Declare truce or quit

The international community must persuade the government to either declare a ceasefire or quit. It cannot pretend to be seeking its own peace when the Maoists have already done so. It seems the government is becoming more arrogant and proving its incompetence more than that of Sher Bahadur Deuba who at least was honest in admitting his failure. If any power is behind sustaining such a corrupt regime, it must know that Nepalis cannot be fooled for long. The King should immediately focus his attention on national peace-building measures in spite of his very weak media and political advisers. India and the US must seize this opportunity to re-establish peace at the earliest. The world should ignore this government like the Myanmar junta as it is showing its ugly face.

Tripti Sharma Koirala, Maharajgunj

Change tack

This refers to “Nepal–Bhutan Talks” published in THT on Sept 8. It was good news that Bhutan, at least, responded to Nepal with some bogus promises. Bhutan has never been sincere in resolving the refugee crisis for the past one and half decades. Nepal must learn lessons from the past and realise that Bhutan is not sincere. Bhutan has neglected the outcome of the 15 rounds of bilateral talks. Sadly, both Indian and Nepali forces blocked the refugees at Kakarvitaa on August 3 this year when they tried to cross into Indian territory to return to their homeland. This only gave the impression that the Indian side was working on behalf of Bhutan to demoralise the refugees.

At present, there is speculation in Bhutan over Nepal seeking international attention at the upcoming UN session. Nepal had repeatedly pleaded to Bhutan to resume the verification process. Instead, Bhutan concluded that refugee camps are breeding grounds for Maoists. It is hard to believe that Bhutan will take its citizens back. The situation inside Bhutan is more tense. There were reports of the Royal Bhutan Army raiding houses and seeking details of

Lhotsampas after a dozen refugees entered Phuntsoling through Pashakha border recently. They interrogated locals and accused them of helping the ‘terrorists’. Therefore, Nepal must address this imbroglio and seek international intervention.

Vidhyapati Mishra, APFA-Bhutan

Atrocious

The negligence of the police force was manifested on the front page of THT on Sept 9. How can a child be mistaken for a protestor and beaten? This is a reprehensible act. The police force should stop doing anything that will tarnish its image, or else the public faith in it will erode further.

Paras Pageni, via e-mail

Be careful

The news published in THT on Sept. 6 about ‘EU, China seal textile trade deal’ had so many mistakes. Norman Lewis says, “It is a scientific law of language that if enough people make a ‘mistake’ the mistake becomes acceptable usage. That applies to pronunciation, to grammar, to word meanings, but not to spellings.” Spellings can make words completely different from the desired ones, if not used properly. Not only vague words appear in your newspaper, but it also resorts to frequent repetition of words (e.g. and, but, the).

Bhupendra Acharya, via e-mail