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Bulletin #38: Beyond Lifting the State of Emergency

The following is a detailed analysis of the current situation in Nepal written by Dinesh Prasain, Coordinator of the Collective Campaign for Peace (COCAP) in Nepal.

Summary

Nepal’s King Gyanendra staged a military coup on February 1, 2005. He declared a State of Emergency (SoE) the same day, suspending almost all the fundamental rights of citizens. The SoE was lifted towards the end of April 2005, but the overall context of unconstitutional and unaccountable rule under a dictatorial monarchy persists. If the national and international democratic constituency and civil society stop mounting pressure on the King until Nepali people attain genuine democracy, he could use such cosmetic changes to further entrench his authoritarian grip on power.

In the three months after February 1, 2005, the human rights situation aggravated seriously in the country. Hundreds of pro-democracy supporters, including political leaders, student activists, journalists and human rights defenders, were arrested and imprisoned. According to the Amnesty International, over 3000 pro-democracy supporters were arrested in the first two-and-a-half months after the coup. As of end of April, over 800 of them were still in prison.

The repression against democratic forces never stopped, particularly re-intensifying towards the end of April 2005, when the state started arresting more political leaders and even possibly torturing and disappearing the student leaders who were arrested and rearrested even after their release from detention by court order.

Silencing of political opposition and civil society including the media and human rights community, has allowed perpetrators of human rights violations to go unscrutinized. The innocent civilians are caught ever more between a “rock and a hard place”, as one recent Human Rights Watch report summed up the situation of the Nepalis suffering the brutality of the Royal Nepal Army and the Maoists. Nepal is now degenerating into a “state on the verge of failure”, as warned by the New York Times editorial of April 15, 2005.

The state and the Maoists insurgents competed with each other to produce the maximum number of “head counts” to prove their superiority over the other side. According to an April 30, 2005, press release of the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR), the killing rate increased in Nepal by 100 percent during the three month-long state of emergency compared to the period before February 1.

In these three months the Royal Nepal Army killed 530 people while the Maoists killed 125. The ACHR statement states that the “Majority of the persons killed during the emergency are innocent civilians who were deliberately executed both by the RNA and the Maoists”. The state armed and backed up vigilantes, who lynched to death at least 40 people within this period. There were no investigations by the state on these alleged human rights violations.

The only way to promote stability, sustainable peace and human rights is through the promotion of a democratic process, to make the state representative, accountable and responsive to the aspirations of the people.

For this : (a) the King needs to unequivocally handover power to the parliament and / or the all-party government as demanded in consensus by the major parliamentary political parties, (b) the new government and /or parliament needs to make changes in the constitution to scrap royal prerogatives and to bring the army fully under the control of democratic civilian government, (c) the government needs to draw up and implement a strategy (agenda and roadmap) for bringing the rebels into the democratic mainstream through political negotiations, and (d) the negotiated political settlement needs to include a plan which will allow the sovereign people to peacefully renegotiate their aspirations for a more democratic, inclusive, just and accountable state by participating in a free and fair election to improve the 1990 constitution. If the King does not agree to this roadmap, the international community should recognize a parallel government of the major parliamentary parties and work with it.

As a foreign aid-dependent country, Nepal’s politics is hugely influenced by the international community. The US is one of the major international players influencing Nepal’s politics. The US has remained one of the major developmental aid donors to Nepal since the early 1950s. Since 2002, it is also one of the major suppliers of military assistance to the Royal Nepal Army (RNA).

The US has provided nearly $22 million in military aid to the RNA since 2002, most of the money used for financing the purchase of M16 rifles to fight a brutal Maoist insurgency which started in 1996 and grew to engulf Nepal. The insurgency spread to nearly all the 75 districts of Nepal after October 2002 when the King started dismantling the constitution thereby depriving the state the legitimacy which is badly needed to tackle any insurgency.

