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| April 22, 2005 | ||||||
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Crimes Against Civilians in Nepal's Unreported Civil War By Thomas Bell |
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Nine years of civil war in Nepal have cost over 11,000 lives and established a pattern of calculated and deliberate war crimes by both the state and Maoist rebels. By most estimates, civilians account for the majority of the deaths as the two sides, both lacking widespread public support, treat the rural population with suspicion and brutality. Civilians are frequently dealt with as if they were combatants, violently coerced into supporting one side or the other or murdered as alleged informers.
A particularly insidious trend has been the militarization of children and schools, as the Maoists have press-ganged children and turned classrooms into training centres. The army’s response has frequently been to fire on groups of children, arrest and mistreat juvenile prisoners and mortar bomb suspicious gatherings at school buildings. Illegal detentions and extra-judicial executions are commonly practiced by both sides. Forced disappearances in state custody are the highest in the world, according to a United Nations report.
Since the breakdown of the last round of peace talks in August 2003, an average of over eight people have died every day due to the conflict, which may now be the most lethal war in Asia. The rebels have made steady progress against the poorly motivated army and now exercise a measure of control over around 80% of Nepal’s territory, with the government’s authority largely confined to urban areas. Despite the gravity of the crisis, Nepal’s war has been slow to attract international attention. The crude tactics employed by King Gyanendra since he seized power on February 1st this year have led to greater scrutiny and external pressure. Under threat of strong censure at the 61st meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Nepal agreed to allow UN rights monitors to open an office in Kathmandu on April 11th.
The Civil War Develops
The Maoists launched their campaign in 1996 in the hilly mid-western districts of Rukum and Rolpa, which remain their greatest stronghold. They claimed that the democratic revolution of 1990, which had ended three decades of absolute monarchy and left the crown a mostly ceremonial role, had done little to change Nepal’s largely feudal social and economic relations. They argue that a substantial improvement in rural life can only be achieved by communism and republicanism. As the Maoists grew in strength, raiding remote police stations to slaughter policemen and steal their guns, elected governments in Kathmandu were slow to respond. When a response did come it took the form of brutal police operations against suspect villages that served to entrench support for the rebels.
During the 1990s there were a series of unstable coalition governments rarely lasting more than one year, and the premiership passed to and fro between a small number of politicians. These men were drawn from the social elite and widely seen as corrupt, incompetent and indifferent to life outside the capital. The Maoists were able to win considerable sympathy among villagers with talk of equality and attacks on landlords and other unpopular figures. But even as their influence spread across much of western Nepal, the conflict remained relatively low in intensity and was treated as a police matter by Kathmandu. One of the anomalies of the 1990 democratic settlement was that the army remained under the control of the palace, and the then king, Birendra, was unwilling to deploy it against the Maoists. The Royal Nepal Army had not seen action since 1907.
The escalation came at the end of 2001. In June that year King Gyanendra came to the throne following the shooting of his brother, King Birendra, and other members of the royal family by Prince Dipendra. The massacre appears to have been motivated by petty family issues in what had become a largely ceremonial monarchy, but it had an enormous impact on the course of the war. Gyanendra proved a more aggressive king than his brother. After a brief attempt at negotiation failed, a state of emergency was declared and the army deployed on November 25th. Over 80% of the war’s victims have died since then and around 60% of those have died at the hands of the state, according to figures compiled by the Informal Sector Service Centre.
As the war escalated Nepal’s infant democracy began to crumble. The then prime minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba, dissolved parliament in May 2002. It soon became clear that fresh elections could not be held, as the constitution demanded, due to insecurity in the countryside. In October that year Gyanendra sacked Mr Deuba for alleged corruption and incompetence. He appointed two technocrat governments, neither of which lasted a year. Nepal was trapped in a three-way power struggle between discredited democrats, the Maoists and the palace and there were violent street demonstrations against the King’s growing power.
In June 2004 Gyanendra reappointed Mr Deuba at the head of a multiparty cabinet, but most Nepalese believed that true power had shifted away from the nominal government to the palace and the army. Finally, on February 1st 2005, Gyanendra sacked Mr Deuba a second time. Apparently alarmed at the progress of the war, he appointed himself chairman of a new council of ministers, declared a second state of emergency and abolished most civil and political rights. Political leaders, scholars, journalists and rights activists were arrested and the media heavily censored. These measures remain in force, and according to Human Rights Watch around 600 non-Maoist political prisoners were being held at the beginning of April. The royal coup effectively brought the army to power, with soldiers deployed everywhere from private media companies to civilian government offices. Dr Tulsi Giri, the king’s senior advisor, has vowed to “crush them [the Maoists] military,” although few believe that a military victory is possible for either side.
