This story first appeared in Gorakha Patra

Trafficking of priceless resources from Nepal, including statues with spiritual and religious values, human and natural resources have been taking place for several centuries.  On 20th March 2023, Finance Uncovered (FU), a UK based organisation, and the International Consortium for Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), with reporters from different parts of the world including Nepal, India, Italy, USA, UK and Egypt exposed that more than 1000 artifacts in the Metropolitan Museum of Arts catalogue in New York are linked to alleged looting and trafficking figures. This disclosure has raised questions as to how could a museum in New York house valuable resources without valid documentation of how it reached there.  In collaboration with Malia Politzer of FU, Spencer Woodman of ICIJ and Delphine Reuter, this author was involved in looking into the Nepal story.

In the village of Bungmati, Nepal, above an ancient spring, stand two stone shrines and a temple. One of those shrines has a large hole where a statue of Shreedhar Vishnu, the Hindu protector god, used to be. Carved by master artisans nearly a thousand years ago, the sandstone god was flanked by the Hindu goddess Laxmi and the winged demigod Garuda and is considered a protective figure. For many years members of the local community carefully tended and worshipped the idol.

Stolen antiquities

Interestingly, the idol Shreedhar Vishnu, from this gap in the shrine at Bungmati was finally identified by an anonymous Facebook account called the Lost Arts of Nepal in 2021, after remaining in the Met Museum for almost 30 years.  “The statue of Shreedhar Vishnu, which was stolen from here in the 80s, was found in the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1995. This statue had resided in Kota tole of Bungmati since the Lichchavi dynasty. A similar statue of Shreedhar Vishnu is also present in the complex of the Changunarayan temple, which is located east of Kathmandu, and is estimated that both could have been built by the same artist, about 1000 years ago in the 11th century,” informed architect and archaeologist Anil Tuladhar, a local from Bungmati.

ICIJ and FU found that hundreds of antiquities in the Met have no records going back to a country of origin. A look at the museum’s catalogue of more than 250 Nepali and Kashmiri antiquities, the team found that only three have any origin records which explained how it had left the place of its origin. The investigative team focussed on Nepal and Kashmir, as both places have experienced heavy looting that have received very little international news coverage. The only provenance that the Met gave for nearly 15 per cent of the Nepal pieces and 31 per cent of the Kashmiri pieces in its collection was the name Samuel Eilenberg, a Columbia University Math professor and antiquities collector who died in 1998.

With the aid of Lost Arts of Nepal, three additional relics allegedly looted from Nepali temples to the Met’s collection were identified. Site visits and interviews with locals confirmed two of the three matches: a smooth, hand-painted wooden statue of a Nrityadevi at I-Baha Bahi, Patan Lalitpur, known as the Goddess of Dance, and an elaborately carved wooden bracket, allegedly stolen from a temple in the world heritage site of Bhaktapur. I-Baha Bahi is one of the oldest Buddhist temples in Kathmandu Valley, according to members of the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign. In 1970, the temple was raided and the community’s gods and goddesses were stolen.

84-year-old Dana Bahadur Shakya and 51-year-old Kancha Shakya are residents of I Baha Bahi and both informed that the I-Baha Bahi site had several statues of Gods and Goddesses that had been stolen. Inspecting the idols on view on Met Museum, the octogenarian who is the head of that area confirmed the Nrityadevi was from the I-Baha Bahi site. There are 11 Shakya families in this area who worship the idols in this site and open it up to the public during community events. Five of these families live within the site. Now that the Lost Arts of Nepal and this reporter representing FU and ICIJ have been visiting them, the residents are hopeful that the idols would be returned back to their site so that Nepal will be restored with its glory and blessings.

Members of the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign have asked Nepal’s government to help them approach the museums and get the relics back. “I understand the concept of preservation, but taking an object away from its living culture and putting it behind glass in a museum and then saying, ‘We are preserving this object for that country’ — it’s just completely wrong,” said Roshan Mishra of the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign. Ken Weine, a spokesperson for the Met, said the museum is “presently in direct discussion with Nepal regarding select objects from the Museum’s collection, and looks forward to a constructive resolution and ongoing and open dialogue.” He did not say which items were being discussed or whether the museum had plans to return them.

Repatriation

Nepal has had a ban on the export of culturally significant materials dating back to 1956. The vast majority of items acquired by museums outside the country after that year are likely stolen, according to Emiline Smith, a lecturer in art crime and criminology at the University of Glasgow’s Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research. “The Met shouldn’t have been dealing with (Nepali) objects at all,” Smith said. “Even if you have an object with provenance dating back to 1970, it should not have been traded after 1956.”

As per the law of Nepal, most of the Nepali artifacts in Western collections may have been stolen. There have been some cases of gods and artifacts being repatriated. However, with constraints of resources to conduct proper investigation, the people working on restoration of Nepali heritage mainly trafficked resource, be it human or idols, often cannot gather evidences to take action and get back them. The government of Nepal, with help from the US embassy here, must now take action based on the cue of this recent expose. Otherwise, much of Nepal’s lost cultural heritage will remain behind glasses in Western museums, far from their communities of origin. The in-depth investigative story by FU and ICIJ can be read here:  https://www.financeuncovered.org/stories/new-york-met-museum-looted-antiquities-nepal-india

https://www.icij.org/investigations/hidden-treasures/more-than-1000-artifacts-in-metropolitan-museum-of-art-catalog-linked-to-alleged-looting-and-trafficking-figures/

Link to original story

This story first appeared in Nepali Times

For decades the Met has been adding to its antiquities collection pieces of dubious origin, including from Nepal. Now, its reputation is eroding.

In the town of Bungamati, Nepal, above an ancient spring, stand two stone shrines and a temple. One of those shrines has a large hole where a statue of Shreedhar Vishnu, the Hindu protector god, used to be. Carved by master artisans nearly a thousand years ago, the sandstone god was flanked by the Hindu goddess Laxmi and the winged demigod Garuda and is considered a protective figure. For many years members of the local community carefully tended and worshipped the idol.

“When women started their labour pain, our elders used to come to put mustard oil on the statue of Sreedhar Vishnu so that the women giving birth would be safe and the childbirth would be easy,” recalled Krishna Bhakti Mali, a 53-year-old resident of Bungamati.

Sometime in the early 1980s that tradition abruptly ended when thieves removed the 20-inch statue. Mali’s neighbour, a man named Buddha Ratna Tuladhar, recalled how the community was “overwhelmed by melancholy” over its loss.

“We kept hoping the statue would be restored, but it never was,” he said.

About a decade after the theft, and on the other side of the world, a wealthy American collector donated the statue to New York City’s famed Metropolitan Museum of Art. There it would remain for nearly 30 years until an anonymous Facebook account called the Lost Arts of Nepal identified it, in 2021. Although the Met has since removed the statue from its publicly listed collection, signalling that it may soon be returned, the damage to the Bungamati community was already done.

“Nepal has a living religion where these idols are actively worshipped in temples. People pray to them and take them out during festivals for ceremonies,” said Roshan Mishra, a volunteer with the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign, a coalition formed to restore the country’s lost heritage.“When relics are stolen, those festivals stop. Each stolen statue erodes our culture. Our traditions fade and are eventually forgotten.”

In the antiquities trade, the Met’s reputation has begun to erode. Over the last two years, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and its media partners have reported on the Met’s acquisition practices — often in relation to a trove of items obtained from Cambodia in an era when that country’s cultural heritage was sold off wholesale to the highest bidder.

