Posted on 09/01/2004 7:48:14 AM PDT by Alouette
KATHMANDU (AFP) - Thousands of people rampaged through Kathmandu, setting fire to a mosque and Arab targets and ransacking employment agencies after 12 Nepalese hostages were murdered in Iraq.
Two men were shot and slightly wounded by security guards when they tried to storm the Egyptian embassy, which represents Iraqi interests in the Himalayan kingdom, police and a doctor said.
The streets returned to normal after the government clamped an indefinite curfew and declared a national day of mourning Thursday for the victims of the worst hostage massacre in Iraq since the US-led invasion.
Demonstrators, some chanting "Punish the Muslims!", swept through Kathmandu early Wednesday, throwing stones and ransacking any targets with Arabic-language script.
Protesters climbed on top of and set fire to the Jama Masjid mosque, the largest shrine of the city's small Muslim minority, after pulling out its furniture and electrical equipment for a sidewalk bonfire.
Riot police used batons to push the crowd of some 5,000 people out of a sensitive central area which includes King Gyanendra's Narayanhity Palace, a police officer said.
The mosque suffered only minor damage but many of its contents were destroyed.
The protests erupted late Tuesday after news that the 12, who left the impoverished nation in search of jobs, were murdered by militants who abducted them about 10 days ago.
The kidnappers accused them of cooperating with US forces.
A mob made up mainly of youths broke windows of more than a dozen employment agencies blamed for sending Nepalese to Iraq and set fire to their vehicles, furniture and computers, police said.
An employee at Qatar Airways, one of the main airlines used by Nepalese seeking jobs in the Middle East, said dozens of angry people stormed into their premises and smashed furniture before setting the building on fire.
The employee estimated damage in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Many protesters also demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, saying he should take responsibility for the failure to free the hostages.
The government had repeatedly stressed that Nepal, which is fighting a bloody Maoist rebellion, was not part of the US-led coalition in Iraq.
Deuba appealed for calm in an address to the nation Wednesday.
"The terrorists who committed this gruesome act don't have any religion or principles. I call upon all citizens of Nepal to have patience," he said.
"We made honest efforts to save them but the militants never spelt out their conditions," Deuba said. "We are now trying our best to bring back the bodies of the victims."
His government announced compensation of one million rupees (14,400 dollars) for the families of each of the 12 slain hostages, a major sum in the one of the world's poorest countries.
The Himalayan capital's skies were patrolled by army helicopters, which were last called out last week when Maoist rebels fighting to overthrow the monarchy ordered a halt to traffic to and from the city of 1.5 million people.
Hindus make up more than 86 percent of the population in Nepal, the world's only officially Hindu state. But the kingdom has experienced little of the inter-religious violence that has scarred neighbouring India.
Muslims account for 3.8 percent of the 27 million population. Some 7.8 percent adhere to Buddhism in Nepal, which is the birthplace of the Buddha, with smaller religions comprising 2.2 percent.
Spontaneous protest strikes were called in the towns of Pokhara, Gorkha and Biratnagar with youths taking to the streets to stop vehicles.
A statement announcing the killings was posted on an Islamist website by an Al-Qaeda-linked group called the Army of Ansar al-Sunna.
It was accompanied by pictures of the grisly beheading of a blindfolded hostage, including one where his bloodied head was held up like a trophy by a hooded captor. A video showed the other Nepalese being shot.
I am no great defender of Islam.. I personally believe ISLAM at its core is indeed EVIL.. it is a religion founded on lies, hatred and spread and based upon death and war.
Now, with that said, I DO NOT believe that all Muslims are evil people... no more than all Russian's were evil people or all people living in NAZI Germany were evil people.... THere is no debat though that Communism and Naziism are and were EVIL.
The issue as I see it with Islam is that they are like the Gangs in the inner city... the radicals are so extreme and vicious that no one of decency can stand up to them without risk not only being killed, but having their families killed as well.
The Gangs and the inner city neighborhoods are the best analogy I can think of. However even that analogy is not appropriate enough, because even in the ravage inner city gang infested neighborhoods the Police are still at least TRYING to bring the thugs down, even though the have terrorised the general population. In many Islamic parts of the world, the islamofacists run rampant like the inner city gangs, but there, they don't even have any police trying to keep order.... there is not even a TOKEN attempt at decency... so not only are the people living there living under tyranny and fear of these thugs, they don't even have a hope at all of seeing it change.
