Two killed as police fire on Nepal protesters

Two killed as police fire on Nepal protesters

Web posted at: 1/23/2007 15:26:39

Source ::: REUTERS

Nepaplese transportation workers burning tyres during a demonstration on the second day of strike in Kathmandu, yesterday. (AFP)

KATHMANDU • Police fired at anti-government protesters in Nepal on Monday, killing two, in violence that threatens to derail a peace process aimed at ending a decade of civil war.

Ethnic Madhesi from the country's south, who are critical of a newly-passed interim constitution that brought Maoist rebels into the political mainstream, clashed with police, a n interior ministry official said

Nepal’s prime minister convened an emergency meeting of the ruling alliance and former Maoist rebels yesterday as violent unrest threatened to derail a fast-moving peace process aimed at ending a decade-old civil war. Police fired at anti-government protesters in south-east Nepal, in growing unrest that threatens to derail a peace process aimed at ending a decade-old civil war. Witnesses said several protesters were hurt in the town of Lahan, the focus of ethnic protests in the last few days against the peace deal. One policeman was injured, police said.

Police said they opened fire after protesters from the ethnic Madhesi people, who oppose a new interim constitution bringing former Maoist rebels into the political mainstream, tried to storm a police station.

“First we fired in the air, even then the crowd remained uncontrolled,” a senior police officer, who declined to be named, said. “We had to open fire at the protesters after they tried to storm the police post.”A 12-hour curfew has been imposed on Lahan, officials said. Dozens of government offices and buses were torched over the weekend by ethnic Madhesi peoples of the southern plains after a Maoist activist shot dead a 16-year-old boy during a Madhesi demonstration against a recently passed interim constitution.

The violence in the south-eastern town of Lahan sparked a transport strike that paralysed much of the Himalayan kingdom yesterday as Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala met with leading politicians.

The strike was called by transport companies to protest against the attacks on their vehicles. The Madhesi People’s Rights Forum, which organised the demonstration, opposes the new constitution, which incorporates Maoists into the political mainstream after an insurgency against the monarchy in which over 13,000 people were killed.