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Nepal youth leading pro democracy movement { April 14 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/04/14/MNG0FI8U791.DTLhttp://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/04/14/MNG0FI8U791.DTL
Youth of Nepal are leading pro-democracy movement
- Somini Sengupta, New York Times
Friday, April 14, 2006
Kathmandu, Nepal -- The Nepalese New Year dawns today, with Nepal's young lashing furiously at the past.
"We will not ask the king to leave the throne -- we will go and take the throne and put it on display," Gagan Thapa, 29, the political symbol of young Nepal, told a crowd of thousands on the outskirts of the capital Thursday.
The vast majority, dressed in baseball caps and jeans and looking well below the age of 30, roared in approval.
A brassy anti-monarchy call-and-response echoed through the warren of terraced lanes:
"We will burn the crown," Thapa shouted.
"Burn the crown, burn the crown," the crowd hollered back.
The protests that have gripped Nepal this week, demanding the end of palace rule and the reinstatement of parliament, are in large measure a function of demographics.
Young Nepal has been at the forefront of rambunctious, often violent pro-democracy rallies that have left four people dead. Whether Nepal descends into further tumult or sees the dawning of a new political age in the Nepalese calendar year of 2063 will depend on whether they can be appeased.
With his country's crisis mounting by the day, King Gyanendra seemed to make the slightest of nods in that direction. In a brief statement read on state-owned television shortly before midnight, he called for general elections "with the active participation of all political parties committed to peace and democracy."
But the king said nothing about when elections would be held, or, more important, whether he will consent to elections to review Nepal's Constitution, something the country's coalition of political parties and the Maoist rebels insist on.
Whether the gesture restores peace in Gyanendra's Himalayan kingdom will depend on the reaction today from the uncompromising throngs of young people who are his most formidable foe.
Nearly 60 percent of Nepal's 23 million citizens are younger than 24. They came of age after democracy came to Nepal in April 1990, and they have tasted the fruits and failures of electoral politics. In February 2005, they saw their king suspend parliament and install prime ministers of his own choosing in a bid, he said, to defeat the Maoist insurgency. For 14 months, they have lived under the king's direct rule.
Last week, he banned protests in the capital and imposed a daytime curfew for six days.
That order has not stopped young people from pouring into the streets, where they've been beaten by police. On just one day this week, of the 59 people admitted to Kathmandu's main teaching hospital for treatment of their injuries, only 13 were over age 30.
Consider the verdict of Shashi Sigdel, a 22-year-old medical student, on the shift in attitudes toward the king.
"My grandfather used to think he is a god," Sigdel said. "My parents used to think he stands between God and the devil. Me, I think he's the devil. That's the generation gap."
On Thursday, the government restored cell phone service, which had been down for nearly a week, and lifted the curfew in the capital. The ban on protests in Kathmandu and several other cities continued, as did the protests.
The Royal Nepalese Army has been dispatched to some of the demonstrations. So far, it has largely refrained from open confrontation with the demonstrators. Of the four people killed in the demonstrations, at least two died by army gunfire.
A protest by the Nepal Bar Association on Thursday morning ended with police beating dozens of demonstrators. Nearly 50 landed in the hospital, including two whose heads had been grazed by rubber bullets.
In a statement Thursday, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights hinted that the use of excessive force by police officers could jeopardize Nepal's participation in U.N. peacekeeping missions, a good source of income for the country.
Pro-democracy demonstrations have been commonplace since the royal takeover of February 2005, but none has been as intense, sustained or violent as the ones unfolding over the past week.
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