Nepali rebels step up recruitment before peace deal
Reuters, Kathmandu
Nepal's Maoist insurgents have embarked on a recruitment drive ahead of signing a peace deal this week, residents and media reports said yesterday, with hundreds of young men and boys forced to join the rebel army. Under the deal supposed to end a 10-year insurgency, the Maoists say they will place their 35,000-strong rebel force in specially established camps and keep their weapons under lock and key, with Nepal's army also promising to stay in its barracks. But as the clock ticks towards the signing, more than 400 people have been forced to join the Maoists in the Surkhet and Dailekh districts of western Nepal in the past three days, according to The Kathmandu Post daily. Villagers from Kohalpur near the western town of Nepalgunj told Reuters that dozens of young men, including schoolboys as young as 15, were taken from their village by the Maoists. "They were taken by the Maoists who promised to recruit them in their army," Om Prakash Oli, chief of a school management committee in Kohalpur village, 320 km west of Kathmandu, said by telephone. "Parents are worried about their children." The Maoists denied they were responsible but the government said it was a violation of a code of conduct signed in May, shortly after peace talks began and a ceasefire was agreed.
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