Dear Friends,
Yesterday, April 22, we witnessed a in Kathmandu how
revolutionary fervour transforms the poor and
oppressed people to a determined force for change. The
poor of Nepal who for centuries have lived on the
crumbs thrown at them by the king and his cohorts, who
were treated as chattel and sent out as mercenaries to
fight and die for other nations while the king
collected commission on the supply of the Gurkha
mercenaries, marched on the streets of Kathmandu to
show their rejection of the king’s offer. The
security forces fired on the demonstrators at four
different places - Tripureshswor, Thapathali, New
Baneshwor and Kalanki the Republic Square. About a
quarter million people were marching towards Ratna
Park, in the centre of Kathmandu. On way to Ratna
Park a section of the demonstrators went to the house
of G. P. Koirala, the President of Nepali Congress.
The leaders of the Seven party Alliance were meeting
in Koirala’s house to finalise their response to the
king’s offer. The demonstrators demanded that all the
leaders come out and pledge their support to the
demand for establishment of a constituent assembly.
They also warned the leaders against making any
compromise with the king.
The “ignorant” and the poor masses of Nepal were aware
that the ambassadors of France. Sweden U.K. USA,
Finland, Germany and the EU had stepped up their
pressure on the leaders of the Seven Party Alliance to
accept the king’s offer. They were trying their best
to wreck the 12-Point Agreement between the Seven
Party Alliance and the Communist Party of Nepal
Maoists. The American news media CNN had joined in
this effort of the Western states. Mr Satinder Bindra
the CNN correspondent painted a grim picture. He
claimed that about two hundred thousand demonstrators
were marching toward the Royal place. He suggested
that the Maoists had taken over the demonstrations and
that they were aiming to storm the Royal Palace. He
kept warning of an imminent Maoist take over of Nepal.
Quoting the US Ambassador in Nepal he kept emphasising
on the Maoist threat to the stability to the region of
South Asia. In his early bulletins, he even denied
that the army and the armed police were firing at the
demonstrators. Perhaps embarrassed by Mr. Bindra’s
obvious partisan reporting, the CNN anchor person
later admitted that had received reports from Reuter
that the army had fired on the demonstrators.
The king disconnected the mobile phone around 3.00
p.m. Some of the cable TV service providers have
stopped their service since midnight. All sources of
communications and contact are being closed down one
by one. Soon we will not know what kind of
brutalities are being perpetrated on the people.
The dictators have always used terror as a tool for
remaining in power. The history is full of examples
of the terrorised overcoming fear and pulling down the
oppressors with their bare hands. Obviously the king
of Nepal and his army have not read history. But what
of those learned men and women in the West, who frame
polices of their government. Huxley was correct. The
most important lesson of history is that we never
learn from history.