KATHMANDU,
18 January 2006 (IRIN)
From dawn to dusk, Shanta Bhandari spends her time looking for her son, who disappeared in 2002 when the Nepali police arrested him on charges of working with the Maoist rebels, who have been waging an armed rebellion against the state for the last 10 years. But her 21-year-old son Bipin was just a student at the time and a member of the Maoist-affiliated All Nepal National Free Student's Union-Revolutionary (ANNFSU-R).
Bhandari and other mothers whose sons were arrested on the same day set out on a mission to force the state authorities to reveal the whereabouts of their sons. They approached almost all organisations they thought would help pressurise the government. They pleaded for help from local human rights groups, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the United Nations office in Nepal, the Supreme Court and even the Royal Palace, but the government paid little attention.
Later in 2002, having failed to get anywhere with the government, Bhandari and three of the other mothers organised a hunger strike in the middle of the capital, Kathmandu. The country was then under a state of emergency, imposed by the government of former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba.
The families also set up Rajya Dwara Bepatta Pariyeko Pariwar Samaj (the Society of families of missing persons by the state), which is leading a campaign to help all those who disappeared following detention inside police stations and army barracks.
The National Working Committee of Disappearances, established with help from the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Nepal, is preparing a report on confirmed data of the disappeared, which will be released within a month. "Once we have the accurate data, we will start filing the cases at the Supreme Court," said Adhikari, who coordinates the committee, which has also planned to lodge cases at the UN's Human Rights Committee (Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) if their efforts fail to pressurise the government. The number of disappearances increased further after the breakdown of the first peace talks in 2003, when the Maoists scaled up violence and the security forces were given more sweeping powers to arrest any suspect. "In almost all cases Publicationed by Human Rights Watch (HRW), witness testimony confirmed that individuals who "disappeared" were last seen in the custody of government security forces, who had detained them during large-scale operations or targeted raids, arrested them at checkpoints, or had simply taken them away from places of work or study," said the HRW report, 'Clear Culpability: Disappearances by Security Forces in Nepal". The report added that the Maoists have been less accused of disappearances because the rebels openly executed their victims in public forcing relatives and villagers to witness the killings of those accused of working as government spies or defying the Maoists. Despite the critical situation of disappearances, some international human rights watchdogs, such as the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and Human Rights Watch (HRW), have criticised the international community for failing to respond effectively. "The AHRC has been continuously pleading with the international community to intervene since cases of extra-judicial killing and disappearances are on the increase in Nepal," said a December report by the group. It added that the majority of cases fail to be investigated on the grounds that the Royal Nepalese Army is beyond the reach of any domestic law in Nepal.
Copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2006 [ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), part of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
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