A broader examination of the Met’s antiquities collection, conducted by ICIJ, Finance Uncovered and other media partners in recent months, raises new concerns over the origin of the museum’s inventory of ancient statues, friezes and other relics.

What the Met decides to do about these concerns will have consequences beyond the museum and may influence what the public can expect from museums all over the world.

‘The Met has it all’

In the beginning an informal gallery inside a former Fifth Avenue residence, the Metropolitan Museum of Art first opened the doors to its own building in 1880, long after its counterparts in Paris and London. The museum got its start with the purchase of 174 paintings. The galleries at France’s palatial Louvre already held thousands of works, many inherited from the nation’s colonial exploits.

Even in the 1960s, the largest museum in North America was still playing catch-up. The Met’s leadership aggressively sought major acquisitions and took a casual approach to, and at times embraced, antiquities smuggling as a mainstay of the museum’s sourcing. Under then-Director Thomas Hoving, the Met embarked on a vigorous buying spree in an effort to build out an antiquities collection that could match rivals in London and Paris. Over the following decades, the institution filled its halls and warehouses with treasures from Greece, Italy, Egypt, India, Cambodia and elsewhere.

“Not a single decade of any civilization that took root on earth is not represented by some worthy piece,” Hoving later wrote of the results of work he had begun. “The Met has it all.”

And seemingly more than it should. Today, governments, law enforcement officials and researchers have linked a mounting number of the Met’s relics to looters and traffickers. While the Met has voluntarily returned some items, prosecutors have seized others.

Reporters reviewed the museum’s catalog and found at least 1,109 pieces previously owned by people who had been either indicted or convicted of antiquities crimes; 309 of them are on display. Fewer than half of the 1,109 relics have records describing how they left the country of origin, even those that come from places that have had strict export laws for decades. Many were removed after international guidelines were already put into place to restrict the movement of antiquities across national borders, according to museum records.

More than 150 additional items in the Met’s antiquities collection passed through ownership of nearly a dozen more people or galleries from whom prosecutors seized stolen ancient works.

In a 1994 memoir, Hoving wrote that his address book of “smugglers and fixers” and other art world acquaintances “was longer than anyone else’s in the field.” Last year, the Met’s former curator of East Asian art, Martin Lerner, said he relied on “the goodwill and integrity” of dealers like his friend Douglas Latchford, who was charged in late 2019 with antiquities trafficking. (The indictment was dismissed after Latchford died in 2020.)

In response to questions from reporters, the Met defended its acquisition practices. “The Met is committed to the responsible collecting of art and goes to great lengths to ensure that all works entering the collection meet the laws and strict policies in place at the time of acquisition,” said Met spokesperson Kenneth Weine. “Additionally, as laws and guidelines on collecting have changed over time, so have the Museum’s policies and procedures. The Met also continually researches the history of works in the collection — often in collaboration with colleagues in countries around the world — and has a long track record of acting on new information as appropriate.”

An ongoing problem for countries hoping to recover stolen works, and for law enforcement officials investigating suspect collections, is that many relics in the world’s largest museums lack high-quality origin records. This makes it difficult to know whether antiquities were stolen and illegally sold before being acquired by a museum.

ICIJ and Finance Uncovered found that hundreds of antiquities in the Met’s collection have no records going back to a country of origin. A look at the museum’s catalogue of more than 250 Nepali and Kashmiri antiquities, for example, found that only three have any origin records explaining how they left the regions. (ICIJ focused on these specific collections because Nepal and Kashmir have experienced heavy looting that received relatively little international news coverage).

Investigators’ interest in the Met’s collections, along with stepped-up media coverage, has caused experts in the antiquities trade to wonder how many more pieces in the museum’s catalogue could be vulnerable to confiscation, and what that might mean for the art industry at large.

“The Met sets the tone for museums around the world,” said Tess Davis, executive director of the Antiquities Coalition, an organisation that campaigns against the trafficking of cultural artefacts. “If the Met is letting all of these things fall through the cracks, what hope do we have for the rest of the art market?”

‘We all believe the stuff was illegally dug up’ .

Hoving, the Met’s director from 1967 to 1977, is credited with transforming it into a world-class museum of major works. In his memoir, he describes how his decade of aggressive acquisition drew upon an array of illicit sourcing. Being an accomplice to art smugglers, he wrote, was a necessary role for a Met director. He had approved the purchase of a large batch of Indian and Cambodian antiquities that he suspected had been smuggled.

Hoving hid diary entries detailing his misgivings about the origins of a stolen Greek ceramic work in case prosecutors came looking for evidence. And when Turkish authorities asked for the return of allegedly stolen relics from the Met, he made a striking admission of guilt to a fellow curator.

“We all believe the stuff was illegally dug up,” Hoving recalled having told a longtime Greek curator. “For Christ’s sake, if the Turks come up with the proof from their side, we’ll give the East Greek treasure back. And that’s policy. We took our chances when we bought the material.”

The Met’s lax approach to acquisitions has subjected large parts of its catalogue to questions today.

“The Met was established to be in competition with the major museums around the world,” said Erin Thompson, professor of art crime at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “It wants one of everything. When you put those conditions together, it’s pretty dangerous in terms of making the most ethical decisions.”

Hoving wrote that late in his tenure at the Met, he attempted to change the museum’s practices. In the early 1970s, he attended UNESCO hearings on looted antiquities and came away feeling that “the age of piracy had ended.” He “decided to change the Metropolitan’s free-wheeling methods of collecting.”

There is little evidence, though, that the Met tightened its acquisition standards in the years that followed. The number of pieces susceptible to claims of looting only grew.

The Kardashian Connection
There may be no person in the world photographed more than Kim Kardashian, but in 2018 she appeared in an image that had a stunning impact on the antiquities trade. The reality TV superstar, outfitted in a gold Versace gown, posed alongside a gold Egyptian coffin inside a private gallery at the star-studded Met Gala. In doing so, she inadvertently revealed to the public an Egyptian work crafted more than 2,000 years ago. It turned out that the Met had bought the piece from a dealer who had provided the museum with a poorly forged export licence. An investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office determined that the coffin had indeed been looted from Egypt. In early 2019, the museum agreed to return it.

In September 2021, authorities seized more than a hundred pieces from one of the museum’s billionaire donors, Michael Steinhardt. The action was part of a deferred-prosecution agreement struck between Steinhardt and the district attorney’s office and involved some pieces that had been shown at the Met. The agreement bans Steinhardt from collecting antiquities for life. A Met gallery of Greek antiquities is named after Steinhardt and his wife, but the Met has not commented on the Steinhardt seizures.

Throughout 2022, U.S. authorities seized at least 29 items from the Met’s collection — including Greek busts, Egyptian bronzes and ancient plates, helmets and statues. There are items made of gold, bronze and terracotta, and they were pillaged from around the Mediterranean and India. The investigators responsible for the seizures are part of an antiquities-trafficking unit led by Matthew Bogdanos, an assistant district attorney in Manhattan. Bogdanos’s unit has worked with agents in Homeland Security Investigations, a unit of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Bogdanos said that his office is not investigating the Met specifically but that prominent pieces in its collection have been swept up in investigations primarily focused on individual traffickers. In its five years of operation, his unit has begun to develop a fuller picture of international trafficking rings, and Bogdanos said he expects the pace of its actions to accelerate as a result.

