NEPAL: Protests Punctuate General Strike

By Marty Logan Reprint | | Print |

Marty Logan

KATHMANDU, Apr 7 2006 (IPS) - A general strike smothered life in Nepal on Friday, where riot police seized dozens more protesters who torched a post office and vehicles and pelted stones one day before scheduled nation-wide rallies against King Gyanendra’s rule.

Demonstrators burned the post office in Lalitpur city, next to the capital Kathmandu, where at least one protester was hospitalised after being hit by police fire. Hundreds of people were arrested in the capital by mid-afternoon and more than 50 in various cities and towns across the South Asian nation, according to local media.

‘Kantipur Online’ also reported that unionised workers at the Central Bank abandoned their desks to support the protests. If true, they would be the first government employees to publicly support the opposition movement, which has failed to spark massive public support in the 14 months since the king fired his prime minister and seized power in a bloodless coup.

The arrested join 10 opposition political and civil society leaders who have been jailed for more than two months under a public security law that the United Nations has called “arbitrary political imprisonment”.

At noon, little traffic moved on the capital’s usually congested streets and pedestrians took advantage to stroll on roadways and children struck up games of street cricket. On main streets all shops, except pharmacies and a few restaurants, were shuttered. On less travelled routes, a few other corner shops and tailors worked.

In Naradevi, a neighbourhood of narrow streets and tiny shops in the old city, a grey-haired balding man sat in a shop reading a newspaper, surrounded by red, green and blue buckets, gas stoves and other household wares. “This is not open,” he told a reporter who stepped inside. “This is closed.”

Shopkeepers know that activists from the alliance of seven political parties that called the four-day general strike are likely to harass anyone who keeps working and most keep their shutters half-closed just in case.

But “it hurts business”, said Deepak Sapkota at the Cyber World Internet café in the main tourist area, Thamel. “We have to pay the rent,” he added, just minutes after scouting for trouble in the area and then cautiously opening the office that houses four computers.

“Some shopkeepers don’t open because they support the strike, others because they are worried what will happen if they do,” he added, suggesting that the split is about 50-50.

Over 400 people were arrested in the Kathmandu Valley and 250 others throughout the country on the strike’s first day Thursday. Dozens more were injured in clashes with police, reported local media.

The government banned all protests in the capital earlier in the week and set an 11 pm-3 am curfew but it has not yet cut telephone service or imposed an all-day curfew, as many people here assumed it would.

Ministers in the king’s handpicked cabinet even warned that they could give security forces the “shoot to kill” order if Saturday’s protest was infiltrated by Maoist rebels.

Now in the 11th year of an uprising designed to erase the hereditary monarchy and end discrimination against women, indigenous people and Dalits (so-called ‘untouchables’), the rebels control most of Nepal’s countryside outside barbed-wire-ringed district headquarters.

When he assumed power, King Gyanendra blamed political leaders’ inability to end the uprising for his move but in 15 months he has made little progress in the civil war and his heavy-handed tactics have irked the U.S., UK and India so much that they have stopped lethal military aid to Nepal.

On Thursday, those countries all protested the government’s clampdown on protesters. “There needs to be cooperation among the constitutional forces in Nepal, not confrontation. We urge the immediate release of those arrested and a return to the path of dialogue and reconciliation,” India’s external affairs ministry spokesperson Navtej Sarna told journalists.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said in a statement: “While maintenance of law and order is the responsibility of the state, security considerations should not be the basis for denying citizens their right to peaceful protest – a right for which virtually all avenues seem to be closing.”

Earlier this week the government renewed anti-terrorism legislation, which permits preventive detention for one year, puts the onus on defendants to prove their innocence and carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. The new ordinance adds sections that experts suggest could make the media guilty for reporting on Maoist activities and the political parties liable for working with the rebels.

Weeks ago the parties reaffirmed an agreement with Maoist leaders that would see the rebels re-enter the political mainstream if the parties work to create a constituent assembly that would draft a new constitution. Since then the government has repeated threats to label the parties as “terrorists” and US officials have also bashed their leaders for striking a deal with the violent force.

About 13,000 people have died in the civil war, most of them innocent villagers caught in crossfire.