RIGHTS-NEPAL: ‘Disappearances’ Still Rife, Says Report

By Marty Logan Reprint | | Print |

Marty Logan

KATHMANDU, Feb 28 2005 (IPS) - Almost one year after Nepal promised to move to end ”disappearances” of people suspected of aiding a potent Maoist insurgency that has left 11,000 of its citizens dead, the Himalayan nation’s commitments still ring hollow.

”The commitments have remained empty declarations, unsubstantiated by real efforts to stop the violations,” declared the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday.

The accusation is contained in ‘Clear Culpability: Disappearances by Security Forces in Nepal’, an 84-page report by the New York-based group released just prior to the annual meetings of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, at which the former government of Nepal made its pledge in 2004.

Since then the political landscape has shifted mightily after King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah dismissed Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and his cabinet and took power on Feb. 1 – simultaneously suspending many constitutional freedoms and tossing political leaders and dissidents in jail.

Nepal, once associated in many western minds with a snowy, mountain-top Shangri-La, has now become one of the world’s leaders in ”disappearing” those supposedly linked to the increasingly bloody struggle fought by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). The United Nations Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) has already stated that fact.

But the new HRW report documents 203 such cases, based on the group’s own research in the South Asian nation in September and October 2004.

It also cites local non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which have received reports of more than 1,200 disappearances since May 2000, including 368 in 2003 alone.

”Almost all arrests and detentions that lead to ‘disappearances’ are carried out by regular army units, police, or Armed Police Force (APF) personnel,” HRW concludes.

For example, ”at least 16 people ‘disappeared’ after being arrested by (Royal Nepalese Army) RNA and APF forces in the course of a large-scale operation from Oct. 20-22, 2002, in Rajapur, Bardia. The security forces based at the Manpur Tapara temporary army camp launched the arrest spree in response to Maoist destruction of many government offices in the months before the operation,” says the report.

”Testimony from several witnesses indicates that the ‘disappeared’ detainees were taken to the Manpur Tapara Secondary School, which the RNA had occupied as their ‘Manpur Tapara temporary army camp’,” says HRW.

”The relatives went daily to the school and saw the blindfolded detainees held in one of the school’s rooms. Many recognised their relatives from the clothes they were wearing at the time of arrest. After the Manpur Tapara temporary camp was dismantled on Oct. 25, the 16 detainees were never seen again.”

The report states clearly that the government has not done enough to prevent such events.

”Even if the government has not directly asked its security forces to commit ‘disappearances’ as part of its campaign against the Maoists, its failure to take reasonable steps to end the practice or to hold perpetrators accountable makes civilian authorities deeply complicit,” finds HRW. ”In the face of such government inaction, ‘disappearances’ can fairly be characterised as government policy.”

Human Rights Watch published the report as the king, who appointed a 12-member committee or cabinet, continues to jail political party members, human rights workers and other activists and to prevent such people – along with academics – from travelling outside of the capital Kathmandu.

According to Monday’s local newspapers, activists from major political parties were jailed in a handful of cities nation-wide Sunday after publicly protesting the state of emergency imposed by King Gyanendra.

Also Sunday, Subodh Raj Pyakurel, president of human rights group the Informal Sector Service Centre (INSEC), was barred from flying from Kathmandu to mid-western Nepal to participate in a seminar for security personnel on human rights and humanitarian law, reported ‘The Himalayan Times’.

Still, members of the governing committee repeat at every opportunity that the monarch is committed to democracy and to restoring the suspended rights, as soon as the Maoist ”terrorists” and rampant corruption among the political parties and in the bureaucracy have been subdued.

Security forces have occasionally released detainees jailed since Feb. 1, apparently at whim, such as Bishnu Nisthuri, general secretary of the Federation of Nepalese Journalists, who was let go last week.

But the international community continues to warn it will stop military and development aid if King Gyanendra does not restore the suspended rights as soon as possible. India and Britain have already suspended new military assistance while the United States, one of the strongest backers of Nepal’s battle against ”terrorism”, is urging a return of civil liberties within 100 days.

Such pressure has been instrumental in prodding Nepal to take the small steps it has made to date to deal with disappearances, says HRW’s report. It suggests the previous government’s most significant move was to establish a five-member commission in July 2004, in response to a hunger strike organised by the families of the ‘disappeared’.

But, it adds, local rights activists suspect the commission ”padded” its own list of disappeared persons with the names of people released long ago. ”Of the more than 200 cases of ‘disappearances’ documented by Human Rights Watch in this report, the work of the commission has provided answers in only a tiny minority of those cases.”

Although the report focuses on government forces, it also condemns the rebels’ human rights violations, explaining, ”If abuses by Maoist forces do not loom large in a report on ‘disappearances’, it is because Maoists often openly execute those they abduct, accusing victims of being spies, class enemies, or guilty of defying Maoist rule.”

Drastic and illegal in themselves, disappearances by security forces are a stepping stone to further rights violations, such as extrajudicial executions and torture, warns HRW. ”In 28 cases documented in this report, families of the ‘disappeared’ believe that their relatives were killed after being taken into custody by the security forces.”

”In many other cases documented by Human Rights Watch in Nepal, particularly those where the ‘disappeared’ persons have been missing for years, it is likely that they were the victims of extrajudicial executions while in the custody of the security forces,” it concludes.

Laws must be changed and senior officials, both military and civilian, have to be held accountable if the problem is to stop, argues HRW. ”Progress will depend on the political will of key actors in Nepal, including the Royal Nepalese Army command, the interim government and the king.”