The Met is not alone in its struggles. Around the world, museums are facing a reckoning over how to deal with looted items in their collections. Just last year, London’s Horniman Museum, Washington’s Smithsonian Institution and various German museums and private collectors repatriated items looted from Nigeria. And in the first two months of this year, museums and private collectors from the U.S., Spain and Australia have repatriated dozens of looted relics to their countries of origin. Central to the issue are problems endemic to the antiquities market, in which transactions worth millions of dollars are sometimes conducted with no due diligence on the part of museums or auction houses. “The antiquities market has been called the largest unregulated market in the world,” said Angela Chiu, an independent researcher and expert on Asian art and the antiquities market. “It’s self-regulating, and you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors.”

This difficulty of confirming an object’s origin history has caused some in the art world to rethink whether museums should be buying antiquities at all. The National Gallery of Australia returned more than a dozen sculptures — bought through notorious antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor for more than $8.7 million — upon learning that they were stolen. Museum officials also made the decision to stop participating in the antiquities market entirely.

“It’s very, very rare for objects to have the level of provenance that we would need to be able to ethically acquire them,” said Bronwyn Campbell, the National Gallery’s senior provenance curator. “We’ve judged that the antiquities market is just too risky and ethically fraught, and would prefer instead to explore new and creative ways of representing diverse cultures by working collaboratively with source countries and communities.”

‘This is a mafia-run business’

In the 1950s, the Met began acquiring pieces from Robert E. Hecht, an American-born antiquities dealer who spent decades running afoul of authorities and was ultimately tried on charges of antiquities smuggling in Italy. In 1959 and 1961, Italian prosecutors charged Hecht with antiquities smuggling, and in 1973, they issued an arrest warrant for him that was later revoked. But the Met kept buying from him. The Italian charges in a subsequent against Hecht were ultimately dismissed because the statute of limitations expired. Hecht, who died in 2012 at the age of 92, denied involvement in the illegal exportation of art.

Bruce McNall, Hecht’s former business partner who helped Hecht sell pieces to the Met, told ICIJ that the museum asked little about how the pieces were acquired. “I don’t think Bob [Hecht] would disclose specifically too often where he got things,” McNall said. “Did I know the things were coming from illegal sites? No, but I suspected it. But we never really went into it at length.”

McNall said he sold one Greek vase to the Met despite knowing nothing about how Hecht had acquired it. He also said the Met’s esteemed classics curator, Dietrich von Bothmer, “did not ask me for any details about its origin or where it was found.”

The Met still holds nearly two dozen pieces once owned by Hecht, including seven Greek vases. The Met offers no provenance or history of ownership that explains how pieces tied to Hecht left their home countries.

McNall said he avoided the underworld that supplied his business partner with relics. “This is a mafia-run business, and you have to be kind of careful,” McNall said of Hecht’s dealings in Italy and Turkey. “These are tough guys, so my view of it always was: ‘Let Bob handle it.’ I don’t want to deal with that shit. I’m not going to go over there and deal with these kind of guys.”

Museum records of Hecht’s most notable sale to the Met, a Greek vase for $1 million, show the museum’s eagerness to acquire unique relics — and that few questions were apparently asked of Hecht. “The vase, if acquired, would not only raise the stature of the Greek and Roman collections but would also be considered one of the greatest objects in the Museum,” according to the minutes of a Met acquisitions committee meeting about the purchase. A summary of the committee’s discussion makes no mention of the vase’s origin apart from identifying Hecht as the seller.

Hoving later became an advocate for repatriating stolen relics and joined a campaign to pressure the Met to repatriate the vase. In 2008 after a long-running criminal investigation into the piece’s origin, the museum returned the vase to Italy, where it was dug up.

Italian prosecutors believed that Hecht bought stolen relics from a high-profile antiquities smuggler named Gianfranco Becchina. Convicted in 2011 by an Italian court for trafficking antiquities, Becchina was also another supplier of works to the Met. Although the Met holds no works with origin records citing Becchina by name, the museum has seven pieces from Becchina’s Swiss gallery, Galerie Antike Kunst Palladion. Becchina was a source of Met items seized by the Manhattan district attorney’s office in August, according to the office. The Met also has more than 800 pieces in its collection — by far the largest portion in ICIJ’s analysis — once owned by Jonathan P. Rosen, another close business partner of Hecht’s. The museum received these both before and after Rosen was charged along with Hecht in an Italian antiquities trafficking case in 1997.

A wealthy banking official and real estate investor, Rosen avidly collected Asian and Mesopotamian relics and co-owned with Hecht Atlantis Antiquities, a Manhattan gallery in the ‘80s and ‘90s. In the mid-2000s, Rosen’s name emerged in connection with Atlantis Antiquities when Italian prosecutors alleged that the gallery had sold stolen Italian treasures. In 2008, the Cleveland Museum of Art returned allegedly stolen relics it received from Rosen.

The Los Angeles Times reported in 2013 that Cornell University agreed to return 10,000 ancient tablets to Iraq that had been donated by Rosen and his family. Scholars believed the pieces had been looted from Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War; the return followed a U.S. federal investigation into the tablets. An attorney for Rosen told the newspaper that the tablets “were legally acquired” and that the federal investigation found “no evidence of wrongdoing.”

The charge against Rosen in Italy was cited in a sprawling criminal case against Giacomo Medici, a notorious antiquities smuggler. When Medici was convicted in 2004, the Italian court’s written judgement cited Rosen’s dealings at length. It said that Rosen had helped to sell an Etruscan tripod to the J. Paul Getty Museum and claimed the piece was legally exported from Italy. The tripod was, in fact, stolen, according to the judgement, and the Getty subsequently returned the piece.

Reporters who reviewed Italian court records and spoke with Italian law enforcement officials were not able to confirm the ultimate outcome of Rosen’s case before going to press. An Italian judicial source said he believes that, after an important piece linked to Rosen was returned from the U.S. to Italy, the presiding magistrate may not have pursued Rosen’s case. A representative of Rosen’s told ICIJ that Rosen was not able to comment because of poor health.

The Met’s collection also contains 85 pieces once owned by Subhash Kapoor or his gallery. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has described Kapoor as “one of the most prolific commodities smugglers in the world.” He was arrested in Germany in 2011 and convicted in India this year of trafficking what prosecutors said amounts to more than $100 million in antiquities.

Among the Met’s high-profile antiquities from India, Celestial Dancer was acquired in a deal involving Art of the Past, Kapoor’s Manhattan gallery at the time. In 2013, two years after Kapoor’s arrest, the gallery’s manager pleaded guilty to selling stolen Asian works. Yet in 2015, as Kapoor awaited trial on smuggling charges in India, the Met accepted the piece as a donation from wealthy collectors who had purchased it from his gallery.

The Met’s publicly available origin records for Celestial Dancer do not give any hint of how the work left India. An archived version of the Met’s website from 2016 states that the piece “ornamented a north Indian Hindu temple” in present-day Uttar Pradesh. This language no longer appears on the museum’s website.

In response to ICIJ’s questions, the Met provided no information about where the piece came from or how it left the country.

‘Like having a heap of cocaine’

More than 40 years after the theft, the people of Bungamati, in Nepal, still go without their statue of Shreedhar Vishnu. But, with the aid of Lost Arts of Nepal, volunteers have traced three additional relics allegedly looted from Nepali temples to the Met’s collection, a claim they support with archival photos showing matches to temple relics.

