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28 April, 2006
Leading into May Day, International Workers’ Day, news from Nepal is that King Gyanendra has met his fate, as defying protestors stood their ground on the streets during curfews and martial law.
During what is now known as Popular Movement II, a general strike in Nepal, which lasted for 23 days, forced the despotic king late on 24 April to restore the country’s Parliament, a first and necessary step toward a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution. “
With the sacrifice of nearly 20 people’s lives, some 5,000 who were seriously injured, and the arrests of 2,000, continuous struggle has meant we have achieved something,” wrote Binda Pandey, ICEM Vice President and a leader inside Nepal’s labour federation, GEFONT. “Let us celebrate this together as an initial victory, but there still is a long way to go to sustainable peace, prosperity and a dignified Nepal.”
April’s general strike brought hundreds of thousands of Nepalese citizens to spontaneous demonstrations across the Kathmandu Valley. Wives, children and relatives of police and army personnel stepped to the front of barricades as a way of getting security forces to defy clear orders to beat and shoot demonstrators at will, highlighting the fact that it was a unified public action that crossed all castes, classes and ethnic origins.
On 22 April, some 300,000 marched to the centre of Kathmandu, to within 500 meters of Gyanendra’s palace where they were met by soldiers with heavy weaponry. ICEM’s four affiliated trade unions all played crucial roles in the organised movement. (The general secretary of the Nepal Independent Chemical and Iron Workers’ Union was badly beaten and hospitalised with a broken knee.) Scores of leaders and activists from the unions were either injured or arrested.
The ICEM issues an alert that resources and organisational support from the global trade union movement will be needed once Nepal reaches a full people’s democracy in order that unions and trade union rights can flourish in the Himalayan country.