World's 'most wanted' criminals making Nepal their home

The man trying to cross into India through the Kakarbhitta border check post in eastern Nepal's Jhapa district caught the attention of police though he presented a valid passport. It was a Nepali passport, but he could not speak a single word in Nepali.
The suspicious policemen handed him over to the authorities in neighbouring Sunsari district as his passport showed it had been issued from there.
After the arrest early this month, police say investigations are pointing to the arrested man being Pakistani national Ashraf Ali, who is wanted for terrorist activities in his own country and has an Interpol alert issued for his arrest.
While police remain tightlipped about Ali, media reports say he had been living in Nepal under fake Nepali citizenship acquired after bribing district officials.
Police on Monday arrested a municipality official on the suspicion that he had recommended a Nepali passport for Ali, who had been living in border towns close to India: Inaruwa, Duhabi and Biratnagar.
When he was arrested, Ali was trying to cross into India and from there proceed to Pakistan.
Last month, at the same border check post, Nepal police arrested another notorious international criminal wanted by India and Bangladesh.
Subrata Bayen, caught in an arms smuggling case in India's West Bengal state last year, was soon out on bail when he fled the country and headed towards Nepal.
Nepal police also found a Nepali passport on him.
Bayen is currently in eastern Nepal's Bhadrapur jail while investigations are on.
Last month, yet another wanted man who had made Nepal his home to avoid being arrested by the police of his own country was arrested as he tried to sneak back.
American Brenice Lee Smith was nabbed at the San Francisco International Airport as he arrived there on a flight from Kathmandu.
The 64-year-old is suspected of being part of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a Hippie gang of drug dealers and users that was founded in the 1960s. Smith had been living in Nepal posing as a Buddhist monk.
The deteriorating law and order system due to continuous political instability for nearly 13 years, corruption in the bureaucracy that enables criminals on the run to procure passports and other legal documents easily and the open border with India have contributed to a growing number of criminals from other countries heading for Nepal where they can lie low in safety.
There are also allegations that some politicians are involved in providing a safe haven to criminals on the run.
Indian don Babloo Srivastava wrote in his fictionalised memoirs that Nepali lawmaker Mirza Dilshad Beg provided safe houses for terrorists from Pakistan and their safe passage from Nepal to Thailand.
Beg was murdered near his own residence in Kathmandu in 1998 in what was believed to be gang warfare.
Besides terrorists, arms and drug smugglers and counterfeit Indian currency dealers, Nepal is also increasingly becoming a haven for western paedophiles.
In 1999, Nepal police arrested French citizen Jean Jacques Haye and British national Christopher R Fraser for paedophilia and running a child pornography racket internationally. Both ran child care centres in Kathmandu and abused the inmates.
Though Haye was deported, he returned to Nepal and lived there quietly till his arrest once again this March when a childcare organisation tipped off police.

Orlando Bloom Joins Unicef As Goodwill Ambassador

Global (ChattahBox) - Orlando Bloom, who has starred in several hit trilogies such as the Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean, has announced that he will soon become an official goodwill ambassador for Unicef.
Unicef, the UN’s organization that spreads awareness and help for various child’s issues around the world, has said the Bloom will become their newest high-profile ambassador.
“We are proud to have Orlando Bloom as one of the strong voices for vulnerable children,” the organization’s executive director, Ann M. Veneman, said in an official statement.
Bloom has been a member of Unicef since 2007, when he began speaking at schools in Nepal about proper sanitation.
He joins past ambassadors, such as Audrey Hepburn and David Beckham, on the list of famous Unicef supporters.

2-Foot Teen to Become World's Smallest Man

It’s an exciting time for Khagendra Thapa Magar of Nepal. Not only has he been enjoying a week of celebrations with friends and family ahead of his 18th birthday, which is Wednesday, he’s now eligible to be officially ratified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s smallest man.
The teenager, who stands 2-feet tall and weighs just 10 pounds, is a full head and shoulders shorter than Pingping of China who currently holds the title of the world's smallest man.
But the Guinness title isn’t the only birthday wish Khagendra hopes will come true. He also wants to find a wife.
"I want two things: to be recognized by Guinness and to find a wife who is small like me," Khagendra told the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph.
"When I am officially recognized as the smallest man in the world I expect to get lots of proposals. It is my dream to have four children," he added.
Currently, there is no official title for the smallest teenager, or smallest child, so Guinness told Khagendra he would have to wait for his title until he was old enough, according to the report.
"I am happy now that I am an adult," he said. "I have been waiting for this day for many years. Being small like me is no fun as a boy, but as a man I will be special."