Site visits and interviews with locals confirmed two of the three matches: a smooth, hand-painted wooden statue of a Nrityadevi, known as the Goddess of Dance, and an elaborately carved wooden bracket, allegedly stolen from a temple in the world heritage site of Bhaktapur. The Nrityadevi had been looted from the temple of I Baha Bahi, one of the oldest Buddhist temples in Kathmandu Valley, according to members of the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign.

Guarded by two black stone lions, the two-story brick, wood and mud building once held numerous statues of gods and goddesses. For many years during the holy month of August, the relics were taken out and put on display. Religious devotees from near and far gathered to celebrate the Bahidyo Bwoyego festival, during which they sang hymns, chanted prayers and worshipped the idols. In 1970, the temple was raided and the community’s gods and goddesses were stolen.

By cross-referencing photos taken in 1969, Lost Arts of Nepal was able to match the lost Nrityadevi to an item in the Met’s collection, and claims to have traced several of the temple’s other lost relics to the collections of other American museums. Members of the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign have asked Nepal’s government to help them approach the museums and get the relics back.

“I understand the concept of preservation, but taking an object away from its living culture and putting it behind glass in a museum and then saying, ‘We are preserving this object for that country’ — it’s just completely wrong,” said Roshan Mishra of the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign.

Ken Weine, a spokesperson for the Met, said the museum is “presently in direct discussion with Nepal regarding select objects from the Museum’s collection, and looks forward to a constructive resolution and ongoing and open dialogue.” He did not say which items were being discussed or whether the museum had plans to return them.

“We believe we will get these relics back,” Mishra said. “But we do not know when.”

Even if all of these items are repatriated, hundreds of Nepali relics of uncertain provenance will remain in the collection of the Met and other museums around the world.

Because Nepal has had a ban on the export of culturally significant materials dating back to 1956, the vast majority of items acquired by museums outside the country after that year are likely stolen, according to Emiline Smith, a lecturer in art crime and criminology at the University of Glasgow’s Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research.

“The Met shouldn’t have been dealing with [Nepali] objects at all,” Smith said. “Even if you have an object with provenance dating back to 1970, it should not have been traded after 1956.”

“Having these Nepali pieces on display, it’s like having a heap of cocaine in the middle of the room,” observed Erin Thompson, who is also an adviser with the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign. “There is no legal justification,” she added.

The Met’s Kashmiri collection is also rife with questions, according to experts. A disputed region between India and Pakistan, Kashmir’s temples have been the target of heavy looting, most of it during periods of conflict. An ICIJ and Finance Uncovered analysis of 94 Kashmiri relics in the Met’s collection shows that none of them have detailed provenance explaining how they left Kashmir. Only four have information about ownership before 1970 — the year UNESCO (the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) adopted a convention protecting cultural property, making it the gold standard for provenance. Eight items were acquired through art dealers, who at one point faced indictment.

“The Met’s collection of Kashmiri artefacts are essentially blood antiquities, acquired during years when much of the population was fleeing what has been described as an ethnic cleansing,” said India Pride Project founder Vijay Kumar, who has published articles about the poorly– provenanced Indian items in the Met’s collection–and its Kashmir items in particular. “By buying these items, the museum was encouraging looting and smuggling from a known conflict zone.”

The only provenance the Met gave for nearly 15% percent of the Nepali pieces and 31% of the Kashmiri pieces in its collection was the name Samuel Eilenberg, a Columbia University maths professor and avid antiquities collector who died in 1998. An itemised list appearing in an archive of his personal papers at Columbia provides details about two dozen antiquities the Met purchased for $1.5 million, including their original purchase price and country of origin.

Conspicuously missing were records of prior provenance. Eilenberg has never been accused of any antiquities-related crimes. Eilenberg worked extensively with Rosen and his files included correspondence with indicted collector Latchford.

Despite historical evidence indicating that most of the Nepali artefacts in Western collections may be stolen, most museums only repatriate on a case-by-case basis when presented with overwhelming evidence that a specific object was stolen from a specific site. Repatriations, when they do happen, are “largely performative,” according to Smith. “They have lots of other items that should also be repatriated, but the burden of proof is on the claimant and relies on evidence rules that are dictated by the global North.”

“It is heartbreaking when we have to explain to communities of origin that public and private collectors in the U.S. can keep their cultural heritage,” she added.

In the absence of more comprehensive repatriation policies, much of Nepal’s lost cultural heritage will remain behind glass in Western museums, far from their communities of origin.

“If you want to preserve cultural conservation, you need to restore these objects to the community,” Mishra said. “You need to bring them out of the museum space and reinstate them to their original temples, where a living culture is active and where the object can be worshipped and fulfils the purpose of why it was made.”

Emilia Díaz-Struck, Karrie Kehoe, Jelena Cosic, Agustin Armendariz, and Leo Sisti contributed to this report.

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This story first appeared in www.nepalitimes.com

National consensus needed on geopolitics, federalism, inclusion and infrastructure-led growth

Former Maoist ideologue, ex-prime minister Baburam Bhattarai of the Nepal Samajbadi Party is a rare politician who voluntarily sacrificed his constituency and did not contest the federal elections in November.

Ever since the Maoist conflict ended in 2006, and in subsequent elections Bhattarai never lost in his Gorkha home base. In an unexpected gesture, he offered his prized constituency to his one-time comrade-at-arms Pushpa Kamal Dahal, now prime minister.

The two had a major falling out during the conflict, when Bhattarai and wife Hisila Yami were actually put under house arrest. In 2015, Bhattarai broke away from the Maoist party, citing fundamental differences with Dahal — some of which are mentioned in Yami’s memoir, From Revolutionary To First Lady.

Dahal contested and won the Gorkha seat to be prime minister again. There has been much speculation about why Bhattarai gave up his sure seat to someone he was estranged with.

Some have speculated that it was a trade-off between handing over a sure-win to Dahal in Gurkha in return for Maoist Centre support for Bhattarai’s daughter Manushi who was contesting from Kathmandu, and which she lost.

I wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth, so I asked him directly, during a meeting at his Nepal Samajwadi Party office this week.

“I strongly felt that we have to always play a strong role in strengthening our federal democratic republic system,” Bhattarai answered. “The Maoist revolution in Nepal has played a big role in establishing this. It was because of the fear that the revolution might be forgotten that I supported Prachandaji (Dahal) to contest from my seat and I still am convinced that I did the right thing.”

Bhattarai stressed that he felt the achievements of the Maoist revolution are slowly being forgotten — either because of internal reasons within the Maoist party, or because those opposed to the revolution want to preserve a corrupt system and maintain the status quo.

“As far as Manushi’s loss in the elections is concerned, there is a general perception that a talented youth like her should not have lost,” Bhattarai added. “Later, based on evaluations and feedback we realised that the urban youth were disillusioned with the Maoist symbol of hammer and sickle. There was an understanding among the general public that if she had contested with another symbol she would have won.”

That argument carries some weight because if there was one strong message Nepal’s electorate sent in May and November elections it was that many were fed up with politics as usual and were voting in young, fresh faces from both old and new parties.

Bhattarai accepted that the outcome of the election as well as the dramatic turnaround in coalition-making that elevated Pushpa Kamal Dahal to become prime minister for the third time was as per Nepal’s constitutional provisions.

Photo: BABURAM BHATTARAI/FACEBOOK

Despite that he is apprehensive that the seven-party coalition led by Dahal and supported by K P Oli of the UML is fragile: “There is a fear that the country could still be mired in continued instability.”

