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Resources > Global Issues > Nepal – Democra... > The Struggle for ... > Bulletins > Bulletin #3: Arre...

Bulletin #3: Arrest and Resistance

(The following was compiled from reports inside Nepal)

Kathmandu, February 5, 2005: Tara Nath Dahal, the President of Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ) was reportedly arrested by the Royal Nepal Army (RNA) this morning from Kathmandu. Immediately after his arrest, the FNJ nominated their General Secretary, Bishnu Nisthuri, to the post of Acting President, in order to go ahead with the struggle for democracy and the right to freedom of opinion, expression and the right to information.

Nisthuri was also reportedly arrested by the army this afternoon. FNJ was one of the first civic associations to strongly condemn the king's military coup and to have announced a resistance for the reinstatement of democratic rights including the freedom of opinion and expression. There are also unconfirmed reports that Netra KC, the local correspondent of BBC Nepali Service, was arrested by the RNA from Nepalgunj today.

Pro-democracy school teachers and political activists from Chitwan district were also reportedly arrested by the RNA this morning.

There are reports of the RNA going around the town to big businesses houses with prepared statements welcoming the king's takeover of power, and forcing businessmen to sign the statements at gunpoint. These statements are subsequently published in the newspapers and broadcast through television and radio as advertisements paid for by the businessmen themselves.

The cabinet meeting held at the royal palace, chaired by the king, announced its programs for reforms in the country. One of the most publicized programs is about the plan to form an anti-corruption commission within 15 days, with the authority to investigate and nationalize property got through corruption. It was not stated whether the commission would have the jurisdiction to investigate the corruption scandals involving the royal palace, king Gyanendra, the army top brass and the panchayat-time corrupt politicians.

The Foreign Minister, Ramesh Nath Pandey, held meetings with the heads of diplomatic missions yesterday and the day before yesterday, at his office. The implications of these meetings are not known. The government is publicizing the fact that the meeting took place. Aid agencies are reportedly discussing about their strategies. According to informal sources, they are seriously contemplating discontinuing large parts of the development aid to the government.

Resistance

Jan Morcha Nepal, one of the four parties agitating for democracy and also the one involved in anti-Maoist campaigns as well as nationwide peace campaign until recently, has decided to launch a campaign for a Democratic Republic of Nepal. In this connection, they will start distributing pamphlets in Kathmandu from today, and in rest of the country from tomorrow.

Pro-democracy underground newspapers have started being published and distributed in Butwal since yesterday. CPN (UML) Central Committee Members held a secret meeting yesterday and have decided to launch a movement for democracy in coordination with all the major parliamentary political parties including the Nepali Congress.

Leaders of all seven student unions have held underground meetings together, and have agreed to form a joint front to struggle for democracy. Most of the student leaders not yet arrested have regrouped and reorganized their strategies. Their first protests will be spontaneous, surprise demonstrations in Kathmandu and distribution of pamphlets.

Civil society groups are meeting to plan pro-democracy protests starting next week. After the government warned of serious consequences to the people speaking out against the king's coup, many political and civil society organizations have started openly defying the warning. Several dozen political organizations and civil society groups have issued statements condemning the coup and demanding the restoration of democratic process.

Political arrests continued on Friday, conditions of detainees unknown

For the first time since February 1, the Nepali broadsheets have carried news on the whereabouts of some of the leaders detained or under house arrest, based on the information provided by the Home Ministry yesterday (updated namelist will be included in the next bulletin). Independent verification of these reports is obviously not possible now.

Moreover, the list of district level leaders arrested from around the country have no been made public. In the absence of media and international gaze, and the well-known records of blatant disrespect of human rights by the king and the military, the likelihood of mistreatment against them is very high.

According to our sources, a few dozen political leaders who had been detained at the Armed Police Headquarters, Halchowk, Kathmandu were reportedly blind-folded, put into army vehicles with opaque glass windows, taken to Tibhuwan airport, and from there flown to Kakani and Panchkhal barracks to a helicopter, with a 'Russian pilot'.

Their conditions are not known. According to the Home Ministry reports, the government charged some of the arrested or detained leaders under the Public Security Act and put them under 'preventive detention' for three months. However, the Royal Nepal Army spokesperson Deepak Gurung said yesterday that the five former prime ministers, main leaders of the parliamentary political parties, and their cadres were detained or put under house arrest 'for their own security'.

Arrests of political leaders continued yesterday. The newly arrested leaders include the central committee members of Nepali Congress (Democratic), and ex-ministers – Prakashman Singh, Bimalendra Nidhi, Homa Nath Dahal, Prakash Sharan Mahat and Minendra Rijal - who were arrested from their party office in Kathmandu yesterday afternoon.

On Thursday, the Nepali Congress (Democratic) leaders had decided that they would gather at their party office everyday as a symbolic gesture of resistance against the coup and to discuss the future moves.

