Police kept tight security in place in Nepal's capital yesterday, as political parties vowed more protests against King Gyanendra's rule despite hundreds of arrests in recent days.
An alliance of seven parties has called for a nationwide strike on Thursday.
On Saturday police arrested more than 230 people after anti-royal demonstrators in Kathmandu clashed with officers who used tear gas and carried firearms in place of their usual bamboo batons.
PHOTO: AP
"Most of the people detained during Saturday's clashes were released late on Saturday night, and 61 remained in custody," said a police officer on condition of anonymity.
Around 150 political and human rights activists who were rounded up on Thursday and Friday remained in detention, the police officer added.
Opposition politicians vowed to keep up the protest program, calling a nationwide general strike for Thursday and planning district-level protests in an attempt to disrupt planned municipal elections.
"The people's movement has come to a new height and will not come to an end unless full democracy is restored," Shobhakar Parajuli, secretary of the Nepali Congress Party, said.
Another opposition leader condemned the government's use of force.
"The effects of the protests are getting very strong because the government is indulging in unnecessary actions by using excessive force," said K.P. Oli, a senior leader of the Nepal Communist Party (United Marxist Leninist).
"The government is suppressing people and we don't have any alternative but to continue protests," said Oli, who is under house arrest.
The parties have called for a boycott of local elections planned for Feb. 8 by Gyanendra, who is under increased international pressure to restore democracy after he sacked the elected government almost a year ago.
On Saturday groups of stone-throwing protesters clashed with police in running battles around Kathmandu's main square after a larger pro-democracy rally was banned.
Police arrested 236 people, an officer said later. Journalists and other eyewitnesses reported that some 300 demonstrators were rounded up and bundled into police vans.
Meanwhile, Maoist rebels and government forces clashed overnight in a village in southern Nepal, killing 14 militants and six security forces, the royal army said yesterday.
The gunbattle began on Saturday night after the insurgents attacked a security patrol in Phapar Badi village, 160km south of Kathmandu, an official at the Royal Nepalese Army headquarters said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home