Gross and systematic human rights violations by the RNA have been documented by national and international human rights organizations, and conflict experts have pointed out that many victims and their families have flocked to the Maoists to seek revenge. The RNA was clearly involved in the February 1 coup, and is likely to feel less accountable to anybody except the dictator King, who has shown little respect for democracy, human rights and human life, and has disregarded international law.

We are already witnessing an unfolding human rights tragedy after February 1. Military aid to the RNA should be stopped until it is fully under the control of a democratic civilian government and respects human rights and humanitarian laws. Apart from critical humanitarian aid, all other development aid to Nepal needs to be suspended until a democratic government is in place.

February 1 royal-military coup

On February 1, 2005, King Gyanendra ousted prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, and announced that he had assumed direct power “to fight terrorism and to strengthen democracy”. Ironically, the King started terrorizing the people and dismantling the democratic process even before his recorded address over the national television and radio was completely played out.

Phone lines across Nepal, including those of the diplomatic missions in Kathmandu, were cut midway through the royal address. Leaders of the parliamentary political parties, human rights defenders, journalists, students, trade-unionists and intellectuals were rounded-up. Some were placed under house arrest, while others were blind-folded and moved to detention centres, which have remained largely inaccessible to human rights groups and lawyers even till now. Many were forced to go under-ground.

A State of Emergency was declared the same day, and fundamental rights including the right to opinion, expression and information, right to property, right to privacy, right to mobility, right to peaceful association and peaceful assembly were suspended. Free media was muzzled, with the army moving into the media houses to intimidate journalists and censor news and opinion.

The houses of pro-democracy supporters were raided and ransacked. The King started ruling directly but repeated announcements were made that any criticism of the King and his proclamation would lead to serious consequences. While the right to peaceful assembly was announced suspended, the royalist vigilantes were allowed to take out rallies in Kathmandu with police escorts, but pro-democracy activists, including students, who organized spontaneous protest demonstrations were arrested, detained and tortured.

Pre-February 1 context: Human rights violations and expansion of Maoists

February 1, 2005, was a culmination of a process of the derailment of constitution and democracy started by King Gyanendra in October 2002, when he unconstitutionally assumed executive power after dismissing the prime minister elected by the parliament. Between October 2002 and February 2005, Gyanendra ruled through three prime ministers he hand-picked and fired at his will.

The already grave human rights situation aggravated further since October 2002, as the parliamentary committees were absent, the judiciary was systematically marginalized by the military and human rights defenders and journalists were routinely intimidated.

Lack of institutionalized accountability mechanisms logically led to increasing human rights violations by the state security forces, with de facto guarantee of impunity to the perpetrators; the RNA is accountable to the King, who feels unaccountable to anybody else. Interestingly, the Maoists gained much more military strength and Nepal became unstable in an unprecedented way after the army was mobilized in November 2001, and even more so after the King started ruling directly by dismantling the constitution from October 2002.

After these developments, the Maoist influence spread to almost all the 75 districts of Nepal, compared to their influence in about two dozen districts before 2001. Increased human rights violations and erosion of legitimacy of the regime under the King helped the Maoists get more recruits and rationalize their brutal insurgency as a rebellion against a dictatorial regime. As the Maoists expanded their military strength, they have tried to blackmail the democratic forces and the neutral population to either support them or be ready to be labeled as royalists and face the consequences.

The Maoists did originally raise some political and socio-economic issues which appealed to the traditionally marginalized sections of the Nepali population, but as they gained control over the rural areas, they started adopting violence as an almost exclusive strategy to expand and retain their base. The Maoists have made every attempt to silence dissent within their areas of influence, conscripted children into their army, systematically intimidated, tortured and publicly executed their opponents, destroyed development infrastructure and forcefully and frequently closed highways, schools and markets.

Their ideological belief in the primacy of violence as a means of political change and near-total intolerance of dissent (also within their own party as indicated by the recent captivity of the dissenting number two leader Baburam Bhattarai by the armed guard of the Maoist supremo Prachanda) have cost them the political legitimacy they badly require nationally and internationally. But for the direct victims of Maoist violence, the erosion of political legitimacy of the Maoists in the long run does not help their immediate predicament.