Coercion and Indoctrination
As the war has progressed the Maoists have forfeited most of the support they once enjoyed by their brutality and destructiveness. A widely shared assessment among villagers in Maoist areas is that “by force, 95% of people support them, but only 5% support them through choice.” The rebels have systematically destroyed all traces of the government in most rural areas, beginning with police stations and administrative offices but extending to bridges, micro-hydroelectric schemes and telephone lines. The system of health posts and schools has been systematically undermined, with teachers and health workers frequently facing suspicion and violence from both the rebels and the army. Development projects have all but ground to a halt.
The account of a 38-year-old man from Jumla district in north west Nepal is typical. “When the Maoists started I thought this was a people’s movement and something good would happen,” he told me earlier this year. “But later I discovered that anyone is safe in the villages, even if they are rapists and murders, if they support the Maoists. But if a good man opposes them in any way he is not safe. Maoism has been nothing but a tool for hoodlums to make some money.”
The man described how he was forced to leave his farm for the safety of the government controlled town when some local youths who disliked him joined the Maoists. His wife made regular visits to see him in the town and fell under suspicion as an informer. She was abducted by the Maoists for eight days, savagely beaten and threatened with kerosene and matches before being released. The couple now live with their six children in Jumla town and both deny acting on behalf of the government against the Maoists. According to the Asian Centre for Human Rights there are 350 000- 400 000 internally displaced people in Nepal and an estimated 2m have crossed the open border with India to escape the conflict and seek work. Young men of military age are a rare sight in many areas.
Maoist recruitment relies on a mixture of coercion, indoctrination and the frustrations of unemployed village youth. Most Maoist fighters and militia are young men and women in their teens and early 20s, and many express seemingly sincere commitment to their cause, as well as despair at the life of agricultural labour and arranged marriage that they escaped by joining the People’s Army. One young man in the western district of Surkhet said, “The Maoist soldiers came to my village and I thought, ‘They are just like me.’ I felt courageous and I joined.” Then he broke down in tears at the thought that his brother is a policeman and his parents now face danger from armed men on both sides.
Schools are regularly used as a venue for propaganda programmes, and groups of pupils are frequently abducted for short periods to receive military training and indoctrination. Asked if his party was conducting ideological teaching in schools, a Maoist commander in Jumla said, “We have done that in a few primary schools in the areas under our control. We are on the way to extend the process in other schools as well.” After the major “human wave” attack on the town of Beni in March 2004 many of the Maoist bodies that lay in the streets appeared to be of children no more than 14 years old.
Forced recruitment is also practiced in some districts, often on the basis of one child per family. Where no boy is available a girl is demanded. There are reports from the far west of civilians being ordered to dig fortifications under the slogan “one family, one bunker.” A man in southern Nawalparasi district told me that the Maoists frequently come in the night and demand that civilians place obstructions on the highway. In the morning soldiers come and, fearing booby traps or ambushes, force civilians to remove them again.
One of the Maoists’ most destructive tactics, and currently one of their most popular, is the use of extended bandhas or blockades, designed to tie up the army and choke off government controlled urban centres. During these blockades, which last up to two weeks, all road transport is forbidden under threat of violence. Ambulances have been among the vehicles attacked. In March the United Nations, European Union and nine bilateral aid agencies issued a statement condemning the tactic. “Children are especially threatened: supplies of vaccines, Vitamin A capsules, deworming tablets and essential drugs must reach rural areas over the coming months to prevent wholly avoidable deaths," the statement said. "There have been credible reports of women dying in childbirth because they could not reach medical treatment.”
Army Uses Indiscriminate Force
Abuses committed by the state largely involve reckless and indiscriminate firing on alleged Maoists and the illegal detention and killing of suspects. In both cases the victims often prove to have been innocent civilians, villagers who have been coerced into assisting the rebels (for example by providing food and shelter) or people with family connections to the Maoists but who are not Maoists themselves. There have been frequent instances of helicopters dropping mortars onto schools and villages where the Maoists are present leading to civilian casualties, and villagers often take cover when helicopters pass overhead. The army and police have a record of defying Supreme Court habeas corpus orders for people in their custody and, despite government assurances to the contrary, human rights observers are routinely denied access to places of detention. Allegations of torture and extra-judicial execution are common. Female Maoist suspects, and other women, are sometimes raped by soldiers and policemen. Off-duty security men have been involved in several robberies where they used their service weapons, sometimes posing as Maoists. Heavy drinking is common among soldiers and morale is low.