Bhattarai says he has always been a strong advocate of overhauling the political process that perpetuated the old ruling system which was holding the country back. Which is why he split from the Maoists to first form the Naya Shakti Party and later the Nepal Samajbadi Party.

As Nepal’s only prime minister who has a PhD, Bhattarai is also a student of political science, and says that the whole idea of a coalition is a consensus among its members about a minimum program. Foremost should be about geopolitics and Nepal’s need to balance the interests of India, China, and the United States.

Nepal’s political parties must also reckon with the country’s geographical, ethnic, caste and linguistic diversity in the Himal, Pahad, Tarai and Madhes. To achieve this, he said, there must be a unity of purpose across party lines.

His third point was that the jurisdictions between the federal, provincial and municipal governments need to be sorted out because they have not been institutionalised. This has affected governance, and trapped the country in a vicious cycle of poverty and unemployment.

Fourth, is something he tried to push throughout his tenure as finance minister and prime minister between 2009 and 2012: investment in infrastructure-led job-creation and growth.

He says there needs to be a national consensus and proper direction to address these four issues.

“If we are able to get consensus on these four points, democracy will be strengthened in this country,” he said, adding a note warning: “If not, no matter which individual or party is in the ruling seat, the current state of crisis will remain.”

On his plans for his Nepal Samajbadi Party, Bhattarai said disparity will try to steer a different path from the Nepali Congress’ liberal democratic capitalist approach and the UML’s centralised communist party structure.

“We are taking a different stand from these two approaches,” he explained. “We are grounded in democratic socialist approach suitable for Nepal’s geopolitics and the country’s economic social underdevelopment. We are a small party now, but we have planted the seed.”

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This story first appeared in Nepali Times

Newsroom in exile exposes the Taliban’s war on women in Afghanistan

The year 2022 has seen a relentless tightening of fundamental rights in Afghanistan, a process that began after the Taliban took over when NATO forces suddenly pulled out in August 2021. The latest was the ban on women getting a higher education.

Behind the scenes, Afghan journalists, especially women reporters and editors both within the country and in exile, have continued with the dangerous work of keeping the world informed about what is happening in their country.

Here is a post from Zan Times on 18 December ‘In the last 48 hours, five women and girls attempted or died by suicide in Nimraz and Ghor provinces, according to hospital registrations. Two teens died in Ghor while three attempts occurred in just one 24-hour period in Nimraz…’

The story was written by Mahsa Elham (a pseudonym) in Zan Times, a volunteer-run newsroom by Afghan journalists in exile. Its editor is Zahra Nader.

I had met Zahra in Kathmandu in 2016 at a media conference co-hosted by the Centre for Investigative Journalism Nepal (CIJ) and the Global Investigative Journalism Network in Kathmandu. Since then, Zahra’s life, and indeed the life of most Afghans, especially its women, has turned upside down.

It is difficult to imagine that such human rights violations and atrocities are being committed in this day and age in countries like Afghanistan and Burma. The Taliban and its precursor guerrillas fought off two world superpowers, yet they are so scared of women that they have tried to kill and muzzle them, deprive them of education and confine women to their homes.

Zahra’s message to me on Twitter was an attempt to show that they are continuing their valiant work as journalists, no matter the risk and challenges they face every day to their lives. Zahra wants the content of Zan Times to be spread as widely as possible.

Zahra says: ‘Zan means ‘woman’ and Zan Times is our way of resisting the Taliban, and speaking our truth.’

Indeed, since it was launched in August 2022, Zan Times has produced more than 50 stories, covering human rights violations, especially those affecting women, LGBTQ community and the environment. Zan Times can be followed on Twitter (@ZanTimes), Instagram (zantimes2) and Facebook (Zan Times).

Zan Times works with journalists inside Afghanistan and in exile, and five of the seven journalists working clandestinely within Afghanistan are women. Other journalists like Zahra herself are abroad.

One story from inside Afghanistan earlier this month related how people whose relatives were detained by the Taliban for months have been told that their loved ones are dead.

Fact checking is an important part of journalism, so is the protection of sources. So how does Zan Times do this? Zahra replies by email: ‘We are using what I call community reporting. Our colleagues are mostly reporting on what is happening in their communities. We do not publish news unless two independent sources confirm it. It is very difficult to work as a journalist in Afghanistan as it has been criminalised under the Taliban. However, we do not run stories that we are not sure of its authenticity. We have journalists on the ground as well as our own connections and network in Afghanistan. We use pseudonyms to protect identities.’

Zahra, 32, has lived through four regime coups in Afghanistan in her life time. During the first take over by the Taliban she was just 6 years old. She belongs to the Hazara community, which has been specifically targeted by the Taliban. She and her family were forced to take refuge in Iran, where she was denied the right to education because she was a refugee.

Lack of education as a child created a huge void in Zahra’s life and she had a traumatising childhood. In a voice recording sent to me from Canada, where Zahra is spending her days in exile, she recounted why she felt a need to start Zan Times: ‘Once again my childhood trauma has returned when I see millions of Afghans denied the right to education again, I am now in exile in Canada as I cannot return back to my country.

Zahra’s husband is a Canadian citizen, and she was able to join him with her nine-year-old son. She is enrolled for her PhD in York University in Toronto in Women and Gender Studies. She had dreams of completing her studies and returning to Afghanistan and teaching in a newly-established University on Gender Studies. Her PhD thesis is on women’s’ political history from 1960s -1990 where she is looking into the rights issues of women in politics and activism in Afghanistan.

Zahra is running the Zan Times newsroom from exile with my own savings, both by doing independent journalism and also exposing the ostracisation and victimisation of women by the Taliban.

She says, ‘We women journalists are trying to redefine what news is, and what matters the most. In Afghanistan, newsrooms are run by men I wanted to be able to bring a new perspective in journalism,” she said with passion and determination.’

Zahra was a journalist in Kabul since 2011 and six years ago joined The New York Times bureau in Kabul — the first Afghan woman journalist to work with an international media in Afghanistan.

With the collapse of Afghan government in August 2021 and the takeover by the Taliban,there is now a systematic attempt to erase the Afghan women from social and political life, but particularly from journalism.

In December 2021, just after four months of the Taliban takeover, four in every five women journalists lost their jobs and there are no women journalists at all in 11 out of 34 Afghan provinces.

‘We want to tell stories of Afghan women, especially when Afghanistan is now under a regime that especially sees one gender as its enemy, especially women from certain persecuted ethnicities,’ Zahra says.

Most of Zahra’s colleagues at Zan Times who are outside Afghanistan are working voluntarily, but she is looking for funding to keep things going. ‘We are women in newsrooms, not boardrooms, so we do not have the right connections with funding agencies,’ she says.

The Taliban now has Zan Times in its radar after the BBC Persian Service did a story on the paper. The Taliban are trying to hunt down the reporters on the ground in Afghanistan who are filing stories for Zan Times.

‘We hide the identity of our sources and reporters inside Afghanistan so that no two people in Afghanistan know whom we are working with. None of our reporters are connected with each other in Afghanistan. They are connected with us outside the country, so even if they are caught, which we pray they never are, they don’t know who else is in the team,’ Zahra explained.

Freshta Ghani is an editor with Zan Times and is also a writer who has published two stories in the book My Pen is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women. She used to work at Radio Azadi. ‘My family and I left Afghanistan in September 2019 and fled to Tajikistan. I was unemployed for three years,’ Freshta told me over WhatsApp.