The King’s tactics are no different than those of the Maoists. He has used the pretext of the Maoist threat to usurp complete power and wealth for himself and the coterie around him. The King talks peace but blocks every effort to settle the conflict through negotiations; a militarized state and society are much more beneficial to him than peace within a democratic framework.

The combined effect of the royal-military and Maoist violence has accelerated the transformation of Nepal into a militarized state and society. Both of these forces understand, speak and celebrate the language of violence. They aspire to silence the desire of the overwhelming majority of the Nepalis for democracy, peace, social justice and human rights. They both claim that they need absolute power and violence to suppress the violence of the other side.

Human rights situation after February 1, 2005

After February 1, 2005, the human rights situation has aggravated alarmingly, as pointed out in a series of reports made public after the coup by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, International Commission of Jurists and International Crisis Group, among others. The State of Emergency was lifted towards the end of April, but the overall climate of an illegitimate, unaccountable and dictatorial regime, which does not respect the concept of rule of law persists. The King’s government has continued to arrest pro-democracy supporters.

Over 3000 pro-democracy activists have been unconstitutionally arrested since the coup, among whom an estimated 800 are still in prison as of the end of April 2005. A dozen human rights activists and over 10 journalists remain imprisoned. Many have fled the country or gone under-ground. The media remains muzzled by the royal machinery as journalists continue to be persecuted, intimidated and private media denied access to government advertisements and licenses to operate. Private radios have not been allowed to broadcast news or independent talk-shows. Over 2000 journalists have been rendered jobless after the coup.

During the last week of April, immediately after the King met Secretary General of the UN, the Indian Prime Minister and other heads of state in Jakarta, his government intensified the crackdown on pro-democracy supporters. During this week student leaders including perhaps one of the most popular democratic figure in Nepal, Gagan Thapa, were rounded up from their residence, colleges and offices, the police disrupted the funeral of a respected freedom fighter and vandalized the office of one of the major parliamentary parties, those released from illegal detention by court order were rearrested and possibly tortured, UN human rights officials continued being denied access to detention centers, dozens of political leaders from the main parliamentary political parties, including the ex-prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba were arrested and detained illegally.

Interestingly, this renewed crackdown on democratic forces comes at a time immediately after the Nepali government signed an MoU with the UN to allow its human rights officials to monitor the situation in Nepal, and as the 100 days of the coup approach. Reportedly, the King had promised the US government that he would come up with a genuine plan to restore democracy and peace within a hundred days of the coup.

The King is institutionalizing his authoritarian regime through the appointment of ultra-right henchmen as regional and zonal commissioners (with the appointment of district commissioners believed to be on the pipeline). Reportedly, repressive laws are being drafted, including a law to seriously curb the freedom of the press. Other anti-human rights laws, including one anti-terrorism ordinance, and a public security act, are being misused to intimidate pro-democracy supporters. Opposition figures risk confiscation of their property, while those loyal to the palace (including the royal family itself) are insulated from any action against corruption and abuse of authority.

In 2003 and 2004, the Nepali state “disappeared” more people than any other country in the world. International human rights organizations have documented hundreds of cases of extra-judicial killings by the RNA. They have also strongly condemned the conscription of children, abduction and brutal murder of unarmed civilians by the Maoists. In the absence of a vibrant democratic opposition, free media, local human rights investigators and independent judiciary, and in the context of a increasingly militarized state and society, human rights violations by both sides are certain to increase to alarming proportions. The state can label anybody as being a terrorist or supporting terrorism, and then arrest, detain or even kill them with impunity.

Between February 1 and April 15, 2005, over 500 people are believed to have been killed - in combat, in cross-fire, in summary executions, in vigilante violence, and in mine blasts. With the Maoists and the Royal Nepal Army, desperate to prove their superiority by demonstrating the maximum number of casualties they inflict on the other side, it is easy to predict the tragedy that is likely to continue unabated. The civil war in Nepal has cost the non-combatant, civilian population their lives and livelihood dearly while immensely benefiting the warlords, both on the side of the Maoists and the royal-military establishment.

