Eva Cheng
Despite police repression thwarting a January 20 protest against the king's autocratic rule, a defiant demonstration of 10,000-50,000 people burst onto the streets of Nepal's capital Kathmandu on January 21. This was followed by more mass actions, culminating in a January 26 national strike that paralysed most of Nepal.
"Hang [King] Gyanendra" and "Thief Gyanendra, quit the country" were dominant slogans at the January 21 protest, according to a January 23 report in India's daily Telegraph.
The alliance of seven majoe political parties, which organised or backed most of the earlier actions, called for a week-long general strike from February 5 to disrupt the municipal poll scheduled for February 8.
Gyanendra seized power unconstitutionally on February 1, 2005, by sacking the elected government, and the February 8 poll is widely seen as an attempt to legitimise his autocratic regime. A popular campaign to restore democratic elections has been gathering pace since November, when the alliance of seven parties finalised a common program of action with the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) to end the king's rule.
The CPN(M) has been leading a guerrilla war since 1996 in many parts of Nepal, seeking to end the rule of the feudal monarch, along with the widespread caste and gender discrimination and other social injustices. In a contribution to the US left magazine Monthly Review last November, a CPN(M) leader claimed the party now controls 80% of Nepal, and with intensive effort is making some progress towards transforming the economic and social life of those "liberated areas". People's committees have been formed, on top of a growing alternative system of justice, education and medical provision.
During the January 26 strike and associated protest actions, which were repressed with live ammunition, more than 200 demonstrators were arrested throughout Nepal and at least a dozen people wounded. Foreign news agencies reported the strike's success in shutting down much of public life — including public and private transport, shops, businesses and schools.
The strike was timed to coincide with the end of candidate nominations for the February 8 poll, which the seven-party alliance and the CPN(M) are boycotting. On January 22, a pro-king candidate was assassinated and another was abducted a few days later. Apparently to facilitate the negotiation with the seven-party alliance, the CPN(M) unilaterally declared a four-month ceasefire last September, which ended on January 2. Since then, armed skirmishes between the CPN(M) guerrillas and the king's army have resumed. On January 25, 29 guerrillas were reportedly killed.
Washington has been backing the Nepalese monarch with military "advisers" and US weapons since 2001, when a massacre of nearly the entire core of the Nepali royal family took place, allegedly by a distraught prince. The US-friendly Gyanendra then became king, and the US administration has expressed no real objection to Gyanendra's "royal coup" of a year ago.
Nor has Beijing, which described that chain of events as Nepal's "internal matter". On the recent crackdown, an official Xinhua News Agency report on January 25 said that "China hoped all parties concerned in Nepal could narrow their differences through dialogue". China is a powerful neighbour bordering Nepal on the north, with significant traditional influence on the poor land-locked country of 27 million people.
From Green Left Weekly, February 1, 2006.
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