More than three years after giving up armed struggle and joining mainstream politics, opposition Maoists in Nepal have begun training their cadres for a ‘decisive war’ against the present government.
While the Maoist leadership terms it as lessons in self-defence, district leaders of
Youth Communist League, the party’s youth organization, say that they have been asked to prepare for a decisive movement.
From Saturday, hundreds of YCL cadres of UCPN (Maoist), Nepal’s main opposition party, are getting military training in several parts of Sindhuli district besides learning Maoist political ideology.
Commanders of YCL are enlisting young boys and girls from villages and teaching them fighting skills using wooden sticks shaped like rifles and khukuris, a traditional Nepali dagger used in warfare.
“We have a target to impart military training to 3,500 people from our district for the decisive movement,” Rajan Dahal, a senior UCPN (M) leader from Sindhuli district stated.
Reports quoting office-bearers of All Nepal Teachers Organisation, another sister organization of UCPN (M), say that similar activities have begun in nearly a dozen more districts and will soon spread to all 75 districts.
As part of its movement to remove the present government and ensure that the new constitution gets adopted before the May 28 deadline, the Maoist leadership has threatened an agitation from the streets.
In order to improve its image and ensure correct dissemination of news related to the party’s activities, UCPN (M) is also planning to start a TV channel and launch a national broadsheet daily.
Two senior leaders Baburam Bhattarai and Dinanath Sharma have been asked to study the editorial and managerial aspects of how viable such ventures would be.
The Maoist leadership including Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ and others also underwent a recent training from several senior journalists on how to handle the media efficiently.