Newspapers also carried some reports of arrests of political leaders and activists outside Kathmandu after the king's military coup. Senior Nepali Congress leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Ramchandra Poudel was arrested from Tanahu. The General Secretary of Nepali Congress, Sushil Koirala, along with over a dozen political activists, was arrested from Nepalgunj on Wednesday.

Thirty-five pro-democracy protestors including Amod Upadhyaya and Ashok Koirala, Nepali Congress leaders, and Guru Baral and Naresh Pokharel, CPN (UML) leaders, were arrested from Biratnagar on Tuesday, who were reportedly moved to the prison yesterday. They were reportedly charged under the Public Security Act, and put under 'preventive detention' for three months.

Similarly, 21 pro-democracy protestors including the Nepali Congress leader Ganga Dutta Joshi, who were arrested from Mahendra Nagar earlier, were also reportedly moved to the Kanchanpur prison yesterday. They were also slapped with the Public Security Act and put under preventive detention for three months.

The army is raiding the houses of civil society and political leaders

Army personnel visited the houses of some human rights activists, who were reportedly on the hit list of the army even before the king's military coup. The human rights activists were not at home at the time of these visits. The army personnel also raided several times over the past week the house of one of the most popular democratic student leader of Nepal, Gagan Thapa.

They misbehaved with his family members and took away his photographs from family albums. There were reports of the Nepal Bar Association representatives being threatened or south by the army.

News from outside the Kathmandu valley are very difficult to gather and verify. The phone lines were active for about two hours yesterday afternoon and additional two hours in the evening. The social and political activists that our team had access to in the districts are either in hiding, or even when at home, feel insecure to divulge detailed information over the phone which they suspect might be tapped by the army.

However, in the last three days, our team members called up sources in Pokhara, Nepalgunj, Nawalparasi, Chitwan, Birgunj, Janakpur to gather information. From each of these places, several dozen political activists and student leaders were reported to be arrested. Their whereabouts are not known. Given the trend, it can be safely assumed that arrests of political leaders must have taken place in many of the remote districts around the country. Firing from helicopter and torture against pro-democracy protestors

Our team received reports from very reliable sources of the torture of the students from Prithvinarayan Campus, Pokhara. Fifty-eight students, out of the hundreds who were peacefully protesting against the king's coup inside the campus premises on 1 February were arrested by the Royal Nepal Army personnel and taken to the nearby army barrack the same day.

Their hands were tied at the back and all of them were blindfolded. They were then severely beaten by the army personnel with fists, boots, sticks, and butts of rifles. Then they were made to sleep inside a "trench" without any bedding outside in the open for the whole night.

Everyone of them visited by our source in Pokhara reportedly had bruises on their body, which have been photographed. There are very credible reports that the army fired tear gas shells and rubber bullets inside the campus premises from helicopter.

Out team members are trying to get information on whether the helicopter used was provided by the Indian or the UK government as military assistance to the RNA and the King.

The national Human Rights Commission has confirmed that it has received the reports of over 250 pro-democracy students being beaten inside the campus, a helicopter being used to fire tear gas shells and bullets against the protestors, and a few dozen of the protestors being taken to the army barrack and tortured.

An NHRC official is quoted by an international newspaper as saying that they plan to conduct a fact-finding mission regarding this, but said that 'it is too dangerous for them to conduct a field visit at this time'. One international newspaper has described the Pokahara repression as 'Nepal's Tinanmen Square'.

Reports of clashes with the Maoists: No way to check the ground reality

There have been unconfirmed reports of at least a dozen clashes between the security forces and the Maoists in different parts of the country. According to the reports of Nepal Samacharpatra daily, the Royal Nepal Army has reported that the royal security forces killed at least 8 'Maoists terrorists' since 1 February 2005 in Lamjung (4), Sunsari (1) and Achham (3).

The army has also confirmed that a major clash is taking place in Rasnalu, Salu and Doramba of Ramechhap district, and the Maoists launched an attack against the army in Jogbudha of Dadeldhura district. The Maoists reportedly set fire to vehicles along the east-west Mahendra highway.

Although, there has been no effect of the bandh closure called by the Maoists in Kathmandu, reportedly, the rest of the country was virtually completely closed for three days, 2nd-4th February.

National and international human rights organizations have documented the consistent and systematic disregard of human rights and humanitarian laws by the Royal Nepal Army ever since it was out of the barrack in November 2001 to fight the Maoist insurgency.

This happened at a time when there were at least a relatively free press, active national and international human rights organizations monitoring the situation and some semblance of a civilian government.

After 1 February 2005, it is extremely worrying that the RNA might go berserk and unbridled in the rural areas, given the fact that they have nakedly shown post February 1 they do not feel accountable to the national or international community and despise the idea of democracy, human rights and accountability.

