Youths Drawn Into Nepal’s Insurgency

No chocolates. No movies. No summer camp. In the remote mountains of Nepal, all 10-year-old Pasang can expect from childhood is to witness death.

When he should be at school or playing with friends, he walks alongside Maoist rebel fighters with a dagger hanging by his side, carrying ammunition and other supplies.

Pasang, who uses a single name, is one of the many minors who children’s rights groups say are the invisible victims of Nepal’s communist insurgency, which has taken more than 10,000 lives since it began in 1996.

The rebels have repeatedly denied recruiting children, but the United Nations and rights activists say boys and girls are used by the guerrillas as fighters, fixers and spies.

“It is distressing to hear repeatedly of more and more children being shot or blown up by bombs and explosives, being taken by force from their homes and schools, and of girls being abused, raped and killed,” the National Coalition for Children as Zones of Peace, an alliance of children’s rights groups, said in an appeal to the rebels.

“Parties to the armed conflict should let children go to school, picking up their books and pens and not guns,” the group said.

Subodh Pyakurel of the Informal Sector Service Center, a human rights group in this small Himalayan kingdom of 23 million people, said boys were used to spy in remote areas where there were no telecommunications. When they get old enough, they become fighters.

For now, Pasang is not allowed to go to the front line, but he carries a dagger and someday hopes to be given a gun.

“Once I have a gun I will go bang, bang,” said Pasang, dressed in black pants and a mud-stained white shirt. The Maoists allowed him to be interviewed near Khadbari, a village about 310 miles northeast of the capital, Katmandu.

The rebels, who say they are inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Tse-tung, are trying to topple Nepal’s constitutional monarchy and set up a communist state. The government calls them terrorists; they call themselves freedom fighters.

Fighting between the guerrillas and government troops has escalated since rebel leaders broke a seven-month cease-fire in 2003. The militants walked out of talks and resumed attacks on government and civilian targets.

There are no official numbers on how many children are with the rebels, either as hostages or volunteers.

Pasang said he fled his home in the village of Khadbari because he did not have enough to eat and was forced to work in the fields. In the mountainous areas of impoverished Nepal, nearly half the people are poor and live on less than $1 a day.

Pasang said he wandered barefoot for nine months before joining the rebels.

Pyakurel, the rights activist, said the rebels easily influence children, many of whom have been abandoned as adults fled villages in combat zones to safer areas.

The children are attracted by the novelty of the rebels, who surround village schools and perform musical dramas highlighting their cause in remote areas lacking television and other entertainment. Thousands of children also are summoned for several weeks to listen to political lectures, Pyakurel said.

Children “may not necessarily be shooting guns at the soldiers and only carrying the supplies for the rebels, but they are there right in the middle of the war and getting killed,” he said.

One senior rebel leader insisted that children were not forced to join the Maoist cause.

“We don’t force anyone to join us or fight for us. All of us are here because we want to fight for people’s rights. Children are not used in the battle but they, like adults, support our cause,” said Sangam, a rebel administrative chief for the 35 villages of the rebel-held Rukum district. He uses a single name.

Whether they join or not, children are hurt. A report by Child Workers in Nepal, a child rights group, said 343 children have been killed in the conflict and 300 have been wounded. About 15,000 are believed to have been forced to flee their homes.

Military leaders contend the guerrillas force youngsters into combat.

“They even use innocent children as human shields to protect them from the security forces,” said Brig. Gen. Bed Kumar Sharma, chief of the Royal Nepalese Army’s human rights office.

The rebels deny that.