NEPAL: Peace Delayed, Dying Continues

By Marty Logan Reprint | | Print |

Marty Logan

KATHMANDU, Nov 17 2006 (IPS) - Government and rebel leaders failed to sign an agreement Thursday to formally end a 10-year insurgency that killed up to 14,000 Nepalis, scarred the lives of tens of thousands more, and continues to claim victims.

Government and rebel leaders failed to sign an agreement Thursday to formally end a 10-year insurgency that killed up to 14,000 Nepalis, scarred the lives of tens of thousands more, and continues to claim victims.

On Nov. 9, Rupan Kandangwa, 9, his sister Rasmita, 5 and their neighbour friend Sushan Fambu, 4, were playing near their homes in the village of Sangrnati in eastern Tehrathum district when they found a strange looking object that they picked up and took home.

Soon after they arrived the landmine exploded, killing the children and mangling their bodies beyond recognition. “The mine was left by the Maoists. They were careless – they didn’t know where they had left it,” Bijaya Subba member of parliament for Tehrathum told IPS on Tuesday.

The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and the government declared ceasefires after uniting temporarily in April to lead hundreds of thousands of people to the streets of this South Asian nation’s cities and towns, chasing King Gyanendra from power after three weeks of protests.

Soon after, the two sides started peace talks that ended in a deal last week that was to be officially sealed Thursday and is now delayed until Nov. 21. It creates an interim government (including Maoists) that will organise elections to a constituent assembly, whose members will write a new constitution.

No one knows how many landmines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were planted during the country’s 10-year conflict. In April 2004, a military spokesman told NCBL that the RNA had deployed 9,500 mines to date.

According to civilians who talked to NCBL over the years, Maoist fighters usually scattered mines and IEDs randomly in areas where they were temporarily based while Nepal’s security forces planted them as perimeters to protect their barracks, government offices or important installations such as hydroelectric towers.

Seventy-two people were killed by mines and other exploding devices from January to September this year, including 13 children, 25 members of the security forces and 22 Maoists, according to NCBL. In 2005, 210 people died from such blasts, among them 33 children.

Chitrakar told IPS a mine awareness education campaign in 35 of Nepal’s 75 districts is one reason for this year’s decline in deaths. “If we compare with the last two-three years, people are more aware, except in the remote areas.”

She says NCBL will use the interim government period, scheduled to last until elections in mid-June 2007, to continue mine education and make arrangements so the next government can sign the International Mine Ban Treaty.

The group will also keep pushing for mine clearance. “If (fighting forces) don’t use mines it’s good, it’s beautiful, but they have to be concerned about those mines already (planted),” said Chitrakar.

On Friday, Ian Martin, personal representative in Nepal of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said he hopes government and Maoist leaders will include landmine clearance in an agreement they are now designing with the UN on decommissioning former rebel fighters.

“It’s a matter of concern to the UN because of the security of our own personnel but also for the women and children who are dying,” Martin told journalists. Until September, at least 46 women were victims of explosions in 2006, two of them fatal, according to NCBL.

Asked about reports that Thursday’s deal signing was postponed because the Maoists objected to clauses in the document on the protection of human rights, Martin said it is up to leaders on both sides to determine how rights are reflected in the deal. “Obviously the UN regards human rights as something at the centre of the peace process,” he said.

“Anything (in the document) that suggested there was less than a full commitment to human rights would be very uncomfortable,” he added.

Besides killings – most of them of innocent villagers caught between the fighting sides – Nepal’s uprising was marked by widespread torture and disappearances by both armies. Tens of thousands of people fled their village homes for district centres surrounded by sandbags, barbed wire and armed soldiers, or crossed the border to neighbouring India.

A draft peace treaty agreed last week calls for the creation of a reconciliation commission that would probe human rights abuses during the conflict.

According to media reports, Maoist leaders postponed Thursday’s signing because they feel the peace treaty does not fully acknowledge the social injustice that pushed them to launch their revolt. “(It) is a ridiculous document. It does not reflect the spirit of the Jana Andolan (April’s people’s movement that chased King Gyanendra from power). We cannot simply ignore the causes of the people’s war in the peace treaty,” The Himalayan Times quoted Baburam Bhattarai as saying.

But Prime Minister Girija Koirala was unfazed, telling reporters Friday, “Delaying a few days would not hamper the peace process but makes it more concrete and stronger.”

Local media continued to report Friday that Maoists are forcibly recruiting youths for their army. Rebel soldiers are scheduled to be placed in camps and their weapons collected on Nov. 21, so the Maoists are hastily boosting their numbers so they can collect more money in allowances, according to reports.

Plus, the more Maoist soldiers there are, the greater proportion of places the former rebels will occupy in the future Nepal army, which is to be created by merging the Maoist and state fighting forces, suggested a UN official Friday.