Kreshma is another Zan Times news editor and an investigative journalist and is living in exile in Turkey. Zan Times is focused on Afghanistan but its newsroom is spread out across the globe with Zahra Nader in Canada, Freshta Ghani in Tajikistan and Kreshma in Turkey.

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This story first appeared in GorakhaPatra

Mayor Balen Shah has been immersing himself in some of the most difficult issues in Kathmandu that urban cities face. Solid waste management, street vendors and excavation and removal of illegal properties are some of the major issues that he has taken up as soon as being elected as Mayor of Kathmandu. Street vendors are essential inhabitants of urban cities. They serve the urban people with easily available goods and services at competitive prices. Their livelihood depends on the volume of people they serve. 

A street vendor is a person who sells various goods such as vegetables, clothes, kitchen utensils, etc. They do not have a permanent space they rent so their “business” is unregistered and excludes tax payment. Many shopkeepers in Nepal complain that the street vendors often earn more than them. Most street vendors come from the below poverty level and are often migrants who move around selling their goods, make profit and again move on somewhere else. They are part of the informal economy which keeps the lives of the majority of the poor people of Asia and Africa alive. Some street vendors could be stationary occupying the same spot every day to sell their goods.

Street vendors increasing 

While registered shopkeepers pay rent for the space they occupy and tax to their municipalities, the street vendors don’t and often earn more than the rent paying shop keepers. Even with carts and baskets they pull or carry they occupy certain space every day to go about their businesses.  As the urban poor increase in cities, the street venders increase too. The National Policy for Urban Street Vendors of India notes that its street venders constitute about 2 per cent of the population of a metropolis. Research also mention that there is a steady increase of street vendors in most Asian cities.

While Metropolises like Kathmandu struggle with removing the street vendors it is important to review what may have gone wrong in the first place. As the capitalist market economy blooms, so does the urban population including the urban poor from both the local and migrant communities. Therefore, a capitalist ecosystem where an integrated approach of coexistence of street vendors in the city’s social and economic life may be the need of the day that people like Mayor Balen Shah and Mayor Chiri Babu Maharjan may need to look into. Due to a lack of jobs people from different parts migrate into cities and the Kathmandu Valley lures most of the aspiring youth and labour workforce from the hills, the mountains and the Terai.

As job availability has become more and more difficult, people opt to become street vendors. The shrinking jobs in the formal sector, lack of skills and education pushes more and more urban poor into street vending. Entry into street vending trade is easy as it does not require formal education, registration, tax payment or rental space payment. As the urban poor increase and street vendors increase their families start moving in and working with them. The number of women street venders is increasing in the Kathmandu valley. While initially only men were seen in this profession, now more and more women are increasing together with their children.

These street vendor’s lives are always in precarious conditions as they are always at the risk of being evacuated by the government and need to develop skills of claiming their “space” on the footpaths, streets, bridges, flyovers or under the flyovers. Apart from this they are also at risk of several types of abuse due to lack of security and protection.  Most of the Asian countries do not have proper laws related to the street vendors. According to a research, Street Vendors in Asia by Sharit Bhowmi, India, Malaysia and the Philippines have policies for the regulation and protection of street vendors in Asia. The research states that among the three only Malaysia seems to be sincere in implementing the policy.

Malaysia is the only country where there is a provision to give licenses to the street vendors thus they are provided facilities for conducting their trade. The government also provides credit facilities for them.  India is one of the countries with large numbers of urban poor and street vendors. The Street Vendors Bill was adopted in 2014 and the National Policy For Urban Street Vendors in 2009. In his article Integrating Vendors in City Planning Avik Munshi mentions that the Street Vendors’ Bill is a big step towards recognising the rights of street vendors not only to get space but also to participate in decision making about the city.

While the Mayors are evicting the street vendors, it is important to review what laws, rules and  regulations prevail in Nepal that are directly related to the lives of the street vendors. Just evicting them as they are not tax payers is not enough. It is important to provide physical space in selected areas where they can conduct their business. It is also important to note that it has been a traditional and cultural practice of Nepali people to having vegetables and different food items delivered at home that has been integrated in their life style and will be difficult to get rid of.

Therefore, a proper planning and strategy needs to be developed. Such planning should include the commercial, social and political perspectives to understand how different groups function in different areas. Spatial structures need to be developed based on the need of the people of any city. This includes both the well-off and the urban poor. No human should be driven off or stopped from earning to live just because they do not have a permanent space. Planners should not focus only in making policies and designing spaces. They should look at the integrated social and human values of people no matter which class cast or category they belong to.

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This story first appeared in GorakhaPatra

The world is supposed to be moving towards a modern age, but civilization seems to be challenged every day with cases of several crimes.  Rape is perhaps one of the most heinous crimes that are committed every day. 

In his book ‘Theories of Rape: Inquiries into the Causes of Sexual Aggression,’ L. Ellis presents feminist, social learning and evolutionary theories that can be probed to learn more about rape. The feminist theory views rape as “a pseudosexual act” used by males to intimidate and dominate women. The social learning theory sees rape as a result of the male behaviour of aggressiveness towards women. Whereas Ellis mentions that according to the evolutionary theory, rape is an extreme response to natural selection pressure which has favoured male assertiveness in attempting to copulate with numerous sex partners and has favoured females who resist male attempts to control their sexual behaviour.

Sexual behaviour

Ellis writes that a review of all aspects of these three theories and the research done indicated that no one theory is clearly superior to the other two in predicting what is currently known related to rape. He proposes a synthesis theory which reasons that rape, like sexual behaviour generally, is motivated by two largely unlearned and closely linked drives – the sex drive and the drive to possess and control. Under this theory Ellis mentions that the motivation to rape is largely unlearned but the techniques and strategies involved in committing rape are learned, largely through conditioning rather than through attitudes and imitation.

While the academics analyse human behaviours including the cause and methodologies of such heinous crimes, social and human right activists struggle to address this issue by supporting the victims and survivors and trying to put mechanisms in place to prevent it from happening.  The state of impunity over several crimes including rape and all other forms of Violence against Women and Girls has been a reality in most of the South Asian countries. Currently, the fact that Manoj Pandey who is accused of rape and trafficking of a minor has been arrested and put in prison is a flicker of hope that this time justice will be provided to the victim Sushmita Regmi who has been courageous enough to fight back and bring her case out in the open.

A series of videos that she posted on TikTok became the medium of informing the world how she was misled and abused since she was 16 years old. It took her eight years to bring this out in the open. There are several people who comment flippantly on why it took her 8 years and how could it be verified if the accusation was correct or not? Anyone viewing the videos that were released can see the pain on the face and voice of the brave survivor who had hushed herself and suffered the pain for several years but came out in the open once she was ready for it.

People, who ask the question as to why she is speaking after 8 years, should realise that it must have been a very nightmarish experience for a 16-year old to internalise what happened to her after going through a lot of physical and mental trauma. Together with her bodily scars, the social, cultural and traditional taboos and discrimination that she mentions in her videos pushed her into low self-esteem and sufferings which were too big for her to evade and come out in the open easily. There must also have been economic and financial difficulties she faced which posed as barriers for her from seeking justice.

The social media has become a tool of helping victims and survivors like Sushmita to bring out crimes against them in the open. Now, it is the responsibility of the government mechanisms including the police and the public persecutors to make sure Nepali daughters like Sushmita and others who have reported being rape and sexual harassment get their perpetrators punished. Proper compensations also need to be given to the survivors for the injustice they had to bear due to lack of security from those who were supposed to protect them.

