Nepal urged to halt human rights abuses

A New York-based rights group urged Nepal’s army today to investigate and halt widespread human rights abuses, including alleged abductions by security forces of rebel sympathisers, in its fight against a communist insurgency.

Human Rights Watch also called on countries supporting the Royal Nepalese Army, including Britain, India and the US, to make all military assistance contingent on its adherence to international human rights and humanitarian law.

India and Britain have already suspended military aid, and the US says it is considering similar action following King Gyanendra’s decision on February 1 to sack the government, impose emergency rule, and suspend civil liberties.

Several countries have withdrawn their ambassadors and halted aid.

The monarch says he was forced to act because of the communist insurgency, and has ignored repeated calls from the international community to restore democracy.

Human Rights Watch quoted local rights groups as saying 1,200 people are estimated to have disappeared because of the security forces.

It urged the government to investigate all reported cases of disappearances, take concrete steps to hold perpetrators accountable, and instruct security forces about the illegality of such abuses.

The army declined immediately to comment on the allegations. It has insisted in the past that it has improved its human rights record and punished several officers who violated these rights.

The rebels, who say they are inspired by Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong, began fighting in 1996 to oust the monarchy and establish communist rule. More than 10,500 people have died in the insurgency.

In its annual worldwide report on human rights issued Monday, the US State Department criticised the Nepalese security forces’ “arbitrary and unlawful lethal force”.

It also criticised the insurgents, who “have not credibly investigated any human rights abuses committed by their forces, despite their claims to respect and uphold international conventions on human rights”.

On Saturday, the rebels lifted a two-week blockade of key highways imposed to protest the king’s power grab. They had blocked roads using crude bombs, boulders and trees, disrupting deliveries of basic supplies across the Himalayan kingdom and choking off major cities.