According to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, Nepal had the highest number of disappearances in state custody worldwide in 2003 and 2004. Human Rights Watch has compiled data collected by local human rights monitors listing 1200 cases over the last five years, although the organisation believes the true figure is higher. “In many cases, particularly those where the ‘disappeared’ persons have been missing for years, it is likely that they were the victims of extra-judicial execution while in the custody of the security forces,” the organisation concluded.
A well known case of enforced disappearance involves 15-year-old Maina Sunwar, who was arrested from her home in Kavre district on 17 February 2004 by 15-20 men in civilian dress who identified themselves as soldiers. According to a report by Amnesty International the soldiers were looking for the schoolgirl’s relatives, who had witnessed the extra-judicial execution of two female teenage Maoist suspects four days earlier. There is a strong suggestion that Reena Rasaili, 18, and Subhadra Chaulagain, 17, had been raped after their arrests. Their bullet riddled bodies were later found in woods near their village. The soldiers told Maina’s family that she would be released if the witnesses came to an army camp, but when family members enquired the next day the army denied that she was in custody. After continued denials the army admitted in March 2005 that Maina had died in custody and a colonel and two captains are to face a court martial.
The Royal Nepal Army’s record of disciplining its men is poor. Although the army claims that over 100 men have been disciplined, most penalties involve loss of rank and short custodial terms. Proceedings are held in closed session and few details are released. An illustrative instance is the Doramba incident of August 2003. Shortly before the second ceasefire and peace talks collapsed, the army arrested 17 Maoists, against the terms of the ceasefire, at Doramba village in Ramechhap district. Their bodies, with hands tied behind their backs and bullet wounds to the head, were later discovered in shallow graves. The army initially obstructed the investigation, but in January this year a major was dismissed from the army and sentenced to two years in prison while a non-commissioned officer was demoted by one rank.
The civilian courts have also failed to hold the army accountable for its actions. According to Human Rights Watch, “The army has consistently ignored habeas corpus orders, showing its utter disdain for judicial authorities, while the courts have failed to insist upon compliance with their orders.” Particularly since the latest state of emergency was declared on February 1st, the courts have shown no stomach for challenging the palace and the army, refusing for a time to hear cases relating even to rights that had not been suspended under the emergency.
A Deteriorating Situation
A worrying new development in the army’s anti-insurgency campaign is the endorsement of vigilantes attacking alleged Maoist villages. The most dramatic instance took place in Kapilvastu district in February 2005, when the attempted kidnapping of two men by the Maoists sparked a weeklong spree in which around 22 people were lynched and up to 700 homes burnt. Local human rights observers allege that three of the victims were delivered to the army then returned to the mob to be killed, and a further nine army prisoners were later handed over to the mob and killed. The remaining victims are widely supposed to have been the innocent victims of local score-settling and economic grievances. Local people told me they had seen plain-clothes security personnel among the mob, concealing weapons and checking the identity papers of villagers.
The day after 500 homes were burnt in the village of Hallanagar, three government ministers arrived by helicopter. Witnesses said they congratulated the mob, which the government calls a Village Defence Committee, and agreed to consider a request to arm it with shotguns. One of the ministers, Dan Bahadur Shahi, the minister for Home, Law and Justice, later repeated his approval of the killings in a BBC interview, saying that recourse to the courts “is not relevant during a war.” The National Human Rights Commission was prevented from visiting the area and there has since been a further vigilante killing in the nearby district of Nawalparasi. On 14 April this year Maoists attacked the village of Somani in Nawalparasi and dragged 10 people, including a 14-year-old boy, from their homes before shooting them as alleged vigilantes.
When King Gyanendra seized power on February 1st he imposed a state of emergency scheduled to last for three months,. Among the suspended rights are those to freedom of expression, assembly, press and publication rights, the right against preventative detention, the right to information, to property and privacy. Many human rights monitors have been detained, harassed and prevented from traveling to the sites of alleged incidents or to foreign conferences. Some have gone into hiding or fled to India. The domestic press has been ordered to rely on army sources for all its reporting of the conflict and banned from carrying news which may “harm the morale” of the security forces. Nine journalists were in government detention at the beginning of April. The lack of public scrutiny possible under these circumstances, and the government’s unwillingness to confront alleged abuses by its forces, has increased the risk of further crimes. With both parties to the conflict apparently unwilling to negotiate, and making bellicose public statements, the need for international scrutiny is acute. Thomas Bell, a journalist based in Kathmandu, has written frequently for the Daily Telegraph and San Francisco Chronicle.
Related Chapters from Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know: Civilians, Illegal Targeting of International vs. Internal Armed Conflict
Related Links:
The Case for Intervention in Nepal (.pdf file) Asian Centre for Human Rights March 14, 2005 Internally Displaced in Nepal Overlooked and Neglected, U.N. Expert Says After Mission United Nations Information Service April 22, 2005
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