For instance, on Friday the RNA claimed that one wounded Maoist under their custody was shot dead as he tried to escape, in Fushre, Sunsari. They also reported that the three Maoists were killed in Accham in a 'sudden encounter'. In Lamjung, they claimed that they had found the corpses of four Maoists shot dead in the course of retaliatory fire, and claimed that there were many more deaths.

In the absence of free media and monitoring by independent human rights groups, the following questions remain worryingly unanswered:

1. Exactly where and in how many places did the clashes take place?
2. Were non-combatant civilians killed and then labeled as 'terrorists'?
3. Have there been extra-judicial killings, torture and arbitrary arrests and unlawful detentions of the captured Maoists even if they were combatants or Maoist political workers?
4. Are the pro-democracy activists belonging to the parliamentary political parties arrested, detained, tortured, or extra-judicially killed in the name of the Maoists?, and
5. Are the families of the RNA, Armed Police Force and the Nepal Police who might have died in the clashes deliberately denied the information about their deaths or abduction in the name of preventing 'loss of morale' among the state forces?

There are reports that the RNA has started major operations in several parts of Nuwakot district adjoining Kathmandu. According to the report, the RNA is rounding up every one in the villages, killing civilian villagers indiscriminately, while the Maoists have escaped and regrouped elsewhere.

The spokesperson of the RNA publicly announced yesterday, and was also quoted by Reuters on February 4, that 'Now we can solely go after the Maoists in a single-minded manner without having to worry about what's going to happen on the streets, people's agitation.'

The Chief of RNA reiterated the commitment towards human rights and the Geneva Convention in the course of fighting the Maoists, and also vowed to crush the Maoists militarily so that they would come to the negotiating table. These words are obviously hollow for the following reasons:

1. It is now accepted nationally and internationally that solely military action will not resolve the civil war in Nepal;
2. The RNA and the king do not have any political organizational base in rural Nepal, and pushing the political parties into total opposition will weaken their capacity considerably;
3. The latest military coup by the king hurts the pro-democracy political forces in the short run, but will bolster support for and morale of the Maoists, who are used to fighting the RNA anyway;
4. There will be strong opposition to the RNA getting further military support from India, UK and the US, which it and the king clearly misused to clamp down on democracy and to further their authoritarian grip on power;
5. The coup has suddenly made the prospects of pro-democracy political parties or at least a large section of their cadres negotiating with the Maoists for toppling monarchy;
6. The claim or hope that there will be no pro-democracy peaceful movement on the streets is very naïve; and
7. It is totally unbelievable that the RNA and the king, who have so nakedly clamped down democratic rights in Kathmandu despite near universal condemnation, will respect the human rights and humanitarian laws in rural Nepal, which will in a very short period antagonize even more rural people against them.

There is a distinct possibility of some of the political activists of democratic dispensation getting radicalized and led into believing that the international and national community recognizes and negotiates only with those with guns and army, if they feel they are cornered only because they are unarmed. This could lead Nepal into a disaster. Free media remains dead: creative resistance reminds of Panchayat days.

The Kantipur and Rajdhani dailies in Nepali did not carry any editorial today. Kantipur yesterday carried an editorial on women's cricket in Nepal, and on the need for internationalizing the Nepali tradition of archery, the day before. The Kathmandu Post's editorial today was on 'Socks in Society', and yesterday on the nice weather in Kathmandu which the editorial complained was not usually appreciated by the Nepalis.

The Nepali Times weekly yesterday carried the editorial titled, 'Hariyo Ban, Nepalko Dhan', the Panchayat time rhyming cliché, 'Green forests are Nepal's wealth'. The Nepal Samachar Patra daily's editorial today complained about the frequent 'load shedding', the power cuts, in Nepal.

The announcement on Thursday by the government that nothing critical of the king's move may be printed, published or broadcast for the next six months were repeatedly broadcast from the television channels, published as notices in the major newspapers and repeatedly emphasized in the news and bulletins of the government-owned media.

The notice that the FM radio stations, community radios and private television channels were forbidden from broadcasting any news, views or opinions not favourable to the king's address were also advertised or broadcast many times today. The free media remains completely crippled and under close and continuous surveillance.

Kantipur daily, for instance, was made to publish on Thursday the report of the last meeting of the Royal Council Standing Committee, a rights wing group of royalists who had drawn much criticism from Kantipur several weeks ago. Communication remains disturbed The phone lines were operational for about two hours last night and also for about two hours this afternoon.

The mobile phones and internet services are not yet operational. According to sources at the Nepal Telecommunication Corporation, there are rumours in their office that the phone lines will not be fully operational for at least another 11 days and that mobile phones will not be operational for about one month.

INSN is the International Nepal Solidarity Network, which has activists in over a dozen countries around the world who are working to bring democracy to Nepal. Visit their website for regular updates related to the Nepal crisis.

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