Home Minister Kamal Thapa (File Photo)
Home Minister Kamal Thapa (File Photo)
Following the rise in Maoist attacks in the different police posts of the Kathmandu valley, the Home Ministry has urged citizens of Kathmandu Valley not to leave their homes after midnight till 4.00 in the morning.
As the ministry has deployed security personnel on the city streets for strict checking and search, it could affect the civilians, the ministry said in a notice on Sunday evening.
“People are prohibited from coming out of their homes in the night and walking in public places unless it is very important,” the notice said. But it is not clarified what constitutes ‘very important’.
The Himalayan Times daily quoted spokesperson to Home Ministry, Gopendra Pandey, as saying that the ban was announced to assist the security process, adding that it is not a curfew. He added that the order will remain active “till the security situation improves”.
The ministry had called people to go to public places only with their identity cards previously. The home ministry also said that all the policemen missing after the attack have come in contact.
Maoists on Saturday evening raided a security check post in Thankot killing 11 policeman and also attaked Dadhikot Area Police Office, Bhaktapur.
Minister of Home Affairs, Kamal Thapa, Additional Inspector General (AIG), Dr Govinda Prasad Thapa, Rajendra Bahadur Singh and Valley Deputy Inspector General, Krishna Bahadur Basnet inspected the spot on Sunay.
An armed group of Sasastra Seema Bal (SSB), Indian paramilitary force, deployed along the Nepal-India border, arrested four Nepalis and took them to India from Dhodhari VDC recently, reports said.
According to reports, Tikaram Tharu, chairman of a local Samjhana Forest Users’ Group, former secretary of the group Dhrubadev Puri, Lautan Tharu, Kamal Tharu and Krishna Tharu, were taken to India while they were collecting timber in their forest area.
According to sources, the four were sent to district prison in Baharaich in India on charges of smuggling timber from the Indian forest. When contacted, Chief District Officer, Bimal Prasad Dhakal, however, denied having information about the case.
India has been deploying SSB along Nepal India open border to check infiltration of terrorists in border areas.
300 Nepalis, who were heading to Iraq for foreign employment are stranded in Amman, the capital of Jordan, reports said.
According to Nepalqatar.com, they were forced to stay as detainees in a hotel in Amman after brokers and some manpower agencies sent them there via India with the assurance of giving jobs in Iraq.
The report quoted Mohammed Ali Miya and Rasid Miya of Syanjha as saying that the owner of the hotel seized their passports and locked them in a room of the hotel.
They are stranded there since one to three months. They had paid 150 thousand to 300 hundred thousand rupees to brokers for foreign employment.
They were not getting assistance from any authorities, as there was no Royal Nepalese Embassy in Amman and less than 50 Nepalese are working there.
The Nepalese, who were duped by the brokers, have appealed the government for their release.
The Election Commission (EC) has denied reports that it is playing a partisan role with respect to the on-going controversy within the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP).
Talking to Nepalnews on Monday, spokesperson at the Commission Tej Muni Bajracharya said the Commission wrote the letter to both the factions on Friday afternoon asking them to furnish proof regarding their ownership of the party’s election symbol. “Maybe our staff delivered the letter only on Saturday,” he said.
He denied allegations that the government or any other party had directed or tried to influence the Commission in connection with the on-going row within the RPP. The EC’s letter to the RPP led by Home Minister Kamal Thapa had been delivered the same day, at 5:30 p.m. on Friday.
Spokesperson of the RPP led by Pashupati Shumsher Rana, Parshuram Khapung, alleged on Sunday that EC was being influenced by the government. He claimed that EC officials issued a letter to his party on Saturday, a public holiday.
Bajracharya said that only administrative section of the EC remains closed during the holidays while works for municipal polls are in full swing even during the holidays.
The dissident group of RPP led by Home Minister Thapa has made claims on the party’s election symbol. According to Sushil Shrestha, one of the leaders of the dissident group, they have made claims at the EC with signatures of 913 party delegates out of RPP’s total general convention members of 1281.
