What is the URL? While searching for the above mentioned website, I ran into this article at http://irelandsown.net/womensd14.html. Interesting, take a read: Hope in the Himalayas: Women Rebels in Nepal ?by Li Onesto The sun was still a bit off the horizon. But up high in the Himalayan mountains, dusk quickly turns to night. And I was worried it'd soon be too dark to get a good photograph. The four young women had spent at least 10 minutes picking the bandanas to cover their faces. But finally, they lined up, with their rifles slung over their shoulders. They had smiled shyly when I asked if I could take their photo. But now the look in their eyes turned serious. It has been three years since I went to Nepal and traveled deep into the guerrilla zones of the Maoist People's War. And I often think about the four young militia women who posed in front of my camera. Many people have seen this photograph and been provoked and inspired. People look around the world and see the plight of hundreds of millions of women peasants ? living in extreme poverty, facing the cruelty of backward traditions. People see the religious rituals and feudal relations that crush a girl's spirit and dash a young woman's hope ? the burkhas, the dowries, arranged marriages, child brides, polygamy. People see how feudal chains in the countryside have been welded to the urban and globalized slavery of sweatshops, brothels, and internet marriage brokers. The four militia women, and millions of other women in Nepal, face the same kind of oppression that delivers lifelong nightmares to women in many corners of the globe. But the revolutionary women in Nepal have taken the future into their own hands. Alongside the men, they are waging an armed struggle to overthrow a corrupt and oppressive regime. And many of these women are giving their lives to change the world. "In the rural areas women are oppressed by the family, mother-in-law, husband and some women are killed because of dowries. This problem exists all over the country in the city and countryside. The thinking in society is that women are brought into the home to serve the husband and to have children ? that this is what they're good for. To solve these kinds of problems we try to educate women, to show that it's not because of their mother-in-law, husband, etc., but that it is the social structure that is protected by the state and that we need complete change, revolution. We educate women to this fact." ?Rekha Sharma, President of the All Nepal Women's Association (Revolutionary); now a member of the United Revolutionary People's Council ? a body recently formed to undertake administrative, legislative and wartime functions in the liberated areas. As I traveled through the countryside, peasant women told me stories of backbreaking labor, inequality and discrimination. Their stories gave me a real sense of how women's oppression in Nepal is tightly woven into the fabric of feudalism and capitalism. And I came to understand, in a deeper way, how even the biggest victories by reformist women's organizations in Nepal ? which concentrate on things like passing laws, getting money for health clinics, or providing education for women ? can never really solve the problem of women's oppression. I saw how the goal of women's liberation is a component part of the People's War, being led by Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). I came to see why tens of thousands of young peasant women had joined the people's army, believing that armed struggle to overthrow the government is the only way to achieve liberation. And in the areas where a new people's power is being instituted, I saw how the revolution is actually beginning to break down and do away with the many social, economic and cultural institutions of women's oppression. Land to the Tiller ? Including Women! Everywhere I went, peasants told me how they couldn't feed their families with the tiny plots of land they farm. In Nepal, over 80 percent of the people live in the countryside, farming the land. But poor peasants, who make up 65 percent of the population, own only 10 percent of the land ? while rich peasants and landlords, who are only 10 percent of the population, own 65 percent of the land. The economic oppression of women in Nepal is rooted in this feudal and semi-feudal mode of production ? which is very patriarchal. Almost every woman I talked to in Nepal spoke with anger about the fact that women are not allowed to inherit land and do not own land on equal terms with men. In the Terai region along the southern border with India, where there are more big landlords, I heard stories of debt slavery where women were forced into "voluntary" sex and labor services to help their family pay landlord debts. The level of production in Nepal is very backward ? once I got into the remote countryside, I didn't see a single motorized vehicle, let alone a tractor. Farming basically depends on human and animal labor with the use of simple tools, like sickles, hoes and shovels. And the living conditions in general are very primitive ? which means women have to spend many hours at tiresome and time-consuming tasks like hauling water, gathering fuel, and grazing animals. A young 27-year-old peasant woman described her day to me, saying, "I wake up at 5:00 a.m., prepare a simple soup for the family, get grass for the goat (which takes five hours to get) and return about noon. Then I have to clean the pots and dishes. I prepare food and eat and then take the goats and cows to graze them... I take them to the same area far away to graze. I also gather roots in the forest, which are boiled and put in salt and ash to neutralize the bitterness. It's five o'clock by the time I get back from grazing the animals. Then I have to prepare another meal. I also have to gather firewood from the forest. I finally go to sleep at 9:00 p.m." All this makes the question of land a central part of the revolution in Nepal. And in many villages in the guerrilla zones, the revolutionaries proudly showed me land that had been seized from landlords, money-lenders, corrupt politicians and others who had cheated and ripped off the people. I remember one day, sitting down to eat a usual Nepali meal of dahl baht (lentils and rice) and the guerrillas telling me with big smiles, "The rice you are eating was grown on land seized from an oppressor." The Maoists have also started to institute beginning forms of collective farming ? where peasants share farm implements and animals and help each other work the land. Under such an arrangement, individual farmers who don't have a large family or many work animals and tools, face less of a disadvantage. And collective farming is also helping those women whose husbands and sons have been killed in the war. The Maoist agrarian revolution in Nepal is being carried out according to the principle of "land to the tiller" and "women's equal right to property." And this has meant that for the first time, women are beginning to get equal ownership of land. ...to be continued...