Nepali police arrest Maoist protesters

By Deepak Adhikari

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AA) – Nepalese police on Sunday arrested more than 100 cadres of a Maoist faction for enforcing a nationwide strike as a protest against price rises.

The protesters called on schools, factories and public transport to close across the country, demanding the government control steep rises in the prices of daily essentials.

Some 142 cadres from the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), a splinter group, which broke away from the ruling Maoist party three years ago, were arrested early Sunday as they forced shops to close and blocked roads in the capital Kathmandu and across the country, Hemanta Malla, a police spokesman said.

The traffic on Kathmandu roads thinned Sunday, forcing commuters to walk for hours to reach their destinations.

General strikes, a preferred mode of protest for political parties in Nepal, has been denounced by large sections of Nepalese society but a spokesman for the protesting party defended it, saying people should bear through the difficulties in their fight against state apathy.

“The rising prices of consumer goods and services have affected common people the most. They cannot afford daily essentials such as rice and cooking gas. But the government imposed tax on these essentials rob off the factory workers, students, low-income households,” Khadka Bishwakarma, a former minister and a party spokesman, told Anadolu Agency.

“We urge the government to provide a 50 percent subsidy on daily commodities to these people. It must do this to ensure the food rights of the people. They will suffer in the short term, but they will not have to bear the price hike in the long run,” he said.

Maoists fought a 10-year insurgency against the state between 1996 and 2006. The war left 16,000 people dead before the former rebels signed a peace deal in 2006.

Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who led the insurgency, took over as prime minister in August but his administration, which completed its first 100 days last week, has drawn sharp criticism from opposition groups for failing to control corruption and inflation.