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Last update: April 20, 2006 – 7:31 PM

# AP Blog: Nepal Protests Vs. King Gyanendra

AP Correspondent Matthew Rosenberg is in Nepal to cover protests against King Gyanendra, who has grown increasingly unpopular since seizing power 14 months ago and is under intense pressure to restore democracy.

By The Associated Press, Associated Press

AP Correspondent Matthew Rosenberg is in Nepal to cover protests against King Gyanendra, who has grown increasingly unpopular since seizing power 14 months ago and is under intense pressure to restore democracy.

Thursday, 8:30 p.m. local

KATMANDU, Nepal

Getting out of Kalanki turned out to be easier than getting in. I linked up there with a few photographers, and by the time we were ready to leave, it was after dark. The curfew meant there were no taxis on the road. Besides, an opposition strike that has been called along with the protests means that any taxis that make it past an army or police checkpoint (an unlikely event) would probably be stoned by the angry mobs that are now roaming the edge of the city.

We beg the army and police for a ride back to our hotel. One army officer, a man who had repeatedly told me to leave the protest, now says: "You came here on your own, now you leave on your own.''

But we are in luck - three of the photographers have motorcycles with them (how they got them through the curfew earlier in the day, I do not know). Four of our group get on two of the bikes and head for a nearby hotel where they are staying.

The remaining three of us get on one bike for the long ride back to our hotel. The only way we know to go is along the ring road, and as we set off, we can see burning tires ahead of us, and the road barricaded with logs and rocks.

It's a scene we encounter throughout our journey. Where there are no police, there are mobs angry enough to attack anyone they think is violating the opposition strike accompanying the protests.

As we approach each barricade, young men come running at us. I shout from the back of the bike "Press, Press!'' and suddenly violent faces break into broad smiles. There are cheers and applause. Young men quickly clear a path for us through the flaming piles of tires and sticks blocking the road.

Only once do we get stones thrown at us, and thankfully they are off the mark. We can hear them slamming into the pavement behind us as we speed away.

The army and police checkpoints are less dramatic. Usually just a few police or soldiers standing on the side of the road. They wave us down as we pass, ask where we are going and then tell us to move on.

"It is very dangerous out here tonight,'' warns an army officer, who identifies himself as Mahindra.

Thursday, 6:30 p.m. local

KATMANDU, Nepal

I've managed to make my way through some muddy paths to get around the back of Katmandu's most violent protests in the past two weeks. The road is littered with bricks, stones, broken bottles. Hundreds of angry young man and three bonfires are between me and the police.

It's wild back here. There's screaming, shouting and chants calling for King Gyanendra's head. "Burn the crown, burn the crown!'' chant a group of boys as they pile tires and sticks onto a bonfire.

Here's what I filed in our story out of Nepal today:

Witnesses said the shooting in Kalanki began when a senior police officer drew his pistol and shot a protester in the head, an act followed by gunfire from police and soldiers.

The security forces "aimed straight for the (protesters),'' said Ankul Shresthra, a 28-year-old throwing bottles at police in Kalanki. Numerous witnesses confirmed his account, and protesters showed reporters fresh bullet casings.

Doctors at Katmandu's Model hospital said three people were killed in Kalanki, and that police took the bodies away. More than 40 people were in critical condition, most with head injuries. Thursday's shootings brought the death toll to 13 since the demonstrations began.

Hundreds more were reportedly injured around the city, including 13 police officers whose clearly exhausted colleagues were, by the end of the day, being forced against demonstrators by senior officers swatting them with rattan poles.

Thursday 5:30 p.m. local

KATMANDU, Nepal

After what really was an incredibly tense two-hour hike, I've made it to Kalanki. The place is wild. The road leading out of Katmandu - the center of the protest - is lined with bonfires, around which young men hurl bricks, rocks and bottles at police, who are firing tear gas and charging in with rattan poles, only to retreat back up the road.

The wisps of white tear gas vapor mingle with the black smoke of burning tires. It's a striking sight.

Hours earlier, police and soldiers used lived ammunition on this protest, killing three people. I've walked miles to find out what happened.

But looking at the protests from behind police lines - bricks, rocks and bottles being showered upon us - I'm not even sure I can get over to the protesters side.

Thursday, April 20 4 p.m. local

KATMANDU, Nepal

We're walking straight up the ring road that skirts Katmandu, navigating rows of burning barricades and sporadic street battles between police and protesters. Thankfully, the police seem to busy with the demonstrations to bother escorting us back to our hotel, as they have with most of the other foreign journalists that they have caught violating today's curfew.