The RPP establishment led by Rana has dismissed the ‘special general convention’ called by the dissident group early this month as “unconstitutional” and signatures as “bogus.”
Accompanied by one dozen central committee members of the RPP, Rana submitted documents showing authenticity of his election to the party at the EC on Monday.
In response to a writ petition filed by the RPP led by Rana, the Appellate Court of Lalitpur has summoned the EC to present the facts before the court on Wednesday.
Indian ambassador to Nepal Shiv Shankar Mukherjee
Indian ambassador to Nepal Shiv Shankar Mukherjee
(File photo)
Indian ambassador to Nepal Shiv Shankar Mukherjee left for New Delhi on Monday to brief the Indian government on the latest political situation in Nepal.
In Delhi, Mukherjee is set to hold discussions with foreign secretary Shyam Saran and other senior officials of the External Affairs Ministry.
“This is a regular visit. He will be meeting with the government people in Delhi,” Gopal Bagley, spokesperson of the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu told Nepalnews.
Indian media reports, meanwhile, said the Indian envoy may also call on Defence Minister Pranab Mujherjee and Home Minister Shiv Raj Patil.
Mukherjee’s visit to New Delhi comes in the aftermath of the collapse of the unilateral Maoist ceasefire, resulting in increased violence. He had held discussions with senior opposition political leaders including CPN (UML) general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal and Rastriya Janashakti Party chairman Surya Bahadur Thapa recently.
Saying that a devastating earthquake might hit Nepal anytime, experts have called for greater awareness on earthquake to minimize the risk .
Speaking at a programme organised to mark the National Earthquake Security Day on Sunday, they warned that a major earthquake similar to that of 1934 could hit the country in every 80 years, but there have not been adequate preparations to cope with such challenges.
A major earthquake measuring 8.4 on the Richter scale had shaken the country on 15th January 1934, leaving over 5,000 people dead, some 25,000 injured and around 60,000 houses destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of other houses were partially damaged.
According to experts, such an earthquake might take lives of around 40,000 people in the Kathmandu Valley alone.
Talking to Nepalnews on Monday, Amod Mani Dixit, executive director of the National Society for Earthquake Technology-Nepal (NSET), said that Nepal lies in eleventh position in terms of risk of casualty due to the earthquake.
He said that indifference of people towards the implementation of safety measures while constructing physical infrastructures is the main cause of growing risk.
He, however, said that enforcement of building codes, increase in the number of rescuer workers and formulation of proper strategy at the government level for minimizing the risk of earthquake are some positive signs.
“At present we are in very dark position from the earthquake safety point of view but we are moving towards the right direction to cope the challenge of such natural calamity,” he added.
A survey conducted by the NSET some seven years ago has suggested that in case of a quake measuring 6.5 or over on the Richter scale in the country, Kathmandu Valley would suffer the most.
According to the survey conducted by NSET, more than half the bridges would be heavily damaged and six in 10 buildings would cave in. The situation could turn worse if the entire water, sewerage, telephone and electric power systems come to a halt.
As many as 1,000 earthquakes, ranging from 2 to 5-magnitude on the Richter scale are recorded in Nepal each year.
The National Earthquake Security Day is organized on 15th January coinciding with the anniversary of the deadly quake that rocked the country on 15th January 1934.
Maoists detonated a powerful bomb at the office of Lekhnath Municipality in Kaski, on Sunday night.
According to Ram Mani Adhikari, legal officer of the municipality, the Maoists detonated the bomb at the main entrance of the municipality.
“All the windowpanes and doors of the ground floor of the two-storied building have been destroyed in the incident,” he informed.
He further said that according to preliminary report, property worth one million rupees has been destroyed in the incident.
The municipality is continuing its service to the people even after the blast, according to him.
The municipality office was shifted to the new building only a month ago.
Maoists have been targeting government offices and municipalities following the withdrawal of unilateral ceasefire on January 2.
A passport issued to a Tibetan official before Chinese forces occupied the remote region over half a century ago has been found in Nepal, reports said.
