While a big anti-Syria rally in Lebanon made the front page of the NY Times Feb. 15, a nationwide coordinated campaign of protests for restoration of democratic rule in Nepal—harshly put down with hundreds of arrests [2]—rated only a small blurb in the "World Briefing" section at the bottom of page 6. Nepal has almost completely dropped from the news since the seizure of dictatorial emergency powers by the king Feb. 1, but repression is escalating. Student protest leaders are wanted for arrest and have gone into hiding [3]; newspaper editors who report on the protests are themselves hauled before the police and held "for questioning [4]"; the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders [5] has called for a thorough investigation in the recent shooting of an editor in east Nepal, and for the immediate release of detained journalists.
See our last blog post [6] on this forgotten nightmare.
