From now on, I'll call this "abbreviated Nepal round-up" since there is frequent breaking news from Nepal.
Summary:
The recent killings of police in Tikapur, Kailali district, were planned by a political party. It was not simply a crowd that got out of control.
The police were given a state funeral. It is now clear that they were lied to and the organizers of the protest planned to kill them. I do not expect the Police, The Armed Police Force, or the Army to make that mistake again. I believe the senior guy was brave and acting out of the highest motivation to keep peace and promote civil dialogue.
If you want to read more, step past the orange roll of concertina wire at the checkpoint operated by the Nepali Army......
Simply a Blockbuster Story in Nepal
printed by The Nepali Times, highly reputable source.
When Madhesi leaders Upendra Yadav, Rajendra Mahato and Amaresh Singh provoked Kailali’s ethnic Tharus to drive away ‘outsiders from their lands’ three weeks ago, supporters of the Tharuhat movement were divided about their response. Attacking ‘outsiders’ would have sparked ethnic violence.
However, when the a rally organised by hill settler supporters of the ‘Undivided Far-west’ province demanded came across Tharu protesters in Tikapur of Kailali on 21 August the situation nearly turned ugly. Police brought the situation under control by dispersing both groups of agitators, and the local administration got all parties to agree that future protests would be peaceful.
That night some Tharu leaders held a late night meeting in a village near Durgauli and planned to use violence to jolt the state and push through their agenda for an autonomous Tharu province. But they were divided over their target: some wanted to attack supporters of the ‘Undivided Far-west’ while others wanted to attack the police. They finally agreed to target the police because killing Far West supporters would spark communal violence.
Analysis of above news by Biswas Baral of Republika
BEYOND BORDERS
Someone looking at the political map of Nepal today must wonder how it has managed to stay independent for so long, how one of the great Indian or Chinese rulers in the past did not make it his own. Prithvi Narayan Shah united the country with brute force, in the process bringing together vastly different regions and ethnic communities. The continuity of such a forced unity was possible, it could be argued, only under the iron-fist of the autocratic monarchy and its imposition of uniform language and culture.
Predictably, this imagination of the Shah monarchs is slowly unraveling. In this day and age it is impossible to force people to follow prescribed rules without their consent. After the end of the Cold War there has been a wave of disintegration around the world as people's aspirations for greater autonomy and self-rule are being realized, not always thorough democratic means. As the federal experiment in Nepal is being hijacked by vested interests, there are fears Nepal might also implode. - See more at: http://www.myrepublica.com/...
Upendra Yadav, political leader,
had this to say:
Aug 27, 2015- Chairman of the Sanghiya Samajwadi Forum-Nepal (SSF-N) Upendra Yadav has ruled out the possibility of talks with the government.
Yadav's statement follows recent call by the government to the agitating Madhes-based parties for talks.
There is no meaning to sit for talks as the government is yet to implement past agreements, he said, speaking in a press conference in Janakpur in Dhanusa on Thursday.
Saying that they took to the streets not pressing for new demands, he pointed out the need for eight-point agreement reached earlier to be implemented.
He, however, said that the ongoing agitation in the Tarai in particular would be stopped once the 22-point and eight-point agreements struck earlier are implemented.
He said that the bottom line of his party is to ensure the agreements reached with Madhes-based parties earlier in the new constitution.
He was of the view that the federal model proposed by the four major parties for 'their personal interests' was against the interim constitution and the spirit of past movements. The country has plunged into a conflict due to the 16-point agreement reached only among four major parties, ignoring the Constituent Assembly.
And - "Storm in the Making" (note, this is just an excerpt from a long post -
click here for the whole thing)
Aug 27, 2015- I am sure I am not the only one out there who finds it extremely difficult to intellectualise acts of physical violence. I had hoped that phase was over for us once the Maoist insurgency ended, as did the violence in the Tarai a few years later. But with deaths being reported from various parts of the country now as a result of protests against the proposed constitution, I am being forced to engage with it willy-nilly
for the simple reason that writing is my vocation.
Despite the weeks of demonstrations, bandhs, riots, and deaths, a belief had got hold that with a wiggle of a boundary here and there, the outpouring of anger could be contained. It took the killing of some police officers in Kailali to shake us out of our stupor. Could the violence have been averted? I certainly think so, but it would have required a radical reorientation of the minds of some of the people who are in charge of the country today.
Um, this is not good for tourism...
I'll stop here for today. My head is spinning. It does not take a genius to figure out that the central government now has one more big problem. I leave it to the readers to work out the possibilities. For my, I pray for my friends there.