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.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing
RSS