submitted on Sun, 07/15/2007 - 18:41 in Travel Asia with Raimondo Bultrini Group by zorg 
Nepal, accidents and clashes. Three victims, hundreds of wounded.The journalist recounts how he managed to save his own life. With the students of Kathmandu in the trap laid by the King’s soldiers. Smiles, slogans, women and children in the squares: then tear gas A studied attack on the crowd: the King’s words were insincere. By RAIMONDO BULTRINI KATHMANDU – It was a trap: a cynical, pre-conceived anti-uprising tactic. Yesterday, the King’s soldiers tried all means possible to execute a massacre, after finding themselves faced with demonstrations of 200-300 thousand people requesting the reinstatement of democracy to Nepal. I found myself to be at the same time a direct witness and a fortunate victim, trapped in an inferno of bodies piled one above the other in the historical heart of the city.
Those who survived were on the verge of suffocation. Others suffered from broken ribs and joints, and at least two died a few paces from us, crushed by the crowd that was trying to escape the tear gas and advancing police. It was the 18th day of the general strike, beginning with a series of road blocks along the ring road that circumnavigates the centre of the capital of Kathmandu. Since 9 o’clock in the morning, young people with jubilant faces were burning tires and chopping down trees up to 20 meters in height with hatchets in order to block police and military vehicles along the delicate artery which had constituted the off-limits curfew perimeter for several days.
No traffic was permitted entrance into the city. Yesterday morning was a special day. It was the day following King Gyanendra Shah’s speech. He had offered to “restore to the people” the power of a prime minister, advocated a year ago, and requested the seven-party opposition alliance to indicate a candidate for prime minister. However, this move by the king, although applauded by almost all the foreign countries, including the European Union, served to galvanize spirits instead of placating them. “Today we will go directly to the Palace of the despot”, said one of the youths, as they screamed increasingly explicit messages and slogans in favor of abolishing the monarchy at the top of their lungs.
Youths prepared for D-Day, determined to defy en masse the umpteenth curfew proclaimed for midday. Meanwhile, in other areas of the city the seven parties forming the coalition, called Spa, met individually at first, then altogether at the house of one of the ex-prime ministers leading the revolt: octogenarian Girija Prasad Koirala. As predicted, the politicians removed by King Gyanendra four years ago when Parliament was dissolved, had rejected the King’s offer. “It doesn’t correspond to the expectations and programmers of the democracy movement”, said the seven-party alliance: ranging from the Nepalese Congress moderates to the extreme wing of the Marxist Party with the support of the Maoist rebels. All were in agreement to not surrender their requests: reconstitution of the Parliament dissolved at the King’s command in 2002; formation of a provisional government of the parties nominated to treat the future entrance of Maoists; and organization of the elections for a constitutional Assembly that should rewrite the constitution, including the delicate passage on royal powers, considered to be “excessive” and anachronistic.
For fear of wearing a symbolic crown, the King, who rose to power following the unresolved mysterious massacre of his brother’s family, assigned to the military carte blanche to fire at protesters, causing the fall of at least 14 victims in just a few days. On Friday, prior to his speech, there had been no shootings, and hundreds and thousands of people, over 70% of them students or young workers, broke through the police cordons and approached the city without too many problems. For this reason the youths on the Ring Road were determined to reach the historical heart of the city for the first time, convinced that the challenge would have been easily won. What follows is the story of how we personally ascertained that this was a dangerous and dramatic illusion. At the start of the midday curfew, announced as usual at the last minute via TV and radio, we were determined to remain in the hotel like most of the tourists and trekkers who continued to crowd hotels and boarding houses in the capital. The clamor of the procession crossing the streets of Tamel seemed to prove that the youths of the Ring Road had been right.
