Kathmandu, March 4:

The metropolitan police today arrested ‘57 Diversity Visa (DV) victims’ who were staging a sit-in on the premises of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Rajendra Bastakoti, coordinator of the DV Victims’ Central Struggling Committee, said they wanted to hand over a memorandum to the ministry regarding denial of diversity visa to them by the American Embassy in Nepal.

“We were peacefully protesting on the ministry premises while police rounded up our friends saying we were not allowed to do so.”

The victims have been holding demonstrations against the American Embassy’s “irrational decision not to issue visas for them though they have received DV lottery” for the last 69 days.

The protesters were kept in the Metropolitan Police Circle, Maharajgunj, for five hours and were released at 5 pm.

The DV victims have been protesting outside the American Embassy since December 26, alleging that the embassy cheated them with the diversity visa scheme.

Bastakoti said that the protest would continue. “Since we could not hand over the memorandum today, we will go to the ministry tomorrow,” he said.

He said they would launch strong protest programmes if the government did not show any concern to meet the demands of the DV victims at the earliest.