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RIGHTS-NEPAL: Security Forces’ Excesses Still a Concern

Marty Logan

KATHMANDU, Sep 21 2006 (IPS) - As talk of the need for a second people’s uprising swirls in the air, the United Nations human rights office here has released a report on excessive force used by security forces during April’s uprising, warning that without reforms such acts could be repeated.

Mohammed Jahangir Khan and Chandra Bayalkoti were among 10,000-30,000 people near the national stadium in central Kathmandu on Apr. 22 protesting against the year-long direct rule of King Gyanendra. Monitors from the Nepal Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) “saw the police firing teargas and rubber bullets at the crowd and pursuing the fleeing demonstrators with lathis (metre-long bamboo staves),” says the report.

“Some police were seen beating demonstrators who were escaping into side alleys,” it adds. Khan sustained head injuries and died in hospital 10 days later. Bayalkoti, who was hit in the chest by a teargas canister, died on May 5, according to ‘The April Protests: Democratic Rights and the Excessive Use of Force’.

The two men were among 25 people killed during three weeks of protests that grew to daily demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of Nepalis in cities and towns countrywide – men, women and children. They ended Apr. 24 on the eve of an expected bloody showdown between the crowds and soldiers at the royal palace gate, when Gyanendra promised to revive the lower house of parliament.

“While recognising the difficulties confronting security forces at times, there can be no doubt that all three branches of the security forces were responsible for serious human rights violations in the context of policing demonstrations,” says the report.. “It often appeared that the violence by the security forces was intended to deter and punish, rather than to disperse the crowds.”

The 79-page document is based on the observations of OHCHR monitors – who witnessed 140 demonstrations – and interviews with government officials, journalists, protesters, NGOs, families of those killed and members of the three security forces – the army, Nepal police and armed police force.

“One of the most important steps will be to ensure that members of the security forces found to be responsible for using or ordering excessive force are held accountable,” said David Johnson, officer-in-charge at OHCHR Nepal. His office’s report was released at the same time that a powerful commission is probing who gave the orders that security forces followed to combat protesters.

Local human rights activists say that one of those who ordered the heavy-handed reaction is former deputy army chief Rukmangad Katwal. They protested strongly earlier this month when the government appointed him to replace the retiring chief of army staff.

The move has increased speculation about the new government’s fears of directly challenging the army, which has close, deep ties to the royal family. Immediately after taking office, Prime Minister Girija Koirala replaced the heads of the other two security forces but left Katwal’s predecessor in place.

The OHCHR and other international organisations have also criticised parliament’s draft Army bill for falling short of recognised standards. Among its faults, the bill does not give civilian courts jurisdiction over serious rights violations – including enforced disappearances – by the army, nor does it sufficiently require the army to cooperate with civilian authorities investigating soldiers alleged to have committed serious human rights violations, says OHCHR.

These critiques join a growing chorus of voices attacking the government for failing to deliver on the promise of April’s people’s movement. “The interim constitution has not addressed indigenous people’s problems,” Him Nachhising, general secretary of the Indigenous Students Society, told IPS at a peaceful protest of several hundred people Wednesday outside parliament.

The interim constitution is supposed to be the next step towards dissolving parliament, forming an interim government and then holding elections to a constituent assembly that will represent all walks of life in this impoverished but culturally rich nation squeezed between India and China.

More people might have attended the rally but “some are a bit wary about civil society because some of them are making extreme statements; they seem to be favouring the Maoists”, human rights activist Kapil Shrestha told IPS.

After years of leading their uprising from underground, Maoist leaders are no longer considered terrorists by the state and are openly politicking. If the government does not move quickly to form an interim government, an October revolution is possible, they have warned.

Johnson said his office will release a report on the Maoists’ recent activities shortly. Meanwhile, “the fact that OHCHR-Nepal has recently documented a number of instances in Kathmandu where protesters have been beaten and injured on the head and back by police indicates that corrective measures still need to be taken”, the report says.

Those steps include: – review the Public Security Act, used to hold protesters and activists in preventive detention without charge or trial, – train security forces in non-lethal methods of crowd control using lathis, rubber bullets and tear gas, – make the “arbitrary and abusive use of force” a criminal offence.

Concludes the report, “To this day, members of the security forces, including officials, do not recognise that there was excessive use of force during the April demonstrations”.