Village militias turning into death-squads?

What is happening in Kapilbastu and Nawalparasi districts in southern Nepal after February 1, 2005, illustrate the possible trajectory of human rights situation in Nepal in the days ahead.

In an interview published in Time Asia (18 April 2005), Nepal’s King Gyanendra “welcomed” the activities of the lynch mobs in Kapilbastu, which were encouraged by the Royal Nepal Army (RNA).

“TIME: What about the reports we hear from Kapilbastu, of lynch mobs killing 30 people, burning hundreds of homes, and encouraged to do so by the RNA?

Gyanendra: Let’s be very clear here. Has Nepal witnessed rising public antipathy against terrorism? Yes. That’s a fact. No one needs to instigate the public. Enough is enough. That’s clearly the message the rural population is giving the terrorists. They are rising up. And I welcome these moves by the people. [Emphasis added].

(Source)

The RNA has set up and armed para-military known as Village Defense Committees in the southern parts of Nepal since November 2003. Strong opposition from national and international human rights organizations had forced the RNA to freeze the plan. This plan has been revived after February 1, 2005, as shown by the incidents in

On 17 February, 2005, people in one village of Kapilbastu district gathered to prevent Maoists from abducting two of their villagers. Soon, armed members of the Village Defense Committee arrived on the scene. Then they instigated and led a mob of the villagers which went berserk, indiscriminately lynching, beating, and raping other villagers in 21 villages. This mob violence lasted for several days, and was backed-up and even actively encouraged by the security forces and the government ministers.

According to the fact-finding mission of human rights organizations conducted in March 2005, at least 46 people had been killed, one 14 year girl raped, and over 600 houses burnt down by these mobs within the first two weeks. According to the same report, tens of thousands of villagers fled to India. As the International Crisis Group’s 24 March report “Nepal: Dealing with a human rights crisis” states, “Their [vigilante’s] actions were actively condoned by the local security forces and then lauded by government ministers”. Three ministers visited the site and publicly praised the people engaged in the violence. A March 14, 2005 BBC News, “Nepal’s rising vigilante violence” reports,

“Home Affairs Minister Dan Bahadur Shahi says he knew they had beaten twelve men to death. “I encouraged their self-defense system”, he told the BBC. “Why shouldn’t I, when the Maoists massacred the people and burned their properties?” Recourse to the courts “is not relevant during a war,” he continued. They gathered, found them and killed them. I thought I should praise them”.

The Maoists retaliated and killed 11 people they alleged as vigilantes. The leader of the vigilante group, a gangster wanted for over a dozen murder cases in Nepal and India, is safe. It is the innocent civilians that are bearing the brunt of violence. According to the report of a fact-finding mission of Nepali human rights organizations, a 40 year old resident in Nawalparasi, Ram Kishore Chamar, was alleged by the Village Defense Committee as not supporting them. On March 26, 2005, Committee members chopped off his right hand, roasted it on fire, made him to eat it, and then shot him dead.

The Village Defense Committee members patrol the area openly carrying guns, conduct searches, and beat up people they dislike, branding them as Maoist supporters. Even human rights defenders have been threatened and abducted by these vigilante groups and later handed over to the security forces. According to newspaper reports, on 15 April 2005, the Maoists surrounded a village, lined up villagers, and shot dead 10 people, including a 10-year old child, alleging them of conducting anti-Maoist violence.

If serious steps are not taken by the international community, vigilante violence and counter-violence could soon be the order of the day across Nepal under the military dictatorship of the King and a brutal parallel regime of the Maoists in rural areas.

International complacency

The international community has generally been very supportive of democracy, development and stability in Nepal. After February 1, the international community almost unanimously condemned the royal move as anti-democratic and described the coup as a further destabilizing step. They asked the King to restore the democratic process as soon as possible. At the same time, though, we cannot forget that the complacency of the international community has emboldened the dictatorial ambitions of the King since 2002.

