Somini Sengupta from the New York Times writes about Nepal's young lashing furiously at the past. (IHT)
"We will not ask the king to leave the throne - we will go and take the throne and put it on display," Gagan Thapa, 29, the political symbol of young Nepal, told a crowd of thousands on the outskirts of the capital Thursday, New Year's Eve in Nepal. The vast majority, dressed in baseball caps and jeans and looking well below the age of 30, roared in approval.
"We will burn the crown," Thapa shouted.
The crowd hollered back: "Burn the crown! Burn the crown!"
Nearly 60 percent of Nepal's 23 million citizens are under 24. They came of age after democracy came to Nepal in 1990, and they have tasted the fruits and failures of electoral politics.
In February 2005, they saw their king suspend Parliament and install prime ministers of his own choosing in a bid, he said, to defeat the Maoist insurgency. For 14 months, they have lived under the king's direct rule. This past week, he banned protests in the capital and for six days imposed a daytime curfew.
That order has not stopped young people from pouring into the streets. They have suffered most of the police beatings: On just one day this past week, of the 59 people admitted to Katmandu's main teaching hospital for treatment of their injuries, only 13 were over the age of 30.
Read the article published in the International Herald Tribune.
Another article written by Kanak Mani Dixit in The Nation explores people power in Nepal.
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