All parties in Nepal must stop violence for polls: UN
KATHMANDU (AFP) — All political groups in Nepal, including the country's ex-rebel Maoists, must stop using violence and intimidation in the run up to crucial polls planned for April, the United Nations said Saturday.
In the past two weeks in the restive southern Terai region, "there has been an upsurge of killings, violence, intimidation against candidates and voters," the UN said in its first report on election preparations.
The country's former rebel Maoists, particularly their feared youth wing the Young Communist League, have been preventing campaigning in areas traditionally under their control, which the UN said was creating a climate of fear.
Maoist cadres have attacked political opponents and the UN said it had evidence that in at least one instance the violence was pre-planned.
"The pattern of these incidents has raised serious questions about whether the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), or significant parts of it, are willing to engage in a genuinely free and fair democratic process," the UN said.
Mainstream parties did not escape censure either, and the world body said they needed to make sure that their own youth organisations did not send large numbers of supporters to polling booths to intimidate voters on election day.
"Widespread concern about 'booth-capturing' and fear of violence on election day -- and after, if results are disputed -- have been expressed by police, party activists and members of the local population," the UN said.
Nepal is set to go to the polls for the first time in nine years on April 10 in elections that will determine the impoverished Himalayan country's political future.
The UN was invited to assist in the peace deal reached between the communists and the government in late 2006, and are monitoring thousands of former Maoist guerillas confined to camps, as well as assisting in the elections.
The polls -- a key part of the peace deal that ended a decade-long bloody war -- will elect a body to rewrite Nepal's constitution and most likely end the 239-year-old monarchy.