This is not the first time in Nepal that girls and women have dared to voice out the fact that they have been raped. There are few cases where the girls and women have openly brought out the issue, and there are many cases where they have privately sought legal support to get justice. However, many a times the cases get dismissed for lack of “evidence” and several other issues that prevent the victims and the survivors to get full justice.

Moral support 

Unfortunately in countries like Nepal, due to various cultural, social, traditional and religious values topped with the economic and financial constraints, bringing out heinous crimes like rape and sexual harassments rarely happens. When someone tries to seek help and justice, the victims and survivors are labelled to have “bad character” or some misgivings which make them the victim. Also, to register the case and get legal support or even financial and moral support from family and friends is required. This is where the girls and women who become victims and survivors face another hurdle.

There may be various academic theories related to the cause of rape and the male psychology around it. How to understand that may be one issue. However, for now how to protect girls and women from being victims of this crime is most important. One step is to remove all forms of restrictions related to time binding for the crime to be reported. The other most important step will be to end this impunity by starting to punish the perpetrators and giving justice to survivors like Sushmita.

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This story first appeared in GorakhaPatra

While the political leaders are engaged in infighting to acquire seats for the upcoming elections, numerous examples of Nepali women leadership at home, office, nation and the world were showcased by Nari, a woman magazine, via their one-day conference entitled Nirvik Nari, meaning fearless women, in Kathmandu the other day. Many women leaders, who have proven their leadership qualities as Deputy Mayors and Vice Chairpersons during their current terms, are at present struggling to get party tickets to contest for Mayors and Chairpersons’ seats. The general lack of networking with the more powerful male leaders, the inability to spend large amounts of cash during elections, and the prevalent mindset that women cannot perform are the major hindrances to women candidates’ easy access to party tickets even if they are the best candidates.

Whether strategically or not, Nirvik Nari was organised at such a time that it has been able to show that there should be no reasons for anyone to say that women cannot perform. There were a number of elder generation women speakers who have become excellent examples of supporting the overall progress in the country’s democratic struggle both as party cadres and pillars at home to support the male leaders and their children. An equal number of such women have been involved in setting up strong and quality educational institutions from where now young generation is getting quality education inside the country itself. The combination of experiences from homemaker women of substance and professional leaders in medicine, business and technology together with judiciary and politics including both elite and rural women shows that Nepal now has ample number of women in all wakes of life who can lead their families, communities, nation and the world, too.

Inspiring women

The sharing of experiences of young Nepali women like Anchal Kunwar, Managing Director of Daraj Nepal, who had made it big in the USA with Amazon but has decided to come back to Nepal and work here; Shailaja Acharya who commenced her business in Nepal when she was 20 and now owns a number of companies and manages it as Managing Director of ICE Group speaks volumes of how Nepali women have made their mark at both national and international levels and have contributed to the economic and educational growth. Kamala Thapa, on the other hand, comes from Butwal and has made a mark as agency manager with Citizen Life Insurance. She proudly shared that due to early marriage and economic conditions of her home, she had to shelve her study. However no matter how much jeering she got, she completed grades 10, 11 and 12 in her early 40s and is now inspiring women to study no matter how late it is. She is actually preparing women to work in the insurance sector but for that she is also initiating a process for them to complete till grade 12.

Life experiences and achievements of women like Judge Sapana Malla Pradhan; Dr Rita Gurung, CEO of Tilganga Eye Hospital; Shristi KC of Blind Rockes and Professor Durga Rizal of Apex College, among others, are examples that can be given to people who says there are no women that we can field. These are just some women. There are thousands all over the country.

Starting from the First Lady Dr Arzu Rana Deuba to Pasang Lhamu Sherpa, the first Nepali woman mountaineer, there were 25 speakers at Nirvik Nari out of them only three were men. All these speakers showed that sex of a person is not an obstacle in achieving any goal human sets. It’s the gender perspective that the society, culture, tradition, religion and politics that discriminates people to achieve what they can. The conference lacked in one aspect as they missed the opportunity to get a transgender speaker as Nepal has recognised them as equal citizens of the country and there are several individuals from their community and LGBTQI community who have been raising voices for their respect and identity in the society.

Equal opportunity

With the long history of Nepal’s struggle for democracy and the establishment of a federal democratic republic, there have been several changes in the constitution, laws and systems of the country. There have been several changes in the faces of leaders in several sectors including the stock market, finance, industry, science and technology. The time has now come to recognise this and accept it as a fact so the society moves ahead where there does not need to be quotas for female and disadvantaged groups. It should be an automatic process where all citizens of Nepal get equal opportunity to excel in any sector they have the capability of engaging their energy. Obstructing citizens from excelling in their field is actually obstructing the country from progressing.

South Asia as a region has similar social, cultural, religious and traditional practices which prevent their citizens in engaging equally in the progress of their nation by utilising their full potential without discrimination. In all South Asian countries, women and people from disadvantaged communities have showed that they are capable of being leaders in all areas. However, the political scenario is still dominant by people who exercise power in the basis of their muscles and mafia where women, transgender and people from minority communities fall behind. This is why Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan are now immersed in never ending political instability while the people are struggling to march ahead by stabilising their livelihoods. Even their powerful neighbour India cannot boast of a stable development for all her citizens.

Until the time comes where automatically all citizens of a country can participate in whichever sector they can excel in specific movements, programmes like Nirvik Nari needs to be continued.

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This story first appeared in GorakhaPatra

Sri Lanka is in the news these days for all the wrong reasons. The education and health system of this country was on par with Europe. A Sri Lankan could get free education till PhD and complete health facilities. Their lifestyles were simple as they were based on Sri Lankan values, culture and tradition. However, their economic systems were way above all the South Asian countries. The people were always full of compassion, down to earth and very easy to work with.

Worsening situation

The people are still the same, but their life situations have now drastically changed. There is a real possibility of starvation of more than 25 million people now. Food and fuel scarcity is hitting the country like never before. There is an emergency situation in Sri Lanka at present with all 26 ministers of the Mahinda Rajapaksha government having resigned from their posts. Four of these ministers are from Rajapaksha’s family. Sri Lankan President– brother of the prime minister– is trying to form a unity government to tide over this emergency situation. Although the Rajapaksha family has been known to be involved in corruption, there is still a section of the Sri Lankan population who feels that the Rajapakshas will save their country.

Sri Lanka was part of the British rule and got independence in 1948 a year after India. Since then, the country has gone through a 26-year long civil war ranging from 1983-2009 during which time the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was active demanding for a separate state for the Sri Lankan Tamils. However, the country managed to maintain the social security system of basic needs like health and education intact. There was 100 per cent literacy.

Even with the civil war, the Sri Lankans worked hard and maintained a lifestyle and economic system that became an example in the global progressive scenario. After the civil war ended, the country progressed with a quantum leap during 2009-2019. Sri Lanka was often cited as an example that countries like India could learn from to increase their economic standards. Three years ago the World Bank placed Sri Lanka in the list of countries in the world where most of their citizens’ income was in the category of High Middle Income. The per capita income of Sri Lanka had reached US$3852 while India’s was US$2100. During the civil war India deployed the peacekeeping force in Sri Lanka role from 1987 to 1990. This intervention had then received mixed response on India’s role in the neighborhood.

In the global market economy, Sri Lanka has become the sole example of economic progress in one of the poorest regions of the world. However, the economic crisis that the country is now facing actually points to the question: Is the capitalist approach and global market economy really sustainable? How has the global market really played in the rise and fall of the country?

