NEPAL: Nepal's 'Democratic' Govt Follows in Hated Regime's Footsteps

Security forces used brute force to break up a peaceful demonstration by women in front of Nepal's parliament building on Tuesday and arrested nearly two dozen women, including the who's who of women's rights defenders, as the republic's communist-Maoist ruling alliance began following in the footsteps of the hated regime of deposed King Gyanendra.

The home ministry, headed by Maoist minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara, banned demonstrations, meetings and rallies within 50m of parliament, setting the stage for defiance by protesters and ensuing skirmishes, just as King Gyanedra had done after he seized power through a bloodless coup six years ago.

Armed police personnel dragged away former MPs, who had been staging a relay hungerstrike in front of parliament for 17 days, detaining three dozen and demolishing the tent they had built for the ongoing protest. They were even more violent with the women assembled peacefully in front of the building, who had been sitting there since last month, singing, dancing and calling for the constitution to be completed in time.

"It's worse than the pro-democracy protests in 2006 against the royal regime," said Bimala Paswan, a 30-year-old daily wage labourer who had come from Siraha in the Terai plains to take part in the demonstrations by women seeking to ensure their rights in the new constitution. "In 2006, our protests were stopped by police in Siraha but no one beat us and none of our leaders were arrested."

Demonstrators said the women police deployed to break up their demonstration did not want to hurt them and only pretended to do so at first, asking them to leave the prohibited area. But they were urged to do so by their male colleagues, who ordered them to hit the women demonstrators. Thirty-five women had been arrested, including Rita Thapa, one of the founders of Tewa, a well-known women's organisation seeking to make women self-sufficient economically, Stella Tamang, an Asoka fellow and founder of Bikalpa Gyan Kendra that seeks to eliminate child labour, and Tulasalata Amatya, president of Shanti Malika, a human right organisation.

The women demonstrators said they were not against the law or advocating violence and relocated their campaign outside the proscribed area. However, other protesters said they would defy the ban. Veteran politician Kamal Thapa said he would lead a march of his Rastriya Prajatantra Party Nepal to parliament Wednesday and encircle it as a protest at the 601 lawmakers failing to conclude the peace process in three years and draw up a new constitution.

Ironically, it was Thapa who as King Gyanendra's home minister in 2006 had ordered the use of force on public protests while the Maoists, then an underground party, had suffered indiscriminate arrests and repression. Now, with the former guerrillas the dominant member in the ruling alliance, the oppressed has been turning into the oppressor with the oppressor becoming the victim.