Kathmandu, June 14:National Human Rights Commission has appealed to the government and the Maoists to exercise restraint, not to terrorise the people and to respect their rights to live peacefully.
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) calls on the government and the Maoists to sit across the table to find a peaceful solution to the insurgency that has been going on since early 1996, NHRC Chairman Nayan Bahadur Khatri said in his first statement.
The statement, which comes a week after the bombing last week of a police post in Jajarkot, makes a passing reference to the incident that left over 20 people killed — 12 policemen, including Inspector Navaraj Poudel who was commanding the Striking Force. Eight of the civilians killed in the bombing of a house included five children. At least two Maoist activists are believed killed in the crossfire following the bombing. The Maoists are said to have attacked the house of a local resident on suspecting the police to be hiding there.
The police are yet to release detailed reports of the circumstances before and after the bombing.
News reports have said over thirty policemen walked about four hours at night to get to the district police office as they fled the Panchkatia police post that came under a sudden attack late in the evening on June 7.
Inspector Poudel, who had sustained two bullet wounds in the thighs, was murdered early next morning while on the way to the district police office at Khalanga, which was just an hour’s walk away.
Family sources say the Striking Force Commander was engaged in shootout all night with around 10 policemen. Eight of them got killed in the crossfire while others fled to safety. One of the police survivors is undergoing treatment at Teaching Hospital here, the bereaved family of Inspector Poudel said.
The family members maintain that if the police had sent back-up or responded to the Inspector’s call for rescue in the morning, he would never have been murdered. “After surviving the shootout all night, the wounded Navaraj called the district police for rescue at 6.30 a.m. in the morning and got murdered two hours later at 8.30 while the district police office was barely an hour’s walk way from where he called,” the family members claim.
Khatri said innocent civilians were dying even when there were gestures of talks between the government and the Maoists. On one hand, the high level Commisison headed by former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba is effortful at finding a peaceful solution to the Maoist problem and the atmosphere for talks is building. Prachanda, the underground Maoist leader whose original name is Puspa Kamal Dahal, has issued a statement saying he is ready for talks if the government creates an atmosphere, the statement. “It is a positive development, but hundreds of people are having to die trapped in violent attacks,” Khatri regrets.
Of late, there is an increasing tendency in both police and the Maoists to make the captives disappear. “It is strongly condemnable that the government who stands for people’s security and the Maoists who claim to be fighting for the rights of the people are murdering the people themselves. The deaths of innocent children at their own home is even sadder an incident, hence more condemnable.”
The Commission strongly believes the people’s fundamental right to life must not be violated under any circumstances. “Under the Constitution of Nepal and other international treaties, the state should make a congenial atmosphere for the Nepalese people to lead a peaceful live and the Maoists must stop violating the people’s rights,” Khatri says in the statement. “To find a peaceful solution to the Maoist problem has become their responsibility,” the statement says. The government and the Maoists therefore should make public the killings and abductions over the last four years, stop kidnapping in the future and stop attacking on the unarmed human beings.
The Commission has urged the Maoists not to bomb, fire at or set ablaze the residences of the civilians and to stop laying bobby traps for killings.