Hundreds of security personnel yesterday patrolled a tense town in western Nepal after an 18-month-old boy and seven police died in violent protests against a new constitution.
The government deployed the army and announced an indefinite curfew in parts of the Kailali District, a day after protesters attacked police and the home of a paramilitary officer, killing his son, with spears, axes and knives.
The boy’s father, Netra Bahadur Saud, told reporters he was sitting on his porch when protesters fired at him, killing his 18-month-old son.
Photo: AFP
“My son was playing in front of me, all of a sudden I heard bullet fire,” Saud said.
“Within seconds my son fell to the ground with head injuries... I rushed him to hospital, but he was already dead,” Saud said.
“The shooters targeted me... my son was innocent. Why was he killed?” he said.
Anger has been building for weeks in parts of Nepal after lawmakers struck a breakthrough deal on a new constitution, spurred by April’s devastating earthquake.
The constitution was meant to draw a line under centuries of inequality, but plans to divide the country into seven provinces have sparked fury among historically marginalized communities, who say the new borders will limit their political representation.
The latest clashes broke out in the town of Tikapur, 420km west of Kathmandu, when activists from the Tharu ethnic minority held a protest to demand their own separate province.
The Tharus have struggled to overcome decades spent as bonded slaves to high-caste landowners.
Officials in Kailali said more than 40 security officers were wounded in Monday’s clashes, but gave no details of casualties among the demonstrators.
“The situation is calm for now, hundreds of police and army personnel have been deployed in the area,” Nepal Police spokesman Kamal Singh Bam said.
“The death toll from yesterday’s street clashes is seven officers,” Bam told reporters, revising earlier figures that counted eight fatalities among the security forces.
“Nepal’s government is squarely to blame for its failure to engage with the local community and address its concerns, which led to this horrific escalation,” Human Rights Watch Asia Director Brad Adams said in a statement.
“The government needs to take immediate steps to restore order and prevent retaliation by the police,” Adams said.
District officials said no further clashes were reported overnight.
Work on a new national constitution began in 2008, two years after the end of a Maoist insurgency that left an estimated 16,000 people dead and brought down the 240-year-old Hindu monarchy.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver