As seven days of "excessive force" used by King Gyanendra's government to quell a civilian uprising tarnished Nepal's image, the UN issued a fresh warning Thursday, indicating the Nepali security forces' role in UN Peacekeeping Forces could be in jeopardy.UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said she was "shocked" by the excessive use of force by security forces, as well as the extensive use of arbitrary detentions violating the right to freedom of peaceful assembly.
"In expressing his concern about the developing confrontation a week ago, Secretary General Kofi Annan noted that virtually all avenues for peaceful protest in Nepal seem to have been closing," Arbour said in her statement.
"Now violence has mounted, despite the efforts of my office in Nepal to urge restraint on both demonstrators and security forces... and the toll of serious injuries has risen alarmingly."
Tacitly warning it would affect Nepal's role in UN Peacekeeping Operations, the envoy said it was her responsibility to provide the Department of Peacekeeping Operations with information regarding individuals implicated in human rights violations. This extended to the police, armed police as well as the Royal Nepalese Army.
Even as the statement came, there was fresh firing near the Supreme Court in Kathmandu valley Thursday when security forces fired on a peaceful anti-king demonstration by leading lawyers, injuring at least four.
In a brutal show of force, riot police attacked the protesting lawyers, hitting them indiscriminately and arresting over 100. A local media report described the unprovoked attack as an instance of the "zero tolerance policy" of the royalist government.
On Wednesday, following the same policy, police had broken up a peaceful sit-in at Lalitpur city by 57 leading international donor agencies, including the development wings of foreign governments.
They snatched the placards held by the protesters, who said they were apolitical and calling for peace to be able to conduct development work unhindered. Nine employees from different donor organisations were also frog-marched to the police station but freed soon after at the intervention of their colleagues.
Security forces ran berserk inside a private theatre where artistes and poets were holding a poetry-reading session, blindly lashing out at the spectators with their truncheons.
One person was killed as security forces fired on demonstrators Wednesday in Nawalparasi in southern Nepal, with the government unleashing a propaganda blitzkrieg that hid the death and, instead, blamed the crowds. (IANS)
