New security measures to avert violence in Nepal
NEPAL: New security measures were imposed Saturday to avert
more violence in Nepal’s volatile southeast, where 29 people were killed
in clashes between an ethnic group and Maoists, officials said.
Six people have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the
bloodshed on Wednesday, officials added.
The moves came after Nepal’s former Maoist rebels placed the bloodied
corpses of their comrades on display in the capital on Friday and
threatened retaliation for their deaths.
The 29 leftists were killed in clashes with activists belonging to
the Mahadhesi People’s Rights Forum, which represents the ethnic group
who live in a fertile strip of land known as the Terai along Nepal’s
border with India.
The clashes, the latest in a string of deadly battles between the
leftists and the Mahadhesis, have cast a cloud over last November’s
peace deal, which ended ten years of civil war between Maoist rebels and
the government.
“A daytime curfew was imposed on Golbazaar town after we learnt
Maoists planned to disrupt a Mahadhesi programme,” said administrator
Shashi Shekhar Shrestha of Siraha district, 140 kilometres (87 miles)
southeast of Kathmandu.
In Biratnagar town, officials said they had banned protest rallies
for four days to head off potential clashes between the leftists and the
Mahadhesis.
Six Mahadhesis were arrested on Friday “during raids” in the region,
on suspicion of being involved in the clashes, superintendent of police
Ram Kumar Khanal told AFP by telephone from Rautahat district, 90
kilometres south of Kathmandu..Meanwhile The United States has warned
that Nepal’s fragile peace process could be “imperiled” unless the
government cracks down on violence besetting the nation’s fertile
southeast.
The United States condemned Wednesday’s killings and called on the
government to arrest and prosecute all the perpetrators, regardless of
their political or ethnic affiliation.
“If unity and inclusiveness are not promoted, further bloodshed may
result and Nepal’s peace process could be imperiled,” the US embassy
here warned in a statement received by AFP on Saturday.
Kathmandu, Sunday, AFP |
