December 22, 2009
Beginning on December 20, the Maoists staged a nationwide bandh (general strike) that has resulted in violent clashes between Maoists and riot police and further weakens the peace process that began almost three years ago.
Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, the Maoists’ leader also hinted that this could lead to an indefinite general strike, should the current government fail to meet his party’s demands.
The protest began with a torch protest on Saturday evening and gained momentum the following day. Security conditions were tightened, vehicular movement came to a halt and the clashes ensued.
Policemen, who were trying to clear a blocked road in the nation’s capital, came under attack with hurled bricks and stones thrown by the Maoist crowd. The police responded with batons, water cannons and teargas in an effort to gain control of the situation. 21 policemen were injured, one critically. Maoists’ claimed that 100 of their members were injured.
Maoist “civil protest” also erupted into vigilante-type vandalism. Buses, trucks and cars were torched. Although the Maoists promised not to obstruct the movement of press vans, vehicles carrying diplomats, tourists and medical personnel, widespread disruption occurred, including one vehicle filled with hospital staff responding to an emergency call from Shahid Gangalal Heart Center. The ambulance driver was severely injured.
Violence was not confined to Kathmandu.
In Gorkha District, members of the YCL, the paramilitary youth wing of the Maoists, beat up Nepali Congress leader Dhruba Panta, leaving him in critical condition.
In Nepalgunj, Kaviiraj Karki, a Mugu journalist, was stoned and pummeled within an inch of his life while photographing the strike. His camera was destroyed and he remains in critical condition with severe head wounds.
The Maoists latest efforts render Nepal’s fragile peace process increasingly dubious. Time is running out for the nascent republic that now has just five months to draft a people’s constitution and implement it on May 28, 2010.
Information and Communications Minister Shankar Pokhrel called the bandh a gross violation of the peace agreement. Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, who just returned from the Copenhagen summit, decried the Maoists, saying that their movement was now not even in their control.
The last few days do smack of “mob rule”, even though the Maoists only secured 40% of the popular vote during the 2008 elections. At this point, a showdown – which is of course what the Maoists have wanted ever since they lost control of the government earlier this year -- seems inevitable. Kunda Dixit, editor of Nepali Times, described the Maoists’ game plan thusly:
"The end goal is, let the protests escalate, frustrations of the public, let it boil over, and then they can swing into power through street protests or an urban uprising. That seems to be the plan at least as far as the hardcore is concerned."
Does the coalition government have the ability to frustrate this plan?
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