At School: Here's how to say 'learn' in Nepali

By Mary Niederberger, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Lake Fong/Post-Gazette
Sarah Dunn, a social worker at Paynter Elementary School in Baldwin, helps Bhuwan Dahl, 7, from Nepal, color his weather project earlier this month.
Second-grader Bhuwan Dahl was busy last week learning about autumn by donning a sweatshirt, picking up fallen leaves and tracing them with crayons along with classmates at Paynter Elementary in Baldwin Borough.
Bhuwan was all smiles even though he was thousands of miles away from his homeland of Nepal, where his family lived in a refugee camp. Just four weeks into school at Paynter, he hasn't mastered English.
His comfort may have come from his experiences in the Welcome Center, a classroom the Baldwin-Whitehall School District created last year to meet the needs of refugee students who are placed in the district by Catholic Charities and Jewish Family & Children's Service.
The center is important in a district where 200 students are refugees, including 97 of the 704 students at Paynter.
Baldwin-Whitehall has the largest proportion of refugees -- nearly 5 percent of all students -- of any district in the county,and other districts, including Keystone Oaks, Mt. Lebanon and Penn Hills, are studying its one-of-a-kind center, said Paynter Principal Darlene DeFilippo.
Baldwin-Whitehall also is considering creating scaled-down versions at its middle and high schools.
Located near the school entrance, the center -- with salutations in world languages on one wall and international flags on another -- is the first stop for refugee students. It's where they are officially greeted by the staff and where they are assessed as they eat breakfast and participate in activities, including art, singing, dancing and play.
The children soon learn that it's the place they can come anytime they encounter a problem at school.
Most of the refugees live at the Prospect Park apartment complex in Whitehall, home to numerous refugee families for the past decade.
The initial influx of refugees to the district started in the late 1990s with Bosnians, followed by people from the Middle East. With those groups, the families generally had lived together in their own homes before they were forced from their native countries.
But in recent years, the arriving families have lived in refugee camps, sometimes for years. The most recent groups come from Nepal, Burundi and Myanmar.
While some lived in their own modest dwellings in the camps, others came from far more rustic camps, which meant students weren't familiar with such concepts as running water when they arrived at Paynter.
Two years ago, when Mrs. DeFilippo started to recognize that these refugee students were far needier than those in the past, she started to work with pupil services director Virginia Deasy and the district's social workers to devise a way to help them make the transition to life here.
"You can't expect children to become students unless they learn how to become a student. We had no formal way of getting the kids acculturated," Mrs. DeFilippo said.
From that effort, the Welcome Center was born. It officially opened last school year, and 27 refugee students passed through it.
There, students learn about school etiquette such how to stand in line or raise a hand to get the teacher's attention.
Some also need to learn how a water fountain, faucet, telephone or light switch works. The children learn about kitchen safety by pretending to make meals at a toy stove and sink.
The room also is equipped with other toys, books, an art-and-crafts area and multi-cultural dolls. It has materials about American culture although the children also take English-as-a-second-language classes.
For children who may not have the words to express themselves yet, Ms. Dunn uses flashcards with faces that express various emotions.
One important lesson is that the climate in Western Pennsylvania includes four seasons.
"Many of the students come from warm climates where they only wear sandals or flip flops," said social worker Sarah Dunn, who operates the center.
School officials, with the help of the school community and other social service organizations, make sure there is a ready supply of warm clothing and shoes for students whose families can't afford them.
School employees try to keep in touch with parents, even translating school handbooks and calendars into multiple languages for open house.
In Bhuwan's leaf activity, the real lessons Ms. Dunn was stressing were all about appropriate classroom behavior.
Because he followed all of his directions, Bhuwan earned five minutes of free play time after the organized session.
He is making steady progress toward what is the goal for all refugee students -- to be placed full-time in regular classes.
In addition to group activities, Ms. Dunn conducts one-on-one sessions to work on individual issues.
During one such session, Ms. Dunn talked with kindergartner Gogan Phuyal from Nepal about how his experience at Paynter was going, using a Nepali translator on a telephone.
Ms. Dunn and the child sat on a carpet with a phone between them. Before the translator became available, Gogan nodded his head to answer yes and no to Ms. Dunn's questions.
But once he heard the familiar sounds of his native language, he became animated and had a lively discussion.
Through the translator, Ms. Dunn learned that Gogan is happy at Paynter and "likes everything about school" but the American food.
Gogan told the interpreter he had solved his problem by bringing his lunch from home.
"That's great," Ms. Dunn exclaimed. "We want you to be happy here."
Gogan flashed a bright smile.

