KATHMANDU, April 14: Fresh pro-democracy protests broke out in Nepal on Friday despite King Gyanendra’s pledge to hold elections, as activists said he offered nothing new or substantive.
Groups of protesters took to the streets of the capital Kathmandu hours after the king’s midnight message, chanting ‘Gyanendra, thief, quit the country’ and ‘Down with autocracy, end police repression’.
Riot police arrested about 20 demonstrators, but there was no violence. Scattered protests continued through the day, but were not as intense as in previous days because it was a holiday for the Nepali Hindu New Year.
Political parties leading the movement against the king were quick to reject his offer for elections, saying the monarch’s new year message would not defuse the fierce campaign in which four people have been killed and hundreds wounded in the past week.
“If the king doesn’t listen to the voice of the people, I can only say, ‘god save the king’,” Girija Prasad Koirala, president of Nepal’s largest political party, said in an interview.
Nepalis had hoped the king’s traditional new year message would contain some new steps to ease tensions, but it was largely a repeat of earlier promises to hold elections by April next year. He sacked the government and assumed total power in February last year.—Reuters
