2 killings spark more violence in Katmandu
By Tilak P. Pokharel and Somini Sengupta The New York Times
SUNDAY, APRIL 9, 2006
KATMANDU, Nepal Pro-democracy protests grew more violent Sunday as demonstrators, enraged by the killings of two people by security forces over the weekend, defied a curfew and poured out onto the streets for the fourth day in a row.
They stormed a government hospital, burned government buildings and defiantly called for the removal of the king. A woman sitting on her terrace was shot by soldiers amid protests in the southern city of Narayanghat on Saturday and died early Sunday.
Her death followed the killing of a protester Saturday by soldiers posted on the roof of a building in the Himalayan resort town of Pokhara. The Royal Nepalese Army said late Saturday that its troops had fired in self-defense after demonstrators threw bricks and stones at troops guarding a telecommunications office.
On Sunday, protesters stormed the main town hospital demanding the body of the slain protester.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Nepal expressed its growing concern at the mounting violence, including "the continued use of what appears to be excessive force" by security forces, according to its spokesman, Kieran Dwyer.
It earlier voiced "grave concern" about troops firing on the demonstrators in Pokhara on Saturday.
The government imposed daylong curfews Saturday and Sunday and made it known that its troops would be dispatched across the country with shoot-to-kill orders.
The protests in the past week, on the 16th anniversary of the establishment of democracy in Nepal, are by far the most strident public demonstrations yet against King Gyanendra, who seized control of the government 14 months ago, saying politicians had failed to stop a debilitating Maoist-led rebellion.
The Maoists, who for nearly a decade had been attacking police officers, soldiers and politicians, have recently been making a joint bid with Nepal's seven largest political parties to restore democratic rule. The Maoists have also promised to refrain from violence in the capital during their four-day strike.
Already, 13,000 Nepalis have died in the conflict, and the country, much of which was already impoverished, has virtually ground to a halt, with economic growth in 2005 slowing to 2.5 percent, according to the Asian Development Bank.
In the capital, the crowds Sunday appeared to be the largest and most violent. "Burn the crown," they chanted. In small, tight-knit groups, they poured out of the city's narrow alleys, shouting slogans and unfurling party flags.
Each time, riot police officers charged at the crowds, whipping batons and firing tear gas and rubber bullets. The most able-bodied scattered. Others were captured by the police, beaten and stuffed inside police vans. Soldiers were posted at key street corners, along with armored personnel carriers mounted with machine guns.
The UN human rights agency, whose monitors have fanned out across the country over the past four days, confirmed Sunday that several demonstrators had been hospitalized with head injuries after encounters with baton- wielding police officers.
The intensity of the protests of the past week raises the stakes for an increasingly isolated king.
"If the movement goes ahead like this, the inevitable will happen very soon," said Lok Raj Baral, head of the Nepal Center for Contemporary Studies, a research organization in Katmandu. "The anger everywhere is against the king."
In a statement issued Sunday, the coalition of seven political parties that issued the protest call said it would not quit its agitation.
The statement did not specify what its next course of action would be.
Tilak P. Pokharel reported from Katmandu, and Somini Sengupta from New Delhi.