Nepal: State of Emergency after Maoist Rebel Attacks

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Times of India - Nov 26, 2001

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_ID=1270130880

Nepal declares state of emergency

Nepal's king on Monday declared a state of emergency, suspending
civil liberties and allowing the use of the military against Maoists
rebels who killed at least 76 soldiers over the weekend, the palace
said.

Previously the military was limited to defending Nepal from foreign
attack, and police were used to fight the rebels.

King Gyanendra, who ascended the throne in June after most other
royal family members were killed in a palace massacre, suspended
civil liberties under the state of emergency.

They included freedom of opinion and expression and freedom of
assembly and movement. The emergency measures also restricted press
freedom and suspended the right to information and property and the
right to privacy, the palace statement said.

King Gyanendra accepted a Cabinet recommendation that will allow the
government to use the army for the first time to hunt down Maoist
rebels fighting since 1996 to abolish the monarchy and establish a
socialist state.

"The king has given assent to the recommendation by the Defense
Council to mobilize the army and has issued an anti-terrorism
ordinance," a royal palace statement said.

Authorities can now detain people for investigation for three weeks
without charging them.

The Cabinet's recommendation for a state of emergency came in the
wake of a devastating rebel attack on Sunday night that killed at
least 34 soldiers, said police officers and government officials in a
mountainous village.

The rebels also suffered heavy casualties in the attack in
Solukhumbu, 200 kilometers northeast of Katmandu, said Interior
Security Minister Khum Bahadur Khadka.

The total number of security forces and government officials killed
has climbed to 76 since Friday, when the rebels, fighting for a
socialist republic in Nepal, broke a four-month cease-fire and
launched attacks across the Himalayan kingdom.

"The Cabinet has taken a serious decision to seek a state of
emergency," Water Resources Minister Bijaya Gachchedar told The
Associated Press after the Cabinet of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur
Deuba met in an emergency session on Monday.

In the attack Sunday night, the rebels killed five soldiers, 28
police officers and the chief district officer. Khadka said the
guerrillas had bombed the district administration office, the
dirt-strip airport and the local bank during the attack.

Airports and borders will remain open and government offices will
function as normal under the state of emergency, he said, but
security would be tightened across the nation.

The military and the armed police were being mobilized to comb the
hide-outs of the rebels, concentrated mostly in the remote hills of
midwest Nepal.

On Wednesday, the rebel leader, known as Prachanda, called off peace
talks with the government. He said attempts to find a peaceful
settlement had failed after the government rejected his demand for a
new constitution.

The government supports the constitutional monarchy with the king as
the ceremonial head of the state. The present system was adopted in
1990, after a democratic movement toppled the absolute monarchy.

Thousands of guerrillas led by Prachanda, whose real name is Pushpa
Kumar Dahal, have waged an insurgency in remote mountainous areas to
end the monarchy and install a socialist republic in Nepal. The
six-year campaign has claimed more than 1,800 lives.

The guerrillas fashion themselves after Peru's Shining Path
guerrillas. Maoist rebels draw their name from China's revolutionary
communist leader Mao Tse-tung, who once said that "political power
grows out of the barrel of a gun."

 
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