The Attitude of Drafting a New Constitution of Nepal

Prakash Bom -
Drafting of a new constitution ought to be inspired with revolutionary expectations against the establishment of status quo. In spite of the revolution born of diverse and conflicting perspectives the new proposal must redirect the nation for an overall structural change. The new proposal must address, therefore, the "ground-breaking reality" against the status quo. Otherwise, the proposal will fail to render fair constitution to honor civilian rule.There are many among us in Nepal, particularly the political leaders and founders of main political parties who will not at all agree with aforesaid statement. For example, the incumbent Prime Minister MK Nepal while addressing a program in New York tried to assure the critical mood of audience regarding the statute of a new constitution with the analogy of his own past experience of drafting 1990´s constitution. He confirmed that there are few issues that are new to us such as republic state and federal structure but the rest won´t be that different from 1990´s constitution model.The assurance was rather pro-status quo – anti-revolutionary and hopeless from the perspective of overall democratic changes for good governance, civilian rule and justice that 1990´s constitution had failed to deliver. The 1990´s constitution, as a matter of fact, gave the birth to the corrupt government system that lacked civilian rule and justice. Basically, it failed to address the diverse issues of entire nation at the grass-root level with the top-down hierarchical administrative structures.But the need to drafting a new constitution has been inspired with revolutionary expectations to address diverse issues of nation to set up a federal state structure for a full civilian rule that can be built with "bottom-up" structures to democratic system that is completely run by people´s elected representatives.But the mood of Nepalis in general seems critical about the drafting of a new constitution. People doubt even if the drafting of a new constitution is accomplished in stipulated time it will not be inspired by the revolutionary expectations for civilian rule and justice. It might end up with 1990´s model of constitution that give power to unelected elites - the creators and the beneficiaries of the old system, who are ordained to carry on the culture of unfairness.The solution to the current political crisis between the coalition of incumbent government and the main opposition party CPN-Maoist on the president´s move to overrule former Prime Minister´s decision under Maoist led government to remove army chief may need amendment of interim constitution to avoid future crisis as such, but it can not guarantee the drafting of a new constitution within stipulated time to shun prime minister from calling an indefinite state of emergency, if consensus among main political parties reach nowhere.That is the fear which lures the minds of Nepalis who doubt the ways current politics is unfolding against the aspiration of people for a ground-breaking transformation. There are yet many fundamental issues that need thorough discussion in the Parliament to institutionalize the functions of federal state structures at central, province or state, and local government.Basically, the current state structures, government system and interim constitution can not be the model of the new constitution because under the federal state structure the functions and relation between central, state and local government ought to be governed by the elected representatives to establish inclusive civilian rule.It seems difficult for status quo of the creators and the beneficiaries of the old system to get rid off their own mind-set. But their stake in the new constitution will prevent innovation in new state system. For example, the current political crisis instigated with the president´s overuse of jurisdiction under the interim constitution.There is very little hope whether main political parties NC, UML and CPN Maoist can consolidate with their differences in order to find ways to reach consensus on democratization of Nepal Army, civilian supremacy, and president´s jurisdiction under interim constitution. But, still the ground reality of statute of a new constitution is barely moving forward.For example, the Constituent Assembly that has the mandate of drafting a new constitution nearly held 57 meetings. But few of them were attended by the top leaders – GP Koiral, MK Nepal and PK Dahal ´Prachanda.´ Instead, as reported they have been busy attending their own internal party meetings that have no connection with the new statute.GP Koirala attended a single meeting; Prachanda attended only four; and Prime Minister MK Nepal was present through three. Since the Constituent Assembly was elected April, 2008, many of its members have been abroad on trips that have no bearing on drafting constitution.The humor the Prime Minister MK Nepal made at one of the meetings in New York about the attitude of main political party leaders to make eleventh-hour solution was not credible towards the duty and responsibility of the government and Constituent Assembly to the statute. Instead it gave the impression "we big leaders can resolve differences in the eleventh-hour" that resembles bygone Nepali rulers´ haunting stubbornness.Nonetheless, it won´t be any near to the aspiration of people for revolutionary changes as opposed to the current state structure and the ways the government does business. All the old ways will keep rolling with the laws and administrations without any mandate to overall change for civilian rule and justice.The unelected elites - the creators and the beneficiaries of the old system (through out the political parties and in the government) as usual will profit the most. That´s what Prime Minister MK Nepal´s humor meant to give emphasis on the attitude that can entertainingly obstruct the regular proceedings of Constituent Assembly for members to take their mandated duty and responsibility towards statute.

