US embassy cable - 04KATHMANDU313

UNCLAS KATHMANDU 000313 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
STATE FOR SA/INS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM, PTER, NP, Maoist Insurgency 
SUBJECT: NEPALI MAOISTS KILL TERROR VICTIMS' LEADER 
 
 
1. (U)  On February 15 suspected Maoists shot and killed 
Ganesh Chiluwal, President of the Maoist Victims' Association 
(MVA), a local NGO representing survivors of Maoist terror. 
Chiluwal was gunned down at about 5:00 p.m. local time as he 
left his office in downtown Kathmandu.  A witness said he saw 
two young men fleeing the scene.  Police sources said five 
shots were fired, three of which hit the 36-year-old 
Chiluwal. 
 
2.  (U)  Chiluwal was a former Nepali Congress Village 
Development Committee Vice-Chairman who had been forced to 
flee his home in Lamjung District with his family several 
years ago after a Maoist knife attack landed him in a 
Kathmandu hospital.  He started the Maoist Victims' 
Association in 1999 in an effort to draw attention to Maoist 
atrocities and attract financial support for victims. 
Chiluwal had met several times with US Mission 
personnel--most recently with the Ambassador on February 5. 
According to press reports, he had received frequent death 
threats from the Maoists since his relocation, including one 
in December demanding that he close the MVA office.  On 
February 12, Chiluwal had led a well-publicized protest 
against Maoist acts of terror in Kathmandu in which 
participants, many of them survivors of Maoist attacks, 
carried black flags and effigies of Maoist leaders Prachanda 
and Baburam Bhattarai in a mock funeral procession.  The 
effigy of Prachanda (complete with an enlarged photograph of 
the elusive leader pasted to its "head") wore a sign 
proclaiming in Nepali, "I am a murderer."  The Maoist 
Victims' Association had been publicizing a fundraising event 
planned to be held in Kathmandu on February 19. 
 
3.  (SBU)  On February 16 the Embassy issued a press 
statement (copy faxed to SA/INS) condemning the slaying.  The 
French Ambassador told Ambassador Malinowski that he would 
raise the possibility of issuing a parallel statement with EU 
Chiefs of Mission the following day.  Late on February 17 the 
French Ambassador advised that the EU had decided not/not to 
issue a statement.  The National Human Rights Commission, the 
Nepali Congress Party and the Communist Party of Nepal - 
United Marxist Leninst, however, all released statements 
decrying the killing. 
 
4.  (SBU)  Comment: Since the end of the ceasefire, Maoist 
propagandists have done a consummate job of keeping the 
international spotlight on Government abuses of human rights 
(assisted, in some respects, by the security forces' 
heavy-handedness and imperfect accountability).  Chiluwal was 
an unsophisticated, small-time political figure from a 
remote, underdeveloped district whose modest efforts to raise 
awareness of the plight of victims of Maoist terror had met 
with neither great success or recognition from the 
international community, the government, the local media, nor 
even the luminaries of his own Nepali Congress Party. 
However, nothing irritates the Maoists more than having their 
acts of terror highlighted--even if it is by someone whose 
lack of proficiency in English and ignorance of well-packaged 
fundraising techniques kept him away from many embassies' 
doors.   While it may be hard to believe that the slick, 
well-oiled Maoist public relations machinery could consider 
the unpolished Chiluwal a threat to their international 
image, his accusations apparently hit too close to home.  It 
is regrettable that the EU missions here, whose vigorous 
defense of human rights in the face of abuses by security 
forces has been stressed in other joint public statements, 
could not decide to denounce this vicious and premeditated 
murder. 
MALINOWSKI