Nepal Police Kill Scores of Pro-Democracy Protesters

Police shot to death scores of protesters Friday after the largest pro-democracy demonstration in the history of this remote Himalayan kingdom degenerated into street violence. Hundreds were injured, dozens of shops and offices were damaged, and the capital was littered with broken glass and burning tires.

At the height of the street battles, which erupted after demonstrators started marching toward King Birendra’s downtown palace, the Nepalese army was called out in force for the first time since the democracy demonstrations began more than seven weeks ago.

Hundreds of soldiers with machine guns continued to ring the palace throughout the night, although the streets of Katmandu were deserted.

Friday’s carnage, which left hospitals overflowing with injured, was the worst in recent memory in Nepal’s once-idyllic capital city. Analysts said the violence deepened the crisis facing the nation and its king, who has ruled over one of the world’s oldest monarchies with virtually unchallenged power for more than a decade.

The killings came after King Birendra, 44, issued a proclamation early Friday dissolving the government, pledging to embrace democratic reforms and appoint a commission on constitutional change, and promising to investigate earlier police shootings, which resulted from the hard-line Cabinet’s policy of using armed riot troops to break up demonstrations.

“I am for democracy,” the king declared in his radio appeal for support from his nation of 18 million.

Instead, virtually every sector of Nepalese society answered with a citywide strike Friday, and within hours of the king’s announcement, the streets of Katmandu filled with tens of thousands of protesters shouting slogans against Nepal’s rubber-stamp National Assembly and the king himself.

By afternoon, according to several independent witnesses, the crowd had swelled to more than 100,000, by far the largest protest in Katmandu’s history. Until late afternoon, though, the mood was peaceful and festive, although most witnesses agreed that there was a strong undercurrent of anger.

Protesters were seen embracing and shaking hands with police, who appeared as relaxed as those in the crowd. At one point, a mass of demonstrators moved from the outdoor arena that was the center of their protest to a nearby hospital where Ganesh Man Singh, leader of the Nepali Congress Party--which has spearheaded the pro-democracy drive along with an alliance of Communist parties--has been since his failing health forced authorities to release him from house arrest.

“They wanted to fetch Ganesh, but the doctors said he was not in good enough health to be moved,” a relative said of the 75-year-old leader.

Singh instead released an angry statement flatly rejecting the king’s attempt at reconciliation and sharply criticizing the new government that the king had formed earlier in the day.

Calling the royal proclamation “vague and hollow promises,” the party leader declared, “The people who have been braving the bullets . . . had definitely not expected to witness the flimsy drama of a Tweedledum being replaced by a Tweedledee.

“What they had aspired for and demanded was a multi-party scheme.”

Singh then warned of violence, adding that the king’s announcement “would only add fuel to the fury of the people” and that the blood would be on the government’s hands.

Two hours later, the bloodshed began. Masses began marching down Durbar Marg (Palace Road) toward Birendra’s sprawling complex. Just 400 yards from the palace gates, they used stones and sticks and their bare hands to attack a prominent statue of King Mahendra, Birendra’s father, who ended Nepal’s decade-long experiment with multi-party democracy when he staged a palace coup in 1960.

Police first tried to stop the demonstrators with tear gas, but they continued to surge toward the palace, and the shooting soon started.

Witnesses said they saw dozens of demonstrators falling with bullet wounds in their heads and chests. Police chased them through narrow lanes and alleys, firing at random.

“It was wanton killing,” said a Nepalese professional who is among the many professors, doctors, teachers, engineers, civil servants and even airline pilots who have joined the students and politicians in the weeks since the protest movement began.

No official death count was announced, but doctors, eyewitnesses and other independent sources said that as many as 90 were killed and that hundreds were injured.

Demonstrators clashed with police in three other towns, and at least nine people were reported killed outside the capital.

A British tourist, 26-year-old Richard John Williams, was shot to death in the cross-fire in Katmandu, and two other foreigners were wounded, doctors said.

A doctor at Bir Hospital, near the area where most of the violence occurred, said there were seven dead in the hospital morgue and that 98 others were admitted for gunshot wounds. However, he and other sources quoted witnesses as saying they saw police trucks loaded with bodies being taken for cremation at police morgues.

When the shooting started, the protesters “became a wild mob,” according to one witness. They smashed the windows of most of the shops and offices along Durbar Marg, a boulevard usually teeming with tourists, and began chanting insults at the king.

“Birendra, the thief, leave the country!” they shouted of a king who has long been a symbol of Nepal’s nationalism and who many Nepalese believe is an incarnation of Hinduism’s greatest god.

“The situation is now very bad,” said one Nepalese businessman who has supported the king and the government throughout the protest movement.

“This began as a movement for a multi-party system--not against the king. The politicians were insisting only on a constitutional monarchy. But now, there is chanting against the king himself.