There are a lot of speculations that successive Sri Lankan governments resorted to taking massive loans and misusing them and it is because of this that the country is presently mired in economic hardships. The political leaders who played a crucial role in ending the civil war in the country are now seen as the force in establishing a family dynasty that is pushing the country’s future over the brink by overloading the economy with unmanageable credit.

In the DNA report of 2016, Sri Lanka had a debt of US$ 46 billion, which was more than doubled within six years. Currently, according to the same DNA report, it has a debt of US$ 81 billion, which is equivalent to the annual GDP of the country. In the total loan share of Sri Lanka more than 10 per cent is from China.

Sri Lanka’s major source of income has been tourism, tea and textiles. Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, the Sri Lankan government earned US$ 5.6 billion from the tourism sector in 2018, but in 2021 this earning, according to the DNA report, came down to US$ 2 billion. Instead of using the loans to prop up the industries and create more jobs, the loans have been misused for the interest of the government officials, mainly the Rajapakshas, in unproductive activities like spending during the elections to garner their prize seats. There has been very poor strategic planning on increasing in-country goods and services to move towards a self-sufficient productivity. Most of the products in Sri Lanka are from other countries, and their depleting foreign exchange is used in purchasing goods from other countries.

Alarm bells

Observing the situation in Sri Lanka, the alarm bells should be ringing loud and clear all over Nepal, too. Nepal is no better in clearing her debts and getting more and more indebted. There needs to be a serious analysis on where we are to prevent possible crisis and emergency situation that our neighbour is facing. I see the Sri Lankan crisis as a major failure of the global market economy and power play of bigger countries. Therefore, a joint effort must be implemented immediately to bail the country and its population out of this situation.

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This story first appeared in www.financeuncovered.org

Investigations involving money are not always about kleptocrats and big corporations: some of the biggest perpetrators of exploitative finance also exist in everyday life.

An investigation led by Namrata Sharma, the former chair of the Centre for Investigative Journalism in Nepal, in collaboration with Luc Caregari from Reporter.lu and Finance Uncovered, was a harrowing illustration of that.

Building on a previous story involving human trafficking and modern slavery in the Nepali restaurant trade in Finland, Namrata used her extensive contacts in the south Asian migrant community across Europe to expose alleged wrongdoings in one of the continent’s richest countries, Luxembourg. Her story was published in the Nepali Times in August 2021.

Workers at a popular Nepali restaurant in the Grand Duchy told her of serial beatings and other human rights abuses by the owner. Not only that, they also alleged he had effectively trafficked them from Nepal, luring them to Luxembourg by providing money for their work permits, then confiscating their passports and controlling their bank accounts as he shammed the authorities into believing they were properly salaried employees – while in reality withdrawing their wages for himself and making them work for free for a year.

Initially deterred from speaking about by the fear of repercussions from the small, closed Nepali community in Luxembourg, the workers had the courage to blow the whistle and take their allegations to the police. The investigations are ongoing.

Namrata believes there is a significant pattern in the way some Nepali restaurateurs operate in Europe. She is working with other whistleblowers and is trying to trace if and how profits made from such exploration are laundered back home in Nepal.

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This story first appeared in Gorakha Patra

A recent interaction in Chitwan with a group of women involved in several professions such as the crusher industry, handicraft, farming, medicine, nursing, tourism and academics highlighted why the International Women’s Day (IWD) is necessary even in the 21st century. Around 30 women gathered to have a fellowship among each other. However, the majority of them needed a special arrangement to come out of the house to spend an evening outside with friends. Among them was a renowned medical doctor- a medical practitioner and a social worker in Chitwan.

All the women gathered there that evening and many more all over the world have been managing their homes, communities and work places and have excelled as both providers and workers. However, due to various social and cultural norms they still have to “prove” themselves in their work and at the same time abide by the “social norms” imposed on them. Many are still “not allowed” to move out of the house without permission from their household heads no matter what age they are!

Nepal now has women Deputy Mayors and Vice Chairpersons of Wards and Municipalities all over the country; however, the majority of them have to fulfill most of their household chores and follow the restrictions on their movements imposed by their husbands, in-laws and sons. These family members probably feel threatened with the fact that women are climbing up the power structure and therefore want to constantly remind that the society still wants them to fulfill all the domestic chores and responsibilities no matter what profession they get into.

Responsibilities

The most important fact is that these women fulfil all the several responsibilities that come their way as a daughter, sister, wife, mother, or a professional mostly with unconditional love and responsibility. However, even till today most of the care work and family input they provide goes unaccounted and is mostly taken for granted. While giving so much to their families, societies and ultimately to the nations, women all over the world still have to give excuses, to gain a few moments of fun and joy on their own, to their families. While several pro-women laws have been promulgated and women are climbing up the professional ladder, it is an irony that in 2022 we still have to celebrate IWD, and that too with a theme of Break the Bias!

In 1869, Elizabeth Cady Stabton and Susan B Anthony founded the National Women Suffrage Association (NWSA) to continue the fight for women’s rights in the USA. In early 1900s women were experiencing pay inequality, a lack of voting rights and were overworked. In 1908, around 15,000 women marched in the streets of New York City to demand for their rights and in 1909 the first National Women’s Day, which was declared by the Socialist Party of America, was observed. In 1910 Clara Zetkin, a German suffragist and leader in the Women’s Office organised an International Women’s Conference and proposed for a special Women’s Day to be organised annually and the IWD was honoured in 1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland with more than one million attending the rallies.

Now IWD is celebrated all over the word on March 8 every year. Therefore, the fact that in 2022 we still have to organise IWD, with a theme of Break the Bias sometimes feels like a slap in the face of the feminist movement. It might therefore be important to sit down and reflect where we have succeeded and where we may have failed to accelerate the process of ending the gender bias so far.
The UN and governments all over the world talk about sustainable development goals and have set a target of reaching it by 2030.

This sounds ridiculous particularly when women’s equal participation and leadership in political, public and family life is still a question mark. As per the data of UN Women, as of September 2021, there are 26 women serving as Heads of State and/or government in 24 countries. Therefore, it is estimated that gender equality in the highest positions of power will not be reached for another 130 years. Just 10 countries have women as Head of State and 13 countries have women as Head of Government. Only 21 per cent government ministers were women with 14 countries having achieved 50 per cent or more women in cabinets.

With an annual increase of just 0.52 percentage points, gender parity in ministerial positions will not be achieved before 2077. The UN Women data also shows that five most commonly held portfolios by women ministers are family, children, youth, elderly and disabled, followed by social affairs, environment, natural resources, employment, labour, vocational training and women affairs and gender equality. The UN data from 133 countries show that women constitute 33 per cent of elected members in local bodies. Only two countries have reached 50 per cent and 18 countries have more than 40 per cent women in local bodies.

Social inclusion

Nepal’s constitution ensures gender and social inclusion in its national and local elections, however, the power transfer and social acceptance is still a far reality. So why do women still have to justify their actions and get “permissions” to carry out their personal interests and desires? An overall empowered world where boys and girls, women and men and transgender, LGBTQ community look at each other as equals and treat each other as equals seem to still be a myth. Even now whether it is the pandemic or war those who bear the worst brunt are the most vulnerable communities, especially girls and women and LGBTQ community.

Respect of humanity in the pure sense has not happened. The most heinous of crimes still happen mostly against girls and women. So while we celebrate the IWD this year, let us also take time to reflect where the boat has been missed and how we can guarantee equality as soon as possible.

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