A New York-based leading rights group, Human Rights Watch (HRW), has said civil war has now engulfed almost every district in the country.
Making public interim findings of their three-week-long fieldwork in nearly a dozen districts in Lalitpur on Friday, Sam Zia Zarifi, research director of the HRW’s Asia division, said space for Nepali civilians has decreased dramatically. It does seem pretty clear that both Nepali security forces and the Maoists have behaved according to international humanitarian laws to some extent. “It is the success of the international human rights monitoring and Leahy amendment. But terror and impact on civilian lives is quite high,” he added.
According to the HRW team, the Maoists were found seeking shelter in civilian areas and launching attacks from civilian areas. Similarly, the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) was found using helicopters and dropping off explosives and 81 mm mortars from helicopters during clashes. “Dropping of mortars is indiscriminate and has added to civilian casualties,” said Zarifi.
The Human Rights Watch team said they were very concerned about what they called government’s alleged sponsoring of vigilante groups in several districts of southern terai. The members of vigilante groups were found to be extorting villagers, torturing them and even killing suspected Maoist rebels. In some cases, vigilante groups worked as advance team before the patrol by the security personnel, they said. In Kapilvastu, for example, the government was even arming the vigilantes. The HRW team said they found evidences of what they called the government supported vigilante activities in districts including Bardiya, Nawalparasi, Dhanusha and even in the mid-western district of Dailekh. “It’s a real cause of alarm. The government should absolutely stop such practices,” said Zarifi.
There were no new cases of disappearances reported during their study period, the practice of re-arrest had dropped and the army was promptly handing over the detainees to civilian authorities. However, there was absolutely no accountability among the security forces neither for the past nor for recent cases (of rights violations).
— Human Rights Watch
Anna Neistat, emergency researcher with the HRW, said during their field research they met 16 child soldiers who were above 18 years of age. “However, they were all recruited while they were child,” said Anna. “The Maoist claim they don’t recruit children as guerrillas is simply not true,” she added.
According to the HRW investigation, most of the children from the Far-Western region were forcibly recruited. Most of them were abducted from the schools and some of them were forced to stay back. The abductions seems to have gone up during the four-month-long ceasefire (October ’05 till Jan. 06).
Similarly, Human Rights Watch said there was absolutely no state policy for the rehabilitation and reintegration of these children. The authorities clearly had no idea as what to do with these children, the researchers said.
The Human Rights Watch team said there had been some improvements too. There were no new cases of disappearances reported during their study period, the practice of re-arrest had dropped and the army was promptly handing over the detainees to civilian authorities. “But, 100 percent of the detainees we interviewed said they had been tortured or abused by the army after they were taken into custody. This practice simply has to stop,” said Zarifi.
The HRW team, however, said there was absolutely no accountability among the security forces neither for the past nor for recent cases (of rights violations). Zarifi also expressed concerns saying that the recently amended Terrorism and Disruptive Activities (Control and Punishment) Ordinance (TADO) was systematically barring people from filing habeas corpus petitions.
The authorities are yet to respond to latest allegations by the Human Rights Watch that has come just days ahead of the 62nd session of the UN Human Rights Commission (now renamed as Human Rights Council) in Geneva.