The fight for political control of the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal left at least three people dead and scores injured on Thursday as pro-democracy demonstrators defied a curfew by gathering at the perimeter of the country’s capital to demand an end to royal rule.
Extending an earlier ban on protests in the centre of Kathmandu, King Gyanendra outlawed demonstrations on the road encircling the city — fearful of a swell of people marching on the palace.
In the capital, perched in a crease of the world’s highest mountains, roads were deserted and shops closed. The only sound was that of army vehicles on the road and helicopters above. Doctors, diplomats and journalists had all been denied passes to travel in the city.
But more than 100 000 people poured on to Kathmandu’s ring road, which marks the end of the city limits, waving flags, pumping fists and filling the air with republican chants. In many places they advanced until they met a wall of heavily armed police wearing body padding. Residents of central Kathmandu came out onto their roofs, whistling and banging plates. Mobile phones were used to call others out on to the streets.
”We are ready to sacrifice our lives for the nation because we are about to be killed, but we are not concerned about that,” said Sangam Poudel, a 22-year-old student. ”It is for the nation and without the nation there is no life.”
Sections of the road were littered with bricks and burning tyres. At least one police post was attacked and its windows smashed by bricks. There were reports that the army had rammed crowds with an armoured personnel carrier.
Demonstrators were also shot at with live rounds and bullets well before they reached the line of canes, helmets, rifles and plexiglass shields. Human rights workers in the suburb of Kalanki said police had shot indiscriminately, with more than 200 rounds used. ”People were coming down the hills to the road, so many of them it looked like a waterfall running down a mountain. Without any provocation the police opened fire,” said Kunjan Aryal of Insec, a human rights group with an office near the demonstration. ”Then the police and army would not let ambulances through. In the end we took eight people to hospital in our car.”
Doctors at Model hospital in Kathmandu said three people had died and more than 40 were in a critical condition, mostly with head injuries. ”Because of the curfew we could not get doctors and anaesthetists into the hospital for many hours,” said Sanduk Ruit, an eye surgeon. Television stations reported later that police had taken the three bodies away.
United Nations human rights investigators condemned the behaviour of Nepal’s security forces. ”We strongly condemn the excessive and deadly use of force by members of the security forces against protesters and innocent bystanders,” investigators said in a statement issued in Geneva. ”The law enforcement agencies have resorted to indiscriminate firing of rubber bullets — even on occasion live ammunition — into crowds; beatings; raids on homes and destruction of property.”
In a little more than two weeks, at least 11 people have been killed and hundreds wounded. More than 25 people were injured in the western town of Bardiya on Thursday when troops opened fire on protesters.
The king’s court claims that Maoists have infiltrated the crowds and fired on soldiers. But Ian Martin, the United Nations’s representative of the high commissioner for human rights, told The Guardian that there was no evidence of this. He said some prisoners had been beaten into making false confessions. Martin said he had warned army commanders that ”human rights violations would impact on serving under a UN flag”. More than 5 000 Nepalese soldiers operate as UN peacekeepers, some in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
A general strike has seen petrol rationed and food prices spiral yet protests have spread across the country, with statues of the royal family being pulled down.
Eleven bank clerks were arrested for refusing to cash a cheque from the home minister this week. Banks in the capital open for just a few hours a day and cash is in short supply.
”You see the people are uprising regardless of what we tell them,” said Ram Chandra Poudel, the general secretary of the Nepali Congress, who was released from prison recently after being detained for three months. ”The king must surrender. He cannot contain this movement.”
But King Gyanendra, a chain-smoking royal who has consulted his astrologers over the protests, appears little moved by the mounting crisis. Like his father, Mahendra, who toppled democracy in 1960, King Gyanendra seized power last year with military backing. He blamed squabbling politicians for failing to squash the Maoists.
The alliance between politicians and Maoists, sealed last November, wants the monarch to step down and concede elections to review the Constitution. But despite the tide of public opinion turning against him and threatening to end 240 years of Shah dynasty rule, the king has proved unyielding.
Diplomats in the capital say interventions by Nepal’s neighbour India have had little effect. ”The king just does not get it and neither do his advisers,” said one. ”He does not have an exit planned as far as we can see.” – Guardian Unlimited Â