Tenzin Tsundue, general secretary of the Friends of Tibet group, said in a statement that the Tibetan government had issued the passport in 1947, according to AFP.
The passport – a sizable sheet of traditional Tibetan paper – was given to then Tibetan Finance Secretary Tsepong Wangchuk Dedhen Shakabpa, who was leading a trade delegation to China, the United States and the United Kingdom, it said.
Shakabpa had given the passport to an Indian friend in 1992 and ended up with an antiques dealer in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, Tsundue said.
It was not known how it found its way into the antique dealer’s hands. It was bought back for US$10,000, using money that was borrowed from a Tibetan monastery in 2004.
Tsundue said some 850 Tibetans — living in exile in India and Nepal — provided donations to repay the monastery. After the target was met, we decided to inform the people of the recovery of the passport, he explained.
The group plans to include the passport in an exhibition “Story of a Nation: Independent, Occupied and Exiled Tibet,” which will be held in India this year aimed at proving Tibet’s former independent status, according to Tsundue.
Articles to be put on display include “postage stamps of independent Tibet, Tibetan currency — notes and silver coins and old photographs of the Tibetan army,” taken in the 1920s, the report quoted Tsundue as saying.
Two days after the Maoist rebels attacked two police posts in Kathmandu and Bhaktapur districts kiiling one dozen policemen, local administrations of Kathmandu and Lalitpur districts have imposed curfew orders from 11:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. with effect from Monday.
Issuing separate public notices, the District Administration Offices (DAO) of Kathmandu and Lalitpur said the curfew orders have been imposed in order to maintain security.
The curfew orders will be effective in areas within the Ring Road in Kathmandu Metropolitan City and Lalitpur Sub-metropolitan City until further notice.
The DAOs in their notices said security forces have been allowed to shoot anybody trying to break the curfew orders.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Monday said it was looking into the demands of a group of some 20 refugees and asylum-seekers of various nationalities, who have been staging demonstration outside its Kathmandu office premises since 10 January, for resettlement to third countries.
The refugees and asylum-seekers, according to the UNHCR, are individual cases of various nationalities assisted under the refugee body’s ‘urban refugee programme’.
On 12 January, the UNHCR officials met a few representatives of the group to listen to their grievances as well as to identify their immediate concerns, a press release issued by the UNCHR said.
“They expressed their concern that resettlement to third countries is proceeding too slowly and complained that they have not been provided clear or accurate information about their cases in the past,” the statement said quoting UNHCR’s Protection Officer, Sardhanand Panchoe.
Sardhanand added, “They demanded written assurances that their cases will be submitted for resettlement. They also urged that deadlines to be set regarding resettlement of their cases.”
As local integration is not available in Nepal, and repatriation to their countries of origin is not yet feasible due to the conditions in those countries, the UNHCR is seeking their resettlement in third countries, the statement further said.
“Resettlement is a lengthy process, in which UNHCR plays a supporting role by submitting applications to resettlement countries. The decision to accept a case for resettlement rests with the resettlement country, rather than with UNHCR,” clarified Kimberly Roberson, Senior Durable Solutions Officer, adding, “The process may take many months, and in some cases may not be possible.”
The UN refugee body assists urban refugees to find durable solutions to their problems. Potential solutions include voluntary repatriation to the country of origin, local integration in the country of asylum, or resettlement to third countries.
The UNHCR stated that members of the group are at various stages of the resettlement process and that they have been provided information concerning the refugee body’s activities on their behalf.
“The refugee agency has assured the group that the organisation is working diligently on their behalf and asked them to bear in mind limited staffing and other practical considerations. Due to UNHCR’s resettlement policies and the exigencies of humanitarian work, it is not possible to provide written deadlines or guarantees for resettlement of individual cases,” the stated read.
The refugee agency carries out refugee status determination (RSD) under its Mandate for these urban asylum-seekers. If recognised as Mandate refugees, it endeavours to identify durable solutions for them and provides medical and financial assistance during their temporary stay in Nepal.