Police fire on anti-monarchy protesters in Nepal

" Protests demanding democracy be restored in Nepal have continued across the country for two straight weeks, with security forces firing on anti-monarchy demonstrators as a general strike emptied roads, closed schools and cut supplies of food and gas to the capital. Defiance of royal rule has spread quickly through Nepalese society. The growing sense of outrage has seen judges, doctors and even families of soldiers take to the streets. Police have beaten, tear gassed and arrested thousands of protesters. Security forces opened fire on thousands of pro-democracy protesters in southeastern Nepal on Apr. 19, killing at least two and wounding several others. Officials in Chandragadi, about 310 miles southeast of Kathmandu, claimed protesters fired first at security forces already being pelted by bricks and debris. The forces then fired back, they claim. Bhola Siwakoti, chief administrator in the region, said the protesters were vandalizing government buildings and private property and attacking security forces after marching in defiance of a government ban on demonstrations. The latest deaths bring the number of people killed by the security forces to nine since the latest wave of protests and a general strike against King Gyanendra's rule. Gyanendra, since seizing absolute power in February 2005, has faced the most serious challenge to the 237-year-old monarchy in the past few days. The strike has forced shops to close and vehicles to stay off the streets for 14 straight days, causing shortages of food and other necessities in Kathmandu. Earlier, the government imposed a day-long curfew and gave security forces orders to shoot violators on sight at Pokhara, about 125 miles west of Kathmandu, where thousands of pro-democracy protesters clashed with police a day earlier. Police arrested 250 college and university professors who defied the curfew order and took to Pokhara's streets. Krishna Adhikari, a professor who was among those arrested, said the academics were rallying peacefully when police suddenly stopped them, loaded them into police trucks and drove them to detention centers. On Apr. 17, 25 civil servants from the home ministry left their desks to chant anti-king slogans in a government courtyard, before police rounded them up and took them to a detention center. An angry mob of thousands has been rampaging on Kathmandu's edge–blocking roads with burning barricades and hurling bricks at police, who responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and baton charges. "We will hang Gyanendra over flames–the king will burn!" yelled Arjun Prasad, 22, as he stood near a flaming pile of tires. In Nijgadh, 75 miles south of Kathmandu, thousands of protesters were marching through the town when security forces opened fire with live ammunition, killing one person. Daily protests have hit nearly ever major city since the opposition campaign began on Apr. 6. Apr. 16 saw upward of 50,000 people march across Nepal, and in the following days tens of thousands returned to the streets, many chanting for the king to be ousted or simply killed–a rare sentiment in a land where monarchs have for generations been revered as Hindu god-kings. The next day, Supreme Court employees held a sit-down strike inside their premises to show solidarity with the protests. In southwestern Rupandehi district, nine others were critically injured by rubber bullets as they tried to transform a signboard reading "His Majesty's Government" into "Nepal Government." Ninety others there were injured by bullets, police beatings or overcome by tear gas. According to the Nepalese Human Rights Alliance, at least 3,000 protesters have been loaded into police trucks in Kathmandu since last weekend and taken to army camps and temporary detention centers where they are held without charge. Some of those released had been tortured, beaten or put before firing squads and threatened. Many people are missing. A spokesman for Amnesty International said that the situation in the kingdom was grave: "These arrests, combined with the heightened restrictions on civil and political rights over the past week, highlight the government's continuing disregard for human rights." At least 80 lawyers were taken for treatment to Kathmandu's Model Hospital after a police attack on 200 members of the Nepal Bar Association. One lawyer, Chandra Pokhrel, who was shot in the head with a rubber bullet, said he was targeted because he tried to stop the police from beating a man. "I asked three policemen to stop hitting an elderly man, a lawyer I knew from my old chambers, but they wouldn't stop, they were emotionless. I'm not sure where the old man is. As I walked away I was shot at from across the street. I hit the ground and my face was covered in blood, then I passed out." Though he has made mention of holding talks with opposition parties, and has received foreign diplomats airing concerns about the situation, Gyanendra has yet to formally respond to the protests.