On one street corner, 22-year-old G.R. Sharma, tells me he's not afraid of the police. "They are nothing. They are thugs for King Gyanendra,'' he says, smiling broadly.

Within seconds, a police van comes screaming down the road, and Shresthra takes off running into a side street.

Thursday, April 20, 3:30 p.m. local

KATMANDU, Nepal

Hearing that police and soldiers have fatally shot protesters in another part of the city, me and my two colleagues set off again on the back roads for a two-hour hike. We're headed for Kalanki, the center of the violence. We're going to try and make our way on back roads to avoid the police, but suspect we'll have to do the last half of the hike on the ring road - a route thick with police and army.

Thursday, April 20, 2:30 p.m. local

KATMANDU, Nepal

Sure enough, the protests has now degenerated into young men hurling bricks at police, who are responding with tear gas and baton charges. Each time the police fire off a cylinder of tear gas, a protester picks it back up and throws it at them. On the rooftops, thousands of supporters cheer and pour down buckets of water so the young men can wash the noxious vapor from their eyes.

Thursday, April 20 12:30 p.m. local

KATMANDU, Nepal

Myself and two colleagues have been walking up the ring road that skirts Katmandu - a route clearly inside the curfew zone - and we have not been even been threatened with being shot. So clearly, the shoot-on-sight curfew does not apply to foreign journalists. Or Russian Buddhists. Or Dutch trekkers.

But we were hassled by the police, who tried to take us back to our hotel, which is looking increasingly like it's going to be far from the action. Luck and a bit of craftiness instead got them to drop us much closer to where we think the action will be, and after an hour of hiking through muddy back roads and dodging a few police who wanted to haul us away, we've ended up on the roof of a building with a clear view of the main street in Gangabu, a Katmandu neighborhood that has repeatedly been the flash point of violence since the demonstrations against King Gyanendra started more than two weeks ago.

Most of the other foreign journalists caught out on the roads were sent back to the Hyatt. In fact, we were forced to push our way past some police as colleagues of ours were down the road being shoved into their cars and ordered away from the scene by officers.

Thousands of protesters are already gathering on the street below us, blocked by a line of riot police from making it onto the ring road that skirts Katmandu.

Why a rooftop? Because it affords a clear view of the action for reporters, who, frankly, don't need to risk their lives by standing in the middle of a violent protest.

Thursday, April 20, 9 a.m. local

KATMANDU, Nepal

Another foreigner, this one a barrel-chested Dutch man. We spotted him walking up the ring road - deserted apart from three journalists and police and soldiers. With him, he had four porters carrying backpacks, bags and even a pot. He, however, wasn't carrying a thing. Traveling in true old-world style, heading out for the mountains.

"I am getting away from the city,'' he told us before marching off, his porters in tow.

Thursday, April 20 8 a.m. local

KATMANDU, Nepal

Woke up early, grabbed a quick breakfast, and then headed out with a few colleagues - safety in numbers - to check out the scene on the edge of the curfew zone.

We did, and among the first people we encountered were two Russians headed to a Buddhist monastery near our hotel. They'd been dropped off in front of the Hyatt by a special tour bus that was being allowed to make a loop of the hotels and airport.

Wednesday, April 19, 11 p.m. local

KATMANDU, Nepal

We're into the 15th day of protests and a general strike against the rule of King Gyanendra - the latest in a line of Hindu monarchs once regarded as god-kings in Nepal.

But those days appear to be fading fast. Two weeks of protests have echoed with chants of "Hang the King!'' and Thursday's demonstration is supposed to be the big one - the day of reckoning when the opposition brings 100,000 people into the streets of Katmandu to show, once and for all, that king no longer has any popular support.

Of course, the government is trying to head off the protest. Tonight, it announced there will be a curfew from 2 a.m. until 8 p.m. Thursday.

Journalists here frantically tried to get curfew passes, which were readily available in the past. But this time - nada. Not even diplomats, like the U.S. Ambassador got one.

Obviously, we need to get out and report regardless of the curfew. So, much of the press corps has decamped to a Hyatt hotel on the edge of Katmandu. It's just outside the curfew zone, and we're hoping it'll provide a good base.

TUESDAY, April 11, 4:15 p.m., local

KATMANDU, Nepal

In Gangabu, on the outskirts of Katmandu, police and soldiers have been facing off against protesters for five days. Gunfire that we'd heard earlier in the neighborhood, it turns out, started after protesters tried to set fire to a senior police official's house. His security guards shot into the air to scare them off.

