Asia-Pacific, Headlines, Human Rights

RIGHTS-NEPAL: Torture, Routine After Arrests

Marty Logan

KATHMANDU , Jan 4 2006 (IPS) - Arrests are growing in Nepal as protests against the king’s rule and soldiers’ abuses rise. Media often report that “all those arrested were freed by the end of the day”. But not everyone detained is so lucky.

On Sep. 10, 2003, at about 11 am, two men on a motorcycle came to Pradesh Bahadur Bista’s house, in the national capital. When he answered the door they asked him to identify himself. Convinced they had the right person, they made a call on a mobile phone and soon a van appeared.

“They told me to go with them because they had inquiries to make. They said they would return me after a while,” says Bista, 47, a small man with greying hair and a thick moustache. He sits cross-legged on a mattress in the office of a local non-governmental organisation (NGO), next to a translator.

Bista was put inside the van, which drove off. After a few minutes, a hood was placed over his head. The van drove around Kathmandu for about a half-hour and then stopped. “Two of them took me inside and flung me to the ground. They stretched out my legs and lifted them straight into the air,” says Bista, leaning back to demonstrate.

“Two sat on my chest. Two or three others then started beating the soles of my feet, and after, all over my body.”

They accused him and started asking questions. “They said, ‘you were responsible for a bombing in Kalanki (in the capital Kathmandu) and of bringing Maoists here from Jitpur’ (his home district).”


“They asked me to tell them where those men were. Then they started beating me again. Finally I lost consciousness,” adds Bista in a surprisingly unemotional manner.

He lost consciousness four times that first day as he was questioned, threatened and beaten, including being thrown into a small pond outside where his head was repeatedly shoved under water.

Such treatment continued for 15 days and then gradually the frequency of the torture diminished. After 100 days of being blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back, Bista and eight other prisoners were taken to the airport and flown to Nepal’s Tarai (plains) region.

They were held for 10 days at various local jails before finally being placed in the detention centre in the city of Biratnagar, near the border with India. On Nov. 29, 2005 Bista was released after the NGO, Advocacy Forum, petitioned the Supreme Court to order his release. Twenty-eight months had passed since he was taken from his home.

Advocacy Forum has petitioned the court for the release of 70 people this year, says its executive director Mandira Sharma. About one-half of them have been released. “In every case they report instances of severe torture,” she adds in an interview.

Under Nepali law, detainees must be produced before a court within 24 hours. A recently revised anti-terrorism law says suspects can be held in preventive detention for up to a year.

“It’s difficult to say how many people are being detained illegally,” says Sharma, whose NGO makes daily visits to 16 prisons in eight of Nepal’s 75 districts. But it has no access to army barracks, like the one where Bista says he was held. “There are people who have been in prison more than three years under preventive detention,” adds Sharma.

IPS visited the Royal Nepali Army’s public relations office to ask about Bista’s story but officers there were unable to provide any information.

In February it will be 10 years since the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) launched its war against the state. Shrugged off as a minor irritation in its early stages, the insurgency has now left more than 12,000 people, mostly innocent villagers, dead.

On Feb. 1, 2005, King Gyanendra fired his appointed prime minister for failing to end the insurgency and curb corruption. (Sher Bahadur Deuba is now in jail on questionable corruption charges related to a massive water project).

The monarch jailed hundreds of critics in the emergency that followed. Most were released but since then the palace has tightened laws controlling the media, NGOs and labour unions, among others.

Among those laws is the Terrorist and Disruptive (Control and Punishment) Ordinance (TADO). Revisions made to the law in 2005 put the onus on suspects to prove that they are innocent of accusations, ban members of the public from attending trials or from having access to any case documents.

The first trials under the revised law are underway, according to Sharma. If found guilty, the accused could spend 20 years in prison.

In November, the United Nations Committee Against Torture (CAT) discussed the situation in Nepal. Among its concerns:

– “The number of detainees in prolonged detention without trial” under TADO and;

– “The extensive resort to preventive detention, up to 15 months, and the lack of fundamental guarantees of the rights of persons deprived of liberty . including the right to challenge arrest, resulting in numerous alleged cases of incommunicado detention”.

The committee commended Nepal’s government for cooperating with the UN human rights office established here in 2005 and for setting up the National Human Rights Commission and human rights cells in the Police, Armed Police Force and Royal Nepali Army. But overall the report was negative, condemning both government forces and the Maoists for torture and other human rights abuses.

The committee was “gravely concerned about the exceedingly large number of consistent and reliable reports concerning the widespread use of torture and ill-treatment by law enforcement personnel, and in particular the Royal Nepali Army, the Armed Police Force and the Police”.

It also urged the government to make torture a criminal offence. On Monday, activists repeated that call at the release of a book here called ‘Combating Torture in Nepal’.

A 1997 survey found that 73 percent of inmates in Nepali prisons had been tortured, said Bhogendra Sharma, chairman of NGO, Centre for Victims of Torture Nepal (CVICT) and co-author of the book. While 823 torture victims approached CVICT for help in 1998, the number rose to 3,100 in 2004, he added.

Bista easily admits that he was a member of one of the many wings of the Communist Party of Nepal, a group known as Masal. And he says he sometimes helped Maoist rebels in his home district, where their activities were known to everyone, including the authorities. “But I never carried a gun and I never gave them money,” he adds.

Today, the father of two grown children says, “I still have pain in my arms and thighs and a burning sensation on the soles of my feet. My vision has decreased. The day before yesterday I went to an eye specialist. He told me to wear these glasses and return to see him but as I do not have any money, I’ll do it later,” says Bista.

Surprisingly, unlike most former prisoners, he is adamant that his real name be used in this article. “When I was in the barracks I was beaten so severely that I asked them to kill me. Now I’m not afraid of their torture. And I don’t want to walk around feeling afraid.”

 
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