Nepal should respect the human rights of lawyers, Law Society President Peter Williamson urged last week after 500 demonstrating lawyers were detained in the Himalayan kingdom.

The demonstration - organised by the Nepal Bar Association (NBA) to protest at a ban on demonstrations and to call for respect for the rule of law and human rights - took place in Kathmandu on 21 April.

Satish Kharel, a lawyer with the Kathmandu-based Saman Legal Service, said: 'When we started marching, the police told us to stop.

Then, about one kilometre on, they said that they would shoot plastic bullets at us if we crossed a line.

They then herded us onto trucks and told us we were arrested.'

The lawyers - who included a number of NBA officials and its current president, Shambu Thapa - were detained at police stations for five hours before being released.

Mr Kharel - a former secretary of the NBA - said: 'Three months ago, the NBA decided to speak out about the large number of people who were being detained without trial.

At least 22 lawyers were detained illegally in the preceding nine months.

When cases were brought to court the government refused to acknowledge they were being held at all.'

He said after the NBA originally discussed demonstrating, the government released all but three of the detainees, who remain 'disappeared'.

In a letter to Colonel Nilendra Prasad Aryal - the head of the Nepalese army's human rights section - Mr Williamson urged the authorities 'to guarantee that lawyers are free to carry out their professional functions and exercise their rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association without harassment or intimidation'.

Jeremy Fleming