King Gyanendra, the current ruler of Nepal, has recently faced a flurry of opposition from citizens seeking the end of Gyanendra’s governance in favor of democratic rule. Thousands of protesters, as well as each one of Nepal’s seven main political parties, have banded together in the past week to face off with police, burn government vehicles and demand a new constitution and parliament.
In the Nepalese rebellion, one tactic the king and his monarchist party use is setting a curfew. In France, a similar curfew was set in order to extract unruly youth from riot-filled streets late at night. As in France, however, the Nepalese have had no qualms breaking curfew, especially considering Gyanendra’s recent daytime curfew in the capital city. Why do governments assume that a group of people protesting against them will listen to the rules that government has set?
And, more importantly, does the government have the right to tell citizens when they can and cannot leave their house?
Curfew laws exist in the United States; usually regulations are directed toward teenagers. In Washington, D.C., for example, a 1995 law dictated that from 11 p.m. until 6 a.m., any citizen under 17 was prohibited from public places, including coffee shops, movie theaters, etc.. That law was overturned in 1998, when a District of Columbia court ruled that setting a city-wide curfew violated “the constitutional rights of children.”
Indeed, if children are to be considered members of the United States, there are myriad problems in assigning these citizens a curfew. The American Civil Liberties Union – an organization that assisted parents and children in the D.C. court case and in similar cases around the United States – points out that curfew law is a violation of the freedom of movement guaranteed within the U.S. constitution as well as the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The ACLU also argues that because most youth crime occurs from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., usually in the form of after-school drug deals, setting an evening curfew is asinine.
Residents of the United States are fortunate to have groups such as the ACLU constantly promoting liberty. In nations such as France and Nepal, curfew is the same violation of basic rights as in the United States, but citizens have little recourse to change the situation. The Nepalese king has even issued shoot-on-sight orders, meaning exactly what it sounds like: If you are seen after curfew, police officers have the go-ahead to shoot you.
In all likelihood the shooting-on-sight will consist of tear gas, although it does bear mentioning that two Nepalese citizens at a Saturday protest against the king were killed by police. Regardless of whether the weaponry is real bullets or rubber ones, it is nothing less than fascism to order the police into harming citizens peacefully walking their city streets – no matter what the time. Why the king has heeded his citizens’ call for Democracy with authoritarian rules is dumbfounding; did he expect that his nation would calm down if they were forced to stay at home from dawn till dusk?
Leaders are expected to create policies that work for the benefit of an entire group of people, and imprisoning certain sects of the population occurs when governments want to take the easy way out of a dilemma. Instead of adjusting himself or his regime, the king of Nepal would prefer to cloister his opponents so they can do no nighttime harm.
The sooner the king realizes that citizens for democracy are not going away, the sooner he can critically concentrate on what kind of political future will be best for his nation. Instead of using his time and energy to address curfew violators, the king could just hit the nail on the head and admit that seizing power in 2005 might have been a bad idea, and now is as good a time as ever to become the leader his citizens desire.
In the United States as well, leaders – especially those at the state and city level, where most curfew laws are created – ought to keep in mind that putting potential lawbreakers under the virtual lock and key of curfew is like announcing “we the government are not skilled enough to prevent youth crime, and because you are children, we will simply lock you in your room.” I am certainly no
Libertarian, but I do believe that the government’s job of enforcing safety must at all times be mitigated by an understanding of civil liberties, and freedom of movement is absolutely one of those liberties. Punishment should not be doled out to the innocent, and it is bad form when the United States resembles authoritarian rule.
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