No one had stopped them and now, for the first time since the start of the general strike on 6th April, they swarmed through alleys and small squares clogged with rubbish that had remained uncollected for days. They passed groups of people flanking side streets or behind the hundreds of shops with their doors ajar, cheering them as they passed or offering sweets and pastries. Onlookers from the windows showered passersby with buckets of water as a sign of greeting. Along the route towards Durbar Square, where the symbolic seat of the Malla and Shah dynasty is situated, the protesters invited people to join them and many of them did, thereby widening the procession. The peaceful aspect of the demonstration, the chanting and dancing, the joyfulness and solidarity of almost the entire population convinced us that the organisers of the procession had been right in not fearing retaliatory action. Slogans against the King and in favor of democracy resonated all around, often by children of 9 and 10 years old, many of them “street boys”: hundreds of orphans who had grown up in the alleys of Kathmandu; uneducated and without the assurance of a daily meal; sniffing glue and stealing here and there in order to survive.
There were also women, mothers, and teachers, as well as the occasional elderly person, business people, even employees of the State. In the temples disseminated at almost every corner of the historic centre, considered the legacy of humanity, even devoted Hindus and Brahmins interrupted their prayers to greet the joyous procession. The first signs that things weren’t going smoothly were immediately evident when a few dozen protesters unexpectedly turned back when finding themselves face to face with the first military patrol dressed in riot gear. However, the flow soon resumed and the soldiers remained in position with their rifles pointed downwards and maintaining absent glances when some of the more courageous or witless protesters invited the guards to join their procession against the King.
The first real blockade was further ahead. It was formed by no more than a dozen soldiers who had prevented the procession from directly reaching Durbar Square. In addition to the Malla Palace, the Kumari residence is also situated there: a venerate female divinity, personified by a ten-year old girl until such time as her first menstruation, when she is substituted by another. The soldiers politely avoided the procession, smiling and joking with some of the protesters. We also infiltrated the network of narrow roads that circled the magnificent palaces of ancient Kathmandu.
The last section, towards Indra Chowk, is several hundred meters long and less than ten meters wide. The crowd had reached almost maximum capacity and the encumbrance of the palaces with no side streets and all the shops closed and barred-up seemed the ideal location for a trap. Without even the time to think, the sound and smoke of tear gas coming from the end of the street threw the protesters, crammed one against the other, into a state of panic. Everyone started running in the opposite direction and, with a timing that couldn’t have been random, other soldiers fired tear gas at the opposite street opening. The air was suffocating and the escape route was blocked. Swept along by the evacuees, dozens of hesitant protesters soon fell to the ground. We stumbled as well, until an enormous mass of bodies accumulated in the same spot. While everyone searched for an escape route, we found ourselves with our limbs trapped and the increasing pressure of the desperate souls behind us.
This was more suffocating than the tear gas smoke. A moment that seemed to last an incalculable time: immobile and on the verge of suffocation. Beneath us other bodies seemed to lie inert on the ground, protected by a relative or friend who tried to avoid being trampled on. When the pressure was relieved, two people that had been next to us remained immobile on the ground. After trying to revive them for several futile minutes, someone came and dragged them away by their arms and turned their faces to the ground. When the military forced us to leave, the crowd covered the two bodies and we never knew what became of their fate. Back at the hotel, the news on TV and on-line Nepalese newspapers didn’t report the incident which had certainly involved hundreds of other people. Only in the evening did a semi-official hospital bulletin speak of 300 wounded, struck by clubs and bullets or suffering from broken bones during their dramatic flight from tear gas and military charges. A doctor reported the number of wounded at over 500, but this news, along with the widespread rumor at the end of the procession of three deaths including a child along the Ring Road, were not officially confirmed.
For the rest, not even the almost certain death of the two Nepalese that we had seen suffocating beside us will ever be reported in the news of this revolution that seems to have run away with the creators themselves. Our testimony is nothing but another fact amongst the hundreds of reports by human rights organizations of bodies disappearing even during these last days of protest. During the 1990 revolts against the dictatorship of the previous king, hundreds of corpses were buried in a mass grave. The official records still show only three victims.
Translation 7/11/2006Patricia Bayne
