Nepal police arrests Tibetan demonstrators outside UN building =

   Kathmandu (dpa) – Nepal police on Friday detained 13 Tibetan exiles who were protesting outside the United Nations building in Kathmandu.

   In an appeal, the protesters asked the UN to send a fact-finding mission to Tibet.

   "With this rightful street protest we urge the UN to pressurize the Chinese authorities to stop killing peaceful protesters in Tibet," the exiles said.

   About 20,000 Tibetan refugees live in Nepal, according to government statistics, but thousands more are believed to be living in the country as undocumented migrants.

   Nepal officially follows the one-China policy and has come under increasing pressure from Beijing to clamp down on anti-China or pro-Tibet activities.
dpa pt npr

Nepal hailed as regional example for women‘s rights

Kathmandu (dpa) - Nepal‘s legislation on domestic violence and gender equality in employment are a positive example for South Asia, a United Nations report said.

The report titled Progress of the World‘s Women: In Pursuit of Justice, listed Nepal and Bhutan as the only countries in the five-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation to explicitly criminalize marital rape.

Nepal was also one of three countries that list domestic violence as a category of crime, it said.

"Fundamental to women‘s access to justice is a legal and constitutional framework that guarantees women‘s rights," said the report, released Thursday in New Delhi. "As the example of Nepal shows, laws have the power to shape society by creating new norms and by bringing about social change."

The report also commended Nepal‘s legal provision that guarantees women 33 per cent representation in the public sector.

It compared this ratio with India‘s national Parliament, which is 11 per cent female.

The countries in the South Asia association are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
dpa
Author: Biswas Baral

Nepal court summons police charged in UN embezzlement scam

Kathmandu - Thirty four high-ranking police officers were Wednesday ordered to appear before a special court in Nepal to face charges in a multimillion-dollar embezzlement scam.

Nepal's corruption watchdog, the Commission for the Investigation of the Abuse of Authority (CIAA), has accused the policemen of misappropriating 300 million rupees (4.2 million dollars) during the procurement process for military equipment for Nepalese police deployed in Sudan under the United Nations peacekeeping mission.

The CIAA filed charges Wednesday against the police officers, in one of Nepal's largest corruption cases. The accused were ordered to appear in court within 15 days.

Also implicated in the scandal are former home minister Krishna Prasad Sitaula, former inspector general of police Om Bikram Rana and former home secretary Umesh Mainali.

Last year, Nepalese troops in Darfur were threatened with a shut-down of their mission because of a lack of military hardware following the procurement scandal.

The UN-African Union mission in Darfur planned to repatriate the Nepalese peacekeepers if the government failed to provide the required armed personnel carriers (APCs) and other logistics.

About 150 Nepalese police officers are posted in Darfur.