CINA

In the medieval Durbar Square in Kathmandu, a young man approached to apologise for what was about to erupt. 'It's the situation, you see,' he said. 'Politics here very bad.' Seconds later, bricks crashed around us, beginning days of violent protest by demonstrators bitterly opposed to the autocratic rule of King Gyanendra, who seized power on 1 February last year with army backing.

Police spent the next two hours fighting with activists and firing tear gas across temple roofs. Troops stood behind police lines, one or two raising their M16 rifles as the protest intensified. More than 200 people were arrested, among them a Polish tourist caught with protesters escaping down the city's ancient narrow alleyways.

Demonstrations against the king continued this weekend throughout Nepal, ahead of the municipal elections called for 8 February. These have been boycotted by all mainstream parties, which see them as a propaganda stunt and are demanding that the king return power to parliament first. Attacks by Maoist rebels last week, including the assassination of Bijaylal Das, a candidate in Dhanusha district, have further undermined the elections. Only one in three wards has attracted even one candidate.

Yesterday the government gathered candidates into 'safe houses' for their own protection. 'This is a precautionary measure keeping in view the security threats to candidates from the Maoists,' a government official said from Sarlahi district, a rebel stronghold in the east.

Candidates were taken to heavily guarded public buildings near army or police posts after filing their nominations. 'We have provided separate security guards to those who are unwilling to stay in groups,' another official said.

King Gyanendra now has two enemies - the Maoist insurgency, which marks its tenth anniversary on 13 February, and the political parties that have rediscovered their confidence after his coup. Analysts agree the chaos could see the king stripped of his power and even his throne. 'Last year there were many who welcomed the king's move,' said Rajendra Dahal, editor of the newspaper Himal khabarpatrik. 'But now the same people are opposing the king's government. It's a complete turnaround.'

The king's deepening unpopularity is a consequence, Dahal says, of his autocratic style, the country's woeful economic performance and his failure to make any progress in resolving the civil war with the Maoists. The rebels now control much of Nepal beyond the Kathmandu valley and urban centres. Almost 13,000 people have been killed, two-thirds of them by the security forces. Dozens have died in the past week.

The Royal Nepalese Army's influence has mushroomed, with the security forces drawing more government revenues and intimidating opponents. 'Nepalis don't know the reality of the king's relationship with the army,' says Dahal. 'Maybe the king is under the control of the army now.' Nepal's army and police both contribute personnel to UN peacekeeping missions. Both have routinely used illegal detention and murder throughout the 10-year conflict with the Maoists. According to the Nepalese human rights organisation Huron, 599 people have 'disappeared' at the hands of the state, and the whereabouts of only 130 have later been made public.

Bhaikaji Ghimere is one of the lucky ones. He was released from detention a few weeks ago after being held for 22 months without charge. At the time of his detention in 2003, Ghimere was working as a journalist for the left-of-centre fortnightly Samadhisti. That spring, during a ceasefire in the civil war, Ghimere got to know a Maoist activist called Bhim Giri. With Maoist leaders above ground for peace talks in Kathmandu, many Nepalese journalists rushed to improve their knowledge of the rebels. Ghimere's links would cost him dearly.

Soon after the ceasefire collapsed in August 2003, Ghimere says Giri called him to ask for a lift on Ghimere's motorbike. He says he did not want to, but felt under threat from Giri, who was now back in hiding. Just south of the tourist district of Thamel, Ghimere says, two men walked out in front of his motorcycle and blocked his path. Ghimere shouted at them to move. Another dozen men bundled him into a vehicle.

The men, Ghimere later learnt, were soldiers in plain clothes. They handcuffed and blindfolded him and took him into custody. The men were part of the Bhairavnath Battalion, then commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Raju Basnet. Scores of suspects, all arrested and detained without trial, were held at its headquarters in north Kathmandu. A few days before Ghimere's arrest, Basnet's brother, also a colonel in the army, had been shot dead by Maoists outside his home. Ghimere realised that the army believed Bhim Giri was responsible. For two days he was kept blindfolded and handcuffed while the security forces searched his paper's offices. On the third day, the beatings started.

Ghimere was brought before Basnet and told to strip. Ordered to admit that he was a Maoist, Ghimere was hit repeatedly with a lathi, or stick, and a plastic hosepipe. When he denied he was a rebel, Ghimere was rammed headfirst into an oil drum until he almost drowned. 'I kept telling them I was a journalist, not a Maoist. Finally, they asked me for my contacts. I couldn't take any more, but before I could gather my senses to tell them, I passed out.'

This month two Maoist prisoners also held with Ghimere began a hunger strike, appealing to the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, for an investigation into the alleged deaths. Ghimere says none of the prisoners was given enough to eat, and they were forced to sleep with their hands bound behind their backs. 'Even now,' he says, 'I find myself sleeping with my hands in that position.'

His survival rests on a piece of paper smuggled out of jail by a sympathetic guard with his name and those of his fellow detainees on it and handed to the International Commission for the Red Cross. With pressure growing for his release, early last year Ghimere was continuously moved, enduring a mock execution and having incriminating evidence planted on him to provide 'evidence' of his guilt to the courts. He was released on 25 August last year.

The courts have been unable to bring most human rights cases to trial. Basnet was rewarded for his service with a tour of duty in Burundi as part of the UN's peacekeeping mission. How the army reacts in the next few weeks will be, Rajendra Dahal believes, critical to the nation's future. He detects a growing revulsion among junior officers for the army's oppressive style. 'If the king orders the army to open fire on mass crowds, then maybe they'll do it for the first hour. But after that they will refuse to shoot their own people. Absolute rule here is doomed within months.'

The king can still return to a constitutional monarchy, Dahal says. 'But if he refuses to back down, then he is finished.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1697365,00.html