In the two hours since, the police have opened up with rubber bullets, allowing them to push the protesters back and move into the side streets, now littered with shards of glass and broken bricks.

Police are still battling holdouts holed up between the tightly packed three-and four-story buildings.

Walking down an alley, three injured civilians are rushed passed us, carried by medics and volunteers to ambulances on the main road. The lingering tear gas sting our eyes.

We see six police officers on a roof beating someone who's down and not getting up. They're kicking and whacking the victim with bamboo polls.

Further into the neighborhood, there's a rundown community clinic. Up the dark staircase, we find two rooms full of injured. One man, 21-year-old Avil Moktan, is lying on a gurney while doctors and medics pull a rubber bullet from his back and suture the baton gashes on his head.

All around us are angry people. They're promising more protests until King Gyanendra restores democracy.

TUESDAY, April 11, 2:30 p.m. local

KATMANDU, Nepal

Hundreds of police and soldiers are positioned on a main road in Katmandu's Gangabu neighborhood, facing off on the city outskirts against protesters hurling bricks from side streets. Burning tires, tear gas, occasional charges by riot police with shields and batons. Tense, to be sure, but manageable as long as you stay out of the range of the bricks.

A burst of gunfire sends hundreds of police and soldiers scurrying for cover. No one knows where the fire is coming from or what's being fired. Rubber bullets? Live ammunition? Not even the security forces know.

TUESDAY, April 11, 1 p.m. local

KATMANDU, Nepal

Tourists are biking around downtown Katmandu, the streets completely empty apart from well-armed police and soldiers enforcing a daytime curfew. As we drive past the seven of men and woman - all Westerners, all pedaling away - one of the guys grins broadly at me and waves.

TUESDAY, April 11, 11:55 a.m. local

KATMANDU, Nepal

The curfew in Katmandu was lifted for a few hours this morning, and throughout the city people poured out of their homes to stock up on supplies. Even amid the anger over the curfew, people seemed to want to soak in the freedom and try to enjoy themselves for a little while.

It's amazing how quickly the mood changes. The curfew's kicking back in at 12 p.m. - five minutes from now - and as we cruise down streets now largely deserted of people or traffic, we see police brandishing batons at stragglers who have not yet made it inside.

A middle-aged woman who stopped to pick up some dropped groceries is pushed along by an officer. A young man hanging out in an open doorway gets whacked by a cop's bamboo poll.

A soldier on patrol sees us and marches over, demanding to see our curfew pass, which allows us to move around the city freely. Unimpressed, he orders us to move on, waving the barrel of his assault rifle at us and then down the road.

MONDAY, April 10, 2 p.m. local

KATMANDU, Nepal

A group of Australian school girls are collecting their bags at Katmandu airport just as I'm arriving to cover the country's surprisingly quick descent into a full-blown crisis. And I thought the gaggle of Canadian retirees coming through immigration looked a bit out of place.

It's Monday afternoon, and protests against the royal dictatorship of King Gyanendra are into their fifth day. It doesn't seem like a good time for a two-week trekking tour of Nepal, where a decade-long communist insurgency has left nearly 13,000 people dead.

In recent days, three people have been shot dead by security forces who opened fire with live ammunition at stone-throwing protesters over the weekend. The dead include a bystander.

Three cities, including Katmandu, are under curfew.

And angry young men across the country are burning tires and hurling stones and broken bricks at police, who are firing tear gas and rubber bullets and charging in to beat them with batons.

On Saturday, some 25,000 protesters took over the southern town of Bharatnagar. They burned government buildings and started calling the place "the kingdom's first republic'' before security forces regained control.

Dr. Vijay Sharma, a senior surgeon in Katmandu, told AP just hours before I arrived Monday that "unless the situation improves immediately, there are chances of civil war.''

-Matthew Rosenberg (PROFILE (COUNTRY:Australia; ISOCOUNTRY3:AUS; UNTOP:009; UN2ND:053; APGROUP:Oceania;) (COUNTRY:Canada; ISOCOUNTRY3:CAN; UNTOP:021; APGROUP:NorthAmerica;) (COUNTRY:Nepal; ISOCOUNTRY3:NPL; UNTOP:142; UN2ND:062; APGROUP:Asia;) (COUNTRY:Netherlands; ISOCOUNTRY3:NLD; UNTOP:150; UN2ND:155; APGROUP:Europe;) (COUNTRY:Russia; ISOCOUNTRY3:RUS; UNTOP:150; UN2ND:151; APGROUP:Europe;) (COUNTRY:United States; ISOCOUNTRY3:USA; UNTOP:021; APGROUP:NorthAmerica;)

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