112 held in protests at new Nepal constitution
Print Edition
Nepalese police arrested more than 100 protestors yesterday for trying to enforce a nationwide strike, the latest in a string of protests against the new constitution.
“The police have arrested 112 cadres from across the country for vandalism and for forcing shops to shut down,” police spokesman Kamal Singh Bam said, adding that protestors attacked 16 vehicles.
Nepal’s bickering parties struck a breakthrough deal earlier this month to redraw the country’s internal borders in the draft new constitution.
Under the charter, which has been held up for years by political wrangling, Nepal will be restructured as a federal state with six provinces.
But several lawmakers and supporters called the strike, saying the proposed borders discriminated against historically marginalized communities.
“State reconstruction in the draft is far from the aspirations of the people,” Pampha Bhusal, spokeswoman of CPN-Maoist, a breakaway faction of the Maoist party, said.
“It does not ensure political participation of marginalized groups in the state bodies.”
Hundreds in Nepal’s troubled midwest and southern plains last week staged protests over the long-awaited document, that flared in violence and left two people dead.
Tourism operators urged a halt to the strike, warning such protests would hurt the industry already reeling from April’s devastating earthquake that claimed more than 8,800 lives.
Work on a new national constitution began in 2008 following a decade-long Maoist insurgency that left some 16,000 people dead and brought down the 240-year-old Hindu monarchy.
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