The UK, USA and India provided military assistance to the Royal Nepal Army, without ensuring that the army top brass, which has been traditionally anti-democratic and loyal to the King, was firmly under the control of a democratically elected civilian government and accountable to the parliament. Diplomats went so far as to pressure the political parties, with over 50 years of history of struggle for democracy, to join the puppet government of the King against the spirit of the democratic constitution promulgated as a result of the people’s movement of 1990.

Inadvertently, a section of the international community played into the hands of the extreme right and extreme left: they were (some still are) among the most enthusiastic in blaming the democratic political parties for their inability to clear in ten years the mess created by centuries of the unjust social structures and processes, entrenched further by over two-centuries of a rent-seeking state controlled by the palace and a few families around it.

The gains made between 1990 and 2002, despite the brutal Maoist insurgency and an anti-democratic palace, in critical sectors such as infrastructure development, basic health and education, community forestry, decentralization, free media, legal reforms related to social justice, expansion of a vibrant civil society asserting human rights, ethnic and Dalit and women’s agenda, etc. are all too easily forgotten. International community sometimes forgets that alternative to an imperfect democracy is more democracy, not authoritarianism.

Even now, the international community appears to be waiting for the King to come up with a roadmap for democracy and expecting the democratic political parties to comply to that roadmap so that they can tackle the Maoist insurgency in a united way. Such expectations reveal the lack of understanding of the ground reality of Nepal by the international community, as well as their lack of respect for the intellect, dignity, rights and aspirations of the Nepali people.

First, the last three years in general and post-February 1 in particular have shown that the King is compulsively anti-democratic and will not come up with a roadmap and strategy to achieve genuine democracy and peace. The King benefits, politically and economically, from a protracted armed conflict. Two, there is a critical mass of Nepali democratic constituency which, despite all the risk, did not and will not agree to surrender democratic principles for the convenience of an anti-democratic king and powerful yet insensitive international bureaucrats.

The more sensitive and more realistic among the international community should therefore assist, and even cajole if necessary, the major parliamentary political parties to come up with their agenda and roadmap for sustainable peace, democracy, human rights, and then force the King and the Maoists to comply to these agenda and roadmap.

There are apprehensions within Nepal that the international community, even after February 1, may repeat the same mistake they made in the past three years, ultimately to their own frustration and to the tragedy for Nepali people. During the last week of April 2005, there have been media reports that India may have decided to resume military aid to the RNA. There are fears that the US might do the same soon after the King makes cosmetic changes, without any substantial improvements in the resumption of the democratic process.

As a result of an MoU signed between the UN and the Nepali government in April 2005, the UN is going to send 50 human rights monitors to Nepal, with the jurisdiction to investigate the cases of human rights violation by both the state and the Maoists. This is a welcome development in the context of the decreasing ability of domestic institutions to effectively monitor the human rights situation.

However, the national and international civil society has watch and assist the human rights monitors to collect evidence comprehensively so that it can ultimately be used by any war crimes tribunal that may be set up in the future to try the leaders of both the rebels and the state security forces, who feel unaccountable to anybody till now.

The way forward: to be led by the democratic forces

The attack on the democratic middle ground will only embolden the extremists on both sides, the far left and the far right. After February 1, there are credible reports of the Maoists threatening the people in rural areas to make their position clear: whether they are with the “revolutionary” Maoists or “reactionary” royalists. The King, military and their right-wing loyalists have publicly warned the people to choose between being “pro-peace” by supporting the King or “pro-terrorism” by not supporting him.

Both sides are unwilling to acknowledge the reality that the overwhelming majority of the unarmed people support neither of these forces. In the five elections, two local and three general, held since 1990, the five parliamentary political parties now launching a joint movement for democracy, have consistently secured over 85 percent of the votes.

Three separate national surveys conducted in the second half of 2004 by National Democratic Institute, International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) and AC Nielsen have consistently revealed that over three-quarters of the Nepali people prefer multi-party democratic system, with only about 5 percent of the people supporting the idea of an absolute monarchy.

