King Gyanendra of Nepal dismissed the government of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba on Feb. 1, 2005, declared a nationwide state of emergency and negated people’s rights by suspending their freedom of expression and assembly and freedom of the press. The king assumed power by putting armed soldiers and police on the streets and appointed a new 10-member cabinet the next day composed of royalist supporters with himself as the head of the cabinet. The king stated he would restore democracy and peace in the country in three years.
During the king’s coup, Deuba and members of his government were placed under house arrest. In addition, other leading politicians were placed under house arrest as well, including Girija Prasad Koirala, former prime minister and leader of the Nepali Congress Party, the country’s largest political party; Madhav Kumar Nepal, leader of the Communist Party of Nepal-United Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML); Pashupati Shamsher, president of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party; and Daman Nath Dhungana, former speaker of the House of Representatives. Other party leaders were reported missing, and a leader of the Nepali Congress claimed several days after the coup that perhaps as many as 500 of his party members had been arrested.
Moreover, Kathmandu’s international airport was closed to incoming and outgoing flights for several days after the coup, and all telephone and internet communication inside and outside of the country was cut. Land-line and mobile phone connections still remain sporadic a month after the coup.
The king also ordered that no reports critical of the monarchy and the new government could be carried in the media for six months; and within a matter of days, armed troops were stationed in the offices of all print and electronic media to censor their reports and ensure that this edict was obeyed. FM radio stations moreover were ordered to only play music. In addition, Tara Nath Dahal, president of the Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ), was arrested on the morning of Feb. 5 for printing a blank editorial page in the weekly newspaper he edits, and Bishnu Nisthuri, the FNJ’s general secretary who became the organisation’s acting president upon Dahal’s arrest, was himself arrested later the same day. Other editors were said to be in hiding or under house arrest. The foreign media was not immune from the crackdown either as Netra K. C., the BBC’s representative in Nepalgunj, disappeared after being summoned to a local army barracks.
Not only was communication and access to uncensored information curtailed, but people’s legal protections were denied as well with the suspension of habeas corpus in spite of safeguards in the country’s constitution and under international law prohibiting the suspension of habeas corpus even during a state of emergency. This regressive step in the legal system became evident when the Supreme Court on Feb. 7 refused to register a habeas corpus writ filed by a group of lawyers led by Shambhu Thapa, president of the Nepal Bar Association (NBA), who was seeking the release of Sindhu Nath Pyakurel, a senior lawyer and former NBA president.
“We have no idea what to do in such cases [in the new political context],” said one Supreme Court justice, “so we are trying to avoid habeas corpus cases under one pretext or another.”
During the weeks following the Feb. 1 coup, reports continue to surface of the arrest of politicians, students, trade unionists and human rights activists in the capital and outlying districts. In the prevailing climate with its absence of legal protections and the suspension of human rights, there is much concern that those arrested will be tortured. In addition, travel restrictions under an “area detention” policy have prevented human rights activists from leaving the Kathmandu Valley, including Kapil Shrestha and Sushil Pyakurel of the country’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Another worry is that with the NHRC’s mandate set to expire in May 2005 that the king will use the occasion to appoint commissioners who are subservient to him, especially since the normal procedures for appointing the commissioners through a committee comprised of the prime minister and leader of the opposition in the House of Representatives cannot be followed in the present circumstances.
The king claimed he took such drastic steps because the government was incapable of resolving the civil war with the Maoists that has taken more than 11,000 lives since 1996 and because the government was not moving fast enough to hold elections by April.
The king had also sacked a government led by Deuba in October 2002 on the same grounds. Parliament, which was dissolved at that time, has not met since then in spite of calls by the country’s five major political parties and numerous protests organised by them for more than two years. Deuba had been reappointed prime minister by Gyanendra in June 2004 after two governments led by prime ministers sympathetic to the monarchy had resigned in the face of widespread protests.
In this tense and constrictive environment, people opposed to the king’s decision have found it difficult to organise protests. However, hundreds of university students in Pokhara peacefully demonstrated on their campus on Feb. 1, the day of the coup, against the king’s grab for power. The military though fired rubber bullets and tear gas at the students from a helicopter, wounding at least one student. Reports said that more than 250 students were assaulted on the campus and 58 were arrested by the Royal Nepal Army (RNA) and beaten by security forces at a nearby army barracks after they were blindfolded and their hands tied behind their backs. Afterwards, the soldiers forced them to sleep in a trench in the open without any bedding for the night. One student claims that soldiers held him over a river and threatened to drop him in the water. Other attempts by the country’s political parties to organise demonstrations against the king’s coup were not possible though because of the inability to communicate, and a three-day general strike called by the Maoists was largely ineffective for the same reason. Meanwhile, the human rights community in Nepal, including the NHRC, as well as the FNJ and NBA produced statements denouncing the usurpation of power by the king and calling for the reinstatement of people’s rights (these statements are available in the annexes).
In a statement issued on Feb. 5 through the U.N. Working Group on Involuntary Disappearances because of concern for their safety, members of 25 human rights organisations in Nepal declared:
“The king’s actions violate international practices and legal standards for human rights even under the conditions of a legitimate ‘state of emergency.’ We are deeply concerned by the growing number of political prisoners and the increasing insecurity of human rights defenders, journalists and lawyers. The current surveillance, monitoring and harassment of human rights organisations and activists, including obstacles set in place to interrupt the work of the National Human Rights Commission, as well as the harassment of journalists, is unacceptable.”
Statements were also released by organisations outside of the country, including the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) as well as the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), condemning the king’s coup and the denial of people’s human rights (see these statements in the annexes). In its series of statements, AHRC has consistently called upon the international community to take the following steps:
1. All international aid to the country must be frozen.
2. The country's seat in the United Nations must be suspended for having violated its charter.
3. All international ties with the RNA and other security forces must be severed.
4. A U.N. envoy must be located permanently within Nepal so as to facilitate the return to democracy.
5. The state parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) should request the chairperson of the Human Rights Committee to convene a special session in accordance with Rule 3 of its Rules of Procedure to discuss the present situation in Nepal arising out of the coup.
6. A U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Nepal must be appointed and report on developments constantly.
The European Parliament and foreign governments also criticised the king with the governments of India, the United States and Britain recalling their ambassadors. The rebuke by the Indian government, which suspended all military assistance in addition to recalling its ambassador, was especially significant as India is Nepal’s leading arms supplier as well as its largest investor and trading partner. Britain, another of Nepal’s major arms suppliers, also took the same step, and a third major source of military aid, the United States, is considering the identical policy option as well. The decision of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh not to attend the summit of leaders of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in Bangladesh on Feb. 6 prompted the meeting to be cancelled, negating the king’s attempts to gain legitimacy for his coup by attending a conference of his peers in the
subregion.
Senior U.N. officials—Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Louise Arbour, U.N. high commissioner for human rights—also publicly criticised the actions of the king with Arbour reminding the king that he had reaffirmed his commitment to human rights, democracy and multiparty rule the previous week when she had met him in Kathmandu. In addition, a statement was released by nine U.N. human rights experts calling for the restoration of democratic institutions in Nepal and the protection of people’s rights, including the implementation of measures “to put an end to the climate of impunity prevailing in the country for serious human rights violations, crimes and abuses committed in the past.”
This last statement is particularly important as the impunity of the past looks set to continue into the future; for with no institutional restraints to check his actions and the military firmly under his control as the commander in chief of the armed forces, the king appears set to fulfil his promise to grant the military more power and unleash the RNA against the Maoists. Caught in the cross-fire, however, will be the Nepalese people most likely as more deaths take place and human rights violations increase.