Neil's Nepal

Yikes, These protests are starting tomorrow. It should prove interesting. I have some other issues to deal with, but I’ll try and get a camera out there.

Maoists ask airlines to stop Kathmandu flights on Nov 10

KATHMANDU: Nepal’s former Maoist guerrillas Friday asked all international airlines to stop flights to and from Kathmandu on Nov 10, saying it
would be a token sacrifice for democracy.

Maoist lawmaker and former finance minister Dr Baburam Bhattarai, who is coordinating a series of fresh protests by his party against the coalition government of Nepal from Sunday, said appeals were being sent to airlines through the media and pamphlets not to run flights to and from Kathmandu’s lone international airport, the Tribhuvan International Airport, on Nov 10 when the protest is aiming to catch the attention of the world afresh.

Bhattarai said his party was willing to reach a negotiated settlement with the ruling parties and call off the protests but admitted that the possibility of reaching an understanding was remote. The Madhav Kumar Nepal government, that has been beset with Maoist opposition since its formation in May, is being asked to either allow a debate in parliament on the role of the President, Dr Ram Baran Yadav, who reinstated the chief of the army after the earlier Maoist government fired the general, or table a joint resolution rapping the president’s move as unconstitutional or have the beleaguered president issue a public apology.

If none of the options are accepted by the government, the Maoists have called a torch rally on Sunday, which will be followed by picketing of government offices, including the prime minister’s office, and declaring the formation of 13 autonomous states as part of the Maoist drive to restructure the nascent republic. The climax will be a Kathmandu valley blockade on Nov 10, which will also include shutting down the airport.

With just 48 hours left, the prime minister Friday called an emergency cabinet meeting that ended with an appeal to the former guerrillas to call off their protest. “We ask the Maoists to call off their announced protest movement immediately and hold talks for a constitutional and parliamentary resolution and to continue with the peace process and drafting of a new constitution,” Information and Communications Minister Shankar Pokhrel, who is also the spokesman of the 22-party government, said after the cabinet meeting.

Pokhrel also said that if the Maoists enforced a blockade of the valley and declared autonomous states unilaterally, it would be a violation of the peace process that had ended the decade-old civil war and go against democratic norms.

Replying to the former rebels’ pressure tactic with retaliatory pressure, Pokhrel also warned them that the government would not tolerate vandalisation or violence in the name of protests and would take tough steps to control lawlessness.