According to the International IDEA survey, the combined support for the authoritarian system, as proposed by the Maoists and the King, was only 10 percent. Despite such clear and consistent rejection of authoritarianism by the vast majority of the people, both the King and the Maoists are claiming that the vast majority of the people support them, with their respective supporters justifying their claims on incredibly flimsy grounds, such as the “impression I got by talking to my friends out there” or “based on my conversation with a taxi driver and several shopkeepers in Kathmandu”.

The best way to give voice to the overwhelming majority of Nepalis supporting the democratic middle ground is to assist them gain the supremacy in Nepali politics, with simultaneous pressure on them to reform themselves to be more inclusive and internally democratic. The democratic forces in Nepal should be accorded primacy in any peace negotiations; it should be their government, assisted by a substantial representation of the traditionally marginalized social groups in Nepal, who should take the peace negotiations forward with the King and the Maoists.

There are claims and counterclaims made by different forces on the supremacy of their agenda and therefore their support base among the Nepali people. Ultimately, such claims have to be settled through fair elections, free from the shadows of the guns of either the King or the Maoists, conducted by an independent or representative government, with supervision from international monitors.

It is only through such elections, with massive participation of the people, that Nepalis can settle in the most democratic way the contentious issues of present day Nepal. That will also be the best way for different social groups to democratically renegotiate their relations to each other and to the state by writing a new constitution reflecting their aspirations for a more democratic, human-rights-friendly, just, inclusive and accountable state.

How can the US citizens assist the Nepali movement for democracy, human rights and peace?

The Nepali struggle for democracy, peace and human rights will be, and should be, the primary responsibility of the Nepali people. However, in the increasingly interdependent globalized world, the policy of powerful countries like the US has critical impact on countries such as Nepal. US support, either by design or default, to the dictatorial regime of the King will have disastrous consequences for the democratic constituency and ordinary citizens of Nepal.

On the other hand, solidarity of the US government and civil society for the people’s movement for democracy, human rights and peace in Nepal will provide moral support to the democratic constituency and help Nepal regain a sustainable peace within a democratic framework. The friends of Nepal in the US, therefore, can assist the movement for democracy and human rights in following ways:

a) Form local Citizens’ Solidarity Groups for Democracy and Human Rights in Nepal; autonomously conduct local activities such as: write briefs on the situation in Nepal and circulate the information locally through list-serves and other effective means, organize discussion programs locally to get more people interested on Nepal issue; write to local Congressmen and Senators requesting them to support pro-democracy US policy on Nepal.

b) Coordinate with similar groups within the US, Nepal and in other countries (such as the International Nepal Solidarity Network - www.insn.org, and various other web-based groups) and the Nepal human rights campaigns launched by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch; launch a specific and coordinated campaigns, starting with the following important and urgent ones:

• Write to and lobby the Congressmen, Senators and the US government to stop military assistance to the Royal Nepal Army until it is firmly under a democratic, civilian government and fully respects human rights of the citizens.

• Write to and lobby the Congressmen, Senators and the US government to put unequivocal and consistent pressure on King Gyanendra to release all prisoners of conscience, and make continuation of development aid contingent upon the resumption of the democratic process, as demanded in consensus by the major parliamentary political parties

• Promote public opinion, in coordination with the media, in favor of a democratic, inclusive and just solution to the crisis in Nepal along the lines suggested above ( para 5 above).

• Launch an international campaign for the establishment of war crimes tribunals to prosecute those responsible for gross violation of human rights in Nepal - this may ultimately be the most effective way to deter King Gyanendra and the Maoist leader Prachanda, both of whom feel unaccountable to any institution for the extreme violence they perpetrate against the unarmed civilians, seriously breaching the provisions of international human rights and humanitarian treaties Nepal has ratified (the UN human rights monitors need to gather evidence which can be used in future war crimes tribunals).

INSN is the International Nepal Solidarity Network, which has activists in over a dozen countries around the world who are working to bring democracy to Nepal. Visit their website for regular updates related to the Nepal crisis.