contd.... On Wednesday, many of the foreign missions based in Kathmandu issued statements. They had been taken by surprise by the royal-military coup, and the United Nations, Unites States, United Kingdom, the Council of the European Union and India all expressed varying degrees of strongly-worded concern. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that he would not attend the SAARC summit scheduled for the coming week in Bangladesh as a vote of protest against 'political turmoil' in the region. Only China was reported to have accepted the King's power grab without critique, stating that it would not pass judgement on Nepal's internal affairs. Prachanda, Chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), issued a passionate statement dated February 1 condemning the King's action and calling upon 'pro-people forces' in the country to join with the Maoists to topple the monarchy and build a republic. The Maoists reiterated their call for a three-day national strike, which had predated the royal proclamation. Judging by the traffic on the streets on Thursday morning, the Maoist call was not heeded, which many saw as an indication of King Gyanendra's influence over the populace and iron grip over the nation's capital. Outside of Kathmandu, the Maoist strike was apparently observed. Reports started to trickle in from the rest of the country, thanks to limited road travel in private vehicles and a brief reprieve in the communications blackout (landlines were turned on for one to two hours each evening, but internet servers, cellular phones and international lines remain blocked). Specific events reported by reliable sources include a student demonstration at Prithvi Narayan Campus in Pokhara which was fired on by a military helicopter gunship leaving several protestors badly injured if not dead; the blocking of all FM radio broadcasts outside of Kathmandu and the instruction to those broadcasting in Kathmandu to play only entertainment-oriented programmes; the BBC FM station recently established in Kathmandu being forbidden from broadcasting the news in Nepali; the closure of news stands outside of the Valley; and a 72-hour blockade on long-distance public bus travel in and out of Kathmandu. As of writing on Friday morning, the communications network remains down. Journalists and human rights activists are concerned that they will be the next targets for arrest now that most political leaders have been muted. It remains to be seen how wide the web of detentions will be, but there is a sense of powerlessness and foreboding for the future among those who have previously expressed criticism of the state in any way.