NEPAL: Day Curfew Follows Political Arrests

By Marty Logan Reprint | | Print |

Marty Logan

KATHMANDU, Jan 20 2006 (IPS) - Except for heavily-armed police and troops, the streets of Nepal’s capital city were nearly empty Friday but opposition leaders were still vowing to hold planned protests after a dawn-to-dusk curfew ended.

Except for heavily-armed police and troops, the streets of Nepal’s capital city were nearly empty Friday but opposition leaders were still vowing to hold planned protests after a dawn-to-dusk curfew ended.

The government of King Gyanendra ordered the curfew late Thursday, hours after jailing more than 100 politicians and activists, putting senior party leaders under house arrest and cutting mobile phones.

An evening curfew has been in place in the capital, home to two million of Nepal’s 25 million people, since Maoist rebels killed 12 police officers in a series of shocking attacks in and around the Kathmandu Valley on Jan. 14.

The government said Thursday it would keep the streets empty Friday to prevent rebels from slipping into a rally organised by an alliance of seven major parties opposed to the king, who unseated his appointed prime minister in a bloodless coup on Feb. 1, 2005.

Local media reported late Friday afternoon that more than 200 protesters were arrested as they gathered at a hotel and there were no signs of the planned mass demonstration. But rallies took place in other areas of the Kathmandu Valley outside the curfew zone and in towns and cities across Nepal. Some arrests were made, said reports.

The insurgents, who the government labels “terrorists”, have promised to disrupt a municipal election scheduled for Feb. 8, and renewed their campaign of violence immediately after ending their ceasefire, which the government dismissed as a ruse. But earlier this week, Maoist leaders pledged to not interfere in Friday’s planned assembly, which political leaders vowed would be the largest yet since Feb. 1.

The seven parties, which collected more than 90 percent of votes in the last parliamentary polls, say they will boycott the election and have set up committees in the country’s regions that are going door-to-door to urge people not to vote.

A number of demonstrations, some organised by the parties and others by civil society, have been held in recent months but none of them ended violently. A week ago, the largest yet protest took place in the south- eastern town of Janakpur. Also peaceful, it attracted more than 100,000 supporters of the parties and Maoists, according to some estimates.

”We are committed to organise peaceful protests despite unprecedented suppression by the regime,” said Madhav Kumar Nepal, leader of a moderate wing of the Communist Party of Nepal, before being put under house arrest Thursday. “If the leaders are arrested, common people will take the movement forward,” he added.

Nepal and other party chiefs have previously predicted “tsunamis” of protest in Kathmandu against the king’s rule but to date rally numbers have not reached the critical mass that many people say is needed to force the king to deviate from his three-year plan to restore peace and democracy.

Thursday’s mass arrests mimicked Feb. 1, when phone lines were cut, the prime minister and other political leaders were put under house arrest and hundreds of activists and academics were jailed or prevented from travelling.

We ”regret that the complete ban on demonstrations represents an extreme limitation on the right to freedom of peaceful assembly,” said a statement from the Nepal Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, which was created at last year’s meeting of the UN human rights commission.

”Suspicions of Maoist violence in the context of public demonstrations cannot be used as a justification for the arrest of the demonstrations’ organisers, many of whom have repeatedly spoken out against the use of violence,” it added.

The United States and Britain also condemned the crackdown. Influential neighbour India called the move ”regrettable and a matter of grave concern to all those who wish to see the constitutional forces in Nepal working together to achieve peace and stability in the country”.

Maoist rebels launched their war against the monarchy and historical injustices meted out to women, dalits (so-called ‘untouchables’), indigenous people and other disadvantaged group in this Hindu kingdom almost 10 years ago. Since then 13,000 people have been killed, according to an estimate made Thursday by the local ‘INHURED’ human rights group.

During the four-month ceasefire that ended Jan. 3, political party leaders finally succumbed to pressure to join forces with Maoist leaders to oppose the king, despite warnings from the government that they too could be branded ”terrorists”. The two sides signed an agreement that would pull the rebels back into the political mainstream and lead to elections to a constituent assembly that would draft a new constitution.

The current supreme law was written after 1990’s democratic revolution but most opponents of palace rule say it did not go far enough to limit the monarch’s power. The constitution also places Nepal’s army directly under the king’s authority.

Earlier this week, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch slammed both sides in Nepal’s conflict for abuses but focussed on the government. It ”prevents political parties and trade and student unions from operating freely, the media is restricted, and individuals have almost no recourse to the law”, said the group.

”Extrajudicial killings, illegal detentions, and ‘disappearances’ continue to be instigated by the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) while the Maoists continue to engage in extortion, murder, forced displacement of civilians and abductions. While these abuses existed before the coup, the ability of human rights defenders and the media to document abuses is now more difficult,” added HRW.