: "In addition to attacking police posts to obtain weapons, they also apply brutal 'punishments' to suspected traitors, smashing their kneecaps with hammers and in some cases beheading them." The Maoists also demand money from businesses and threaten violence if they don't pay up, the reporter wrote.

The article cited a public opinion poll by the Nepali Times magazine in which two-thirds of the respondents said they feared that democracy in their country was in danger. But the majority did not blame the Maoists.

Eighty-one percent said the threat came from mainstream political parties. Fewer than 8 percent said the Maoists posed a threat to democracy, and a large majority said they believed the government should negotiate with the Maoist Communist Party.

That comes as good news to Krishna Sen, a genteel man whose words often were lost in the din of blaring horns and motorcycles thundering by on the narrow alleyway outside his office. The soft-spoken editor was the antithesis of the table-pounding, loudmouth Communist ideologue portrayed in movies like "Reds."

His most recent arrest came in April 1999, after Janadesh carried an interview with Baburam Bhattarai, a top leader of Nepal's Maoist guerrillas. For nearly two years he languished in cells, being moved secretly from one remote jail to another hundreds of miles out of Kathmandu, cut off from family, colleagues and lawyers. He was not allowed to read or write.

The charges against him were never proven in court. It was, he says, a time of "mental torture." The editor believed he would spend his life in prison, or worse, be murdered by authorities.

The ordeal ended in March 2001. The Supreme Court of Nepal ruled Sen's imprisonment was illegal and ordered his release. That wouldn't have happened, Sen believes, without mounting pressure from national and international media organizations that spotlighted his case. On March 15, he was turned over to a delegation from the Federation of Nepalese Journalists.

Media groups in Nepal united behind Sen, hounding state officials on his behalf. "They look at him as a journalist, not as a Maoist," says the NPI's Koirala. The solidarity was "remarkable."

Back in the makeshift newsroom, a bright fluorescent light flickered on and off as the editor sat with hands folded under his chin, matter-of-factly forecasting his future. "I know I can be imprisoned, kidnapped or even killed," Sen says. The government "can stop this newspaper at any time. But they cannot stop the people's revolution."