Today is Krishna Janmaasthami a major Hindu holiday celebrating Krishna, the God of music and love.
The 24-hour curfew in Birgunj, Nepal has been lifted for a five-hour window while the remains of five young men are cremated by the side of a river that is a tributary of the Ganges.
http://images.dailykos.com/...
The men were killed in separate incidents in Birgunj, but the bodies were held by police while negotiations took place to declare them "martyrs" and provide monetary compensation to the families.
The next few days will continue to be tense in Birgunj, and indeed, throughout the Terai region of Nepal. Join me below the fold for more information.
Let's clarify what we mean by "Police killing" in Nepal right now. In this case, the killings were justified by the need to control riots, and the government used deadly force. These ones are not the same as the ones we are having in USA, where a lone policeman or small group of police shoot and kill an unarmed man when they think nobody is watching, then lie about it. In Nepal, these killings have been public events.
For months, the Terai people have been conducting large peaceful protests, drawing up to 20,000 people in various cities. The country has been without an official constitution for eight years, but the effort to actually write one and adopt it seems to have been propelled by the April 25th earthquake. In August they finally published a draft.
Tikapur Kailali murders
The draft constitution has proved contentious over various issues, and in the Terai the protest movement escalated. On August 24th, in a premeditated plan, protest leaders in kailali district ( far west, near Nepalganj) decided to authorize cold blooded murder of seven policemen and an infant boy, which they admitted doing.
The government leaders in Kathmandu sent the Nepal Army. A 24-hour curfew was imposed. Riot police tactics were implemented. Tear gas and live bullets were fired. Protests spread to other cities. In a number of cities, individual protesters were shot and killed.
In Birgunj, protesters attacked a police outpost and burned it. The police opened fire. Four were killed. One of the district hospitals became a mob scene, along the way.
That's about all the summary I will give. The historical grievances of people in Terai are a labyrinth of groups, names and events. In the year I spent in Nepal I made numerous trips trips to teach at hospitals and medical schools in the region, totaling about five months of my overall time. Last year at this time in Terai, it was blasted hot.
What's happening now?
The leaders of a main Terai party had pulled out of the constitution-drafting process but came back, briefly. They are threatening to pull out again.
Province Boundaries seem to be back on the table
The "Four Party Alliance" seems to be considering one of the main demands, to resubmit the proposed federalist boundaries so as to have more than just seven provinces. They have stated their unwillingness to suspend the constitution-drafting process altogether.
Curfew
The Nepal Army is still maintaining a curfew. Even without the Army, the political parties of Terai had been conducting a "bandh" - closing down all motorized traffic - in the Terai. It's going on twenty days now, since that started.
Hospitals
A few days ago, on the blog for my critical care education project, I wrote a piece giving advice as to preventing the hospital emergency rooms from becoming part of the conflict. There is a long history behind this. Much of my teaching project since 2011 has been designed to develop situational awareness among nurses and doctors to prevent violence and de-escalate when dealing with angry people. Misdirected anger is a big problem in Nepal, where somebody has to always be at fault when something goes wrong ( it's part of their culture). The general citizenry does not own guns, but everyone owns a "lathi" - a fourfoot stick used to administer a beating - and there is a form of frontier justice with the euphemism of "thrashing."
"Thrashing" is where a group of people beat the target, breaking many bones and killing them. (sometimes they stop before the point of death but it's not an exact science).
I posted links to the blog on FaceBook and the first three dozen "likes" all came from nurses and doctors in Terai cities where the violence had occurred. (Of course, it's a bit odd that I can write a piece here, and have it read nearly instantaneously in the Terai, which most person would consider to be remote).
Riot Police.
There are many pictures and videos on YouTube that show the responses to the various protests, and it seems to my semi-trained eye that the Nepal Riot Squads are exceptionally well-trained and disciplined. I'd not previously spent much time reading up on riot squad tactics, but with very little effort I found training videos showing what they do. In some cases, the video shows a stop-and-go sequence and the narrator gives a sort of play-by-play analysis of what the Team Captain of the Riot Squad is thinking, much like John Madden or other TV commentators who entertain during games of American Football. The group tactics hearken back to the days of the Roman legions, the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War, and stylized ritual warfare now practiced by the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks.
Nurses, Doctors and Riot Police
In the training I give, I encourage the Nepali nurses and doctors to work with the police, giving examples of how to be pro-active and decide when it's needed. Many hospitals already have tight security due to the ongoing "thrashing" issue. For example, there's a major medical center which employs 40 guards just in the ER alone. (clarification: that's 24/7; six or seven are on duty at all times). There are two guards right at the only door in or out. They are accustomed to groups of ten or twenty emotional family members arriving at the door angry.
The smaller hospitals do not have the same physical set-up or the level of security, though this also happens at the smaller hospitals. The young doctors in Nepal are expected to do a year or two of national service in a rural location when they graduate, but this fear of being thrashed makes it less attractive. In that sense, the violence prevents regular health promotion work from getting done. It's true that "the first casualty of war is public health" - and rural Nepal is an example of that.
I have been asked what I think about the riot police.
Well, now. There's "regular criminality" and "organized criminality."
As long as individual police can be ambushed in their house while off-duty, the mostly-unarmed police will find it impossible to get willing guys to join them there as regular patrolmen, and we have "organized criminality." Until the organized criminality is suppressed, the Army is the only law and order. Now, there are fifteen million people in this region ( roughly the same population as the six-state New England region in USA). there are simply not enough riot police to impose the control on all of them. Everyone has recognized the need for a political solution, though it took a week for the government to come around to that idea. The U.N. Secretary General called for a political solution, and so have various Human Rights Groups. In the meantime, my opinion is, the central government had no choice but to deploy the Army. There will always be a need for police as long as there is "regular criminality" - of which there is plenty.
At the same time, there are ongoing demonstrations in Kathmandu. One group is the RPP, the Hindu Fundamentalists, who wish to re-impose the monarchy, stop further Christian conversion in Nepal, and declare Hinduism the official religion. In Kathmandu September 1st, they conducted a demonstration that the police stopped by using water cannon and teargas.
Future.
It's possible that the declaration of martyrdom and the payout to the families will calm things down for a bit. In the collective culture of Nepal, the people will reach a consensus as to what to do next. There are attempts in the media to appeal to a sense of national identity, may those will have time to work.
In the meantime, after the April 24th earthquake, international donors pledged 4.1 billion dollars of aid. In the media it was revealed that none of this money has been spent. 800,000 people in the mountainous region affected by the quake are "food insecure" which means that they are at risk of an old-fashioned famine.
I will post news every few days. There is a lot of activity these days, and it's hard to keep up with. For those interested, one of the sites that aggregates news reports is located here.
7:52 AM PT: news that the Big Three Parties have agreed not to declare Nepal a Hindu state, and to use the term "secularism" in the constitution http://setopati.net/...