I agree that ISLAM needs to clean its house if it wishes to survive and not wind up being obliterated by force... however I don't honestly see any internal or even external system in most Islamic nations that are going to help that occur. This means, its going to be up to the west once again to clean up these messes... and hopefully once they are cleaned up these nations and peoples will recognize what brought them to this sorry state and never let it happen again....
That is exactly what they're trying to do.
I know, that is why I am saying it is NOT AWESOME that their actions are being responded to in this manner.
You are right, of course.
Its way past time that us "infidel's" start paying back the islamo-fascists murderers of innocent children in a coin that the animals will understand, if ya get my drift...
Yes they are. As are the larger numbers of Gurkas in the Indian Army.
This would have happened in the U.S. if Bush hadn't put a lid on it. CAIR seems to have no idea how close we are.
Reminds me of what the Spaniards did about a year ago to the Morrocans. Payback's a bitch.
The major difference being that the Germans and Japanese were living in the 20th century. Not the 7th or 8th. The Nazis were what they were in spite of Germans being Christians. In Japan the God-Emperor helped a lot withe the "pacification". If he had not, things could have been very ugly for a very long time.
Islam is already involved in a world-wide war against the rest of the world.
Terrorism, Sudan, Israel, Algeria, Kosovo, Bosnia, Chechnya, Lebanon, East Timor, etc., etc.
You're vastly overstating the case. Radical Islam is indeed trying to start a worldwide war, and part of their strategy is to pull the rest of the Islamic world into the fight.
Most Muslims, however, just want to be left alone, and they're not really interested in fighting a world war. For example, if you look at Iraq or Afghanistan, you find that the vast, vast majority of the population in those places is not involved in the fighting, nor apparently are they particularly interested in supporting the salamikazes who are fighting.
Part of our strategy has to be to separate the radical salamikazes from the rest of the pack, and to avoid driving normal people over to the side of evil. And, of course, the other part of the strategy has to be hunting down the evil ones and removing them from the planet.
Why not throw in Christ-killing while you're at it.
Other than their shared perverted Religion of Piss.
I wonder how much money the Nepali muslims have given to Al-Quida and OBL??
I wonder...did they react with joy over 9-11?
Does it warm their black hearts to see terror and death handed out to little Russian schoolchildren in the name of their god??
After all the innocent Russian children are only infidels, the moon-god condemns them all…
Riot Policemen block the road to prevent protestors from proceeding towards a burning mosque in Katmandu, Nepal, Wednesday, Sept.1, 2004. Thousands of demonstrators ransacked a mosque and clashed with police in the Nepalese capital to protest the killing of 12 Nepalese hostages by Iraqi militants. (AP Photo/Binod Joshi)
Riot Policemen, right, try to prevent protestors from entering into a burning mosque in Katmandu, Nepal, Wednesday, Sept.1, 2004. Thousands of demonstrators ransacked a mosque and clashed with police in the Nepalese capital to protest the killing of 12 Nepalese hostages by Iraqi militants. (AP Photo/Binod Joshi)
Police shield a Muslim man at a mosque in Katmandu, Nepal Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2004. Thousands of demonstrators ransacked a mosque and clashed with police in the Nepalese capital to protest the killing of 12 Nepalese hostages by Iraqi militants. (AP Photo/Binod Joshi)
Nepalese protesters shout slogans as they stand on the dome of a mosque during a demonstration in Kathmandu to protest against the killijng of 12 Nepalese hostages in Iraq. Around 4,000 people set Kathmandu's biggest mosque ablaze and smashed up private job recruitment agencies in response to the killing of 12 Nepalese jobseekers in Iraq, witnesses said(AFP/Devendra M. Singh)
Protesters attack a burning mosque in Katmandu, Nepal, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2004. Thousands of demonstrators ransacked a mosque and clashed with police in the Nepalese capital to protest the killing of 12 Nepalese hostages by Iraqi militants. (AP Photo/Binod Joshi)
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