evolution

King Gyanendra of Nepal has dissolved his country’s democratically-elected government and appointed his own ministers in a misguided effort to combat Maoist guerillas.

This king was the brother of the previous Nepali king (Nepal has a constitutional monarchy), who was murdered in 2001. King Gyanendra was opposed from the start to the democratic reforms his brother began, and his actions bear that out.

Surely the answer to a group of guerillas who want to establish a leftist totalitarian state cannot be to roll back democratic institutions and restrict freedom. This is a huge mistake. America, India, and any other benefactors of this Nepali government should withhold any contributions to it until the institutions of democracy are restored. Fortunately, as the AP reports, we seem to be prepared to do just that.

This story has not gotten enough play on the weblogs or in the media. The Washington Post has noticed, however, in this op-ed piece that ran on Monday which denounced the moves by the Nepali king.

There is a weblog called Radio Free Nepal, set up by a group of Nepali citizens who post anonymously under the same pseudonym “Kathmandu”, the name of the Nepali capital. It is starting to generate some heat (and light), which is good. To see how high the stakes are for Nepal, look no further than RFN’s tagline:

King Gyandendra of Nepal has issued a ban on independent news broadcasts and has threatened to punish newspapers for reports that run counter to the official monarchist line. Given that any person in Nepal publishing reports critical of “the spirit of the royal proclamation” is subject to punishment and/or imprisonment, contributors to this blog will publish their reports from Nepal anonymously.

Authors of Radio Free Nepal, I hope that you prevail.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 17th, 2005 at 20:40 and is filed under freedom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.