[From The Worker, #5, October 1999.]
A TRIBUTE
HEROIC MARTYRDOM OF COM. SURESH WAGLE
Com. Suresh Wagle (Com. Basu) has become the highest ranking leader of the Party to be martyred during the course of the three-and-a-half years of the People's War (PW). Com. Wagle, an Alternate Member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Party and in-charge of the Central Regional Sub-Bureau No. 1, attained heroic martyrdom on September 8, 1999, in an encounter with the enemy special commando force at Gankhu Village in Gorkha district (Central Region).Accompanied by a platoon commander and a platoon member, Com. Wagle was passing through a hilly terrain on specific Party work, when he was suddenly confronted by the heavily armed killing squads of the enemy specially commissioned in the district under a new suppression campaign. He made a heroic attempt to break the encirclement, but was hampered by his ill health, on the one hand, and was far outnumbered by the enemy, on the other. In the ensuing battle the platoon commander (Com. Bhimsen Pokharel) was killed and Com. Wagle was captured alive by the enemy. When Com. Wagle refused to disclose his identity and to surrender but instead, in the the true proletarian revolutionary spirit, dared the reactionary hirelings to shoot at him, the cowardly butchers shot him dead on the spot. The platoon member, a female comrade, managed to escape unhurt.
Com. Wagle was an outstanding proletarian revolutionary, a good Marxist-Leninist-Maoist theoretician and an able organiser. He was one of the most respected and popular leaders in the Party. Born in 1953 in a poor peasant family in a remote mountain village in Gorkha district, he joined the communist movement when he was a student in the 1960s. While working as a teacher in his own village till 1991, he served the underground Party as a popular mass leader among the teachers, students and peasants. After the initiation of the PW in 1996 his rise in the Party hierarchy was phenomenal, as he played a very important role both in the realms of class struggle and two-line struggle with his consistent committment to the proletarian revolutionary line.
In a statement Com. Prachanda, General Secretary of the Party, has paid rich revolutionary tributes to Com. Wagle and hailed his great contributions to the Party and the revolution. Similarly, Com. Lal Dhoj, in-charge of Central Regional Bureau, has in his statement paid glowing tributes to Com. Wagle and vowed to take revenge for his cowardly killing.
There were spontaneous protest actions particularly in Gorkha district, against his killing. The Party has called for a Nepal Bandh (general shut down) on October 7 to give vent to the mass umbrage against the dastardly killing of Com. Wagle, among other issues.