Diwali in India spells danger for Nepal

Kathmandu, Oct 3 (IANS) Every autumn, as India celebrates Diwali, the festival of lights, it spells danger for neighbouring Nepal where smuggled fireworks from Indian cities pose a severe fire hazard.The Nepal Police headquarters said searches have been intensified at Thankot, the major entry point to Kathmandu valley, and key check posts on the India-Nepal border in the Terai plains in the south to confiscate crackers and other powerful fireworks that are smuggled every year around this time.
Fireworks are banned in Nepal, especially in Kathmandu valley, where several world heritage sites, temples and monasteries are located.
The scarcity of water, the narrow bylanes and the mushrooming of buildings without any open space have contributed to make Kathmandu and its neighbouring Lalitpur and Bhaktapur cities potential death traps where a single stray flame can trigger a conflagration.
The ban was strengthened during the 10-year Maoist insurgency for fear that the explosives could be used by the Communist guerrillas.
Despite the ban, in the recent years, the authorities are alarmed by the growing use of fireworks during Diwali in Nepal.
On Friday, police said they had confiscated 350 kg of firecrackers from three buses that had reached Thankot from Sarlahi and Dhanusha districts in the Terai.
On the same day, two cartons of fireworks were also seized from a fourth bus coming from Birgunj.
Since last week, police have seized over 1,300 kg of such explosives.
Selling firecrackers is a punishable offence and last year, a trader caught by police was charged with violating the Explosives Act.
Earlier this week, a group of Indian pilgrims who had come to worship at the Pashupatinath temple were in temporary trouble as police found three sacks of fireworks hidden under vegetables and stashed on the roof of their bus.
The phenomenon has also triggered public discussions on the potential hazard.
On Friday, Kantipur FM, Nepal’s most popular radio station, urged listeners during a chat show not to flout the law and put theirs as well as others’ lives in jeopardy.
Nepal celebrates its own form of Diwali, the indigenous Tihar festival, differently.
While lamps are lit at temples, devotees worship the cow and the dog and traditionally, there are no fireworks.

Nepal Deploys Police on Tibetan Border

Just days after almost 80 Tibetans were arrested in the Nepali capital of Kathmandu, the country has announced the deployment of a number of police along the Tibetan border, the AFP reported.The 80 Tibetans in question had gathered in the capital to protest the Chinese celebration on the 60th anniversary of the Communist government. Nepal supports the Chinese view that Tibet is now a part of China, and has come under increasing Chinese criticism in recent months over harboring anti-Chinese activists and Tibetan exiles. The Nepali Home Minister, however, denies allegations that the move has anything to do with pressure from Beijing, citing the armed police presence already deployed along the Indian border as evidence. As many as 2500 Tibetans per year have traditionally made the attempt to move out of Chinese-controlled Tibet and into India, using the Nepali border as an escape route.