Details of conflict-hit being collected | Concerns over Peace Committee berth to murder accused | Insurgency victims deprive of relief

Details of conflict-hit being collected

Added At:  2011-04-13 4:42 PM  

Last Updated At: 2011-04-13 4:42 PM

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RSS

KAWASOTI: Local peace committee in Nawalparasi has started to collect the details of the conflict-hit people during the insurgency in the district.

The details of the insurgency victims are being prepared by forming different peace committees at the local level as records of the conflict-hit people were missed in the past as well. The committees are collecting the records of the victims, displaced and abducted people including the destroyed public property during the decade long conflict.

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Concerns over Peace Committee berth to murder accused

Added At:  2011-04-11 5:04 PM  

Last Updated At: 2011-04-11 5:04 PM

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THT ONLINE

KATHMANDU: Accountability Watch Committee (AWC) has expressed its concern over the nomination of Devendra Poudel, one of the murder accused of teacher Muktinath Adhikari, as the coordinator of Lamjung District Peace Committee.

Adhikari, the principal of Lamjung-based Panini Sanskrit School, was brutally killed by a group of Maoists after abducting him from the school premises nine years ago.

Issuing a statement, AWC Chairman Sushil Pyakurel accused the government of backing impunity by rewarding the murder accused by picking up him at the Peace Committee a day after the victim’s family filed a case against him at the District Police Office.

Adhkari’s widow filed the case against four including Poudel, Jita, Sadhuram alias Prabhuram Ghimire of Bhorletar and Dhruba Adhikari of Kaski last week.

The AWC urged the government to look into the case and not to reward the ones accused of human rights violations.

In the case, Indira has mentioned the incident of January 16, 2002, when Muktinath was accosted by a group of Maoist cadres led by Devendra, Sadhuram and Dhruba in the class before he was taken to Duradanda and murdered.

She has also mentioned that the same group had sought donation from Muktinath during Dashain the previous year.

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Insurgency victims deprive of relief

Added At:  2011-04-11 3:40 PM  

Last Updated At: 2011-04-11 3:40 PM

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RSS

BANKE: Insurgency victims of Baijapur area in Banke district have complained that they were not provided relieves from the state side yet. Altogether 19 people of Baijapur area had lost their lives during the decade long insurgency.

The victims said they were not provided with the relief amount distributed by the government for the war victims through the district peace committee.

However, chair of Banke district peace committee Saroj Pokhrel claimed that most of the deceased's families were provided with the relief amount from the state side.

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Price of conflict costing state in excess of Rs. 2.5 billion

The Himalayan Times - Price of conflict costing state in excess of Rs. 2.5 billion - Detail News

Added At: 2011-03-31 6:07 PM

Last Updated At: 2011-03-31 6:07 PM

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LEKHANATH PANDEY

KATHMANDU: As the saying goes, conflict comes at a cost. Nepal’s post-conflict approach to assuage the decade-long conflict-victims reflects it truly.

The state coffers have already been depleted by at least Rs. 2.5 billion just to give a nominal relief package to some of the thousands of victims of the Maoist insurgency, and the cost continues to rise.

Data prepared by the Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction (MoPR) showed that it has delivered an amount of Rs. 1.4 billion as relief to the kin and kith of 14,064 people who died during the rebellion. It is yet to allocate relief to the remaining 2655 people who suffered the same fate. It means that the state would have to pay at least another Rs. 265 million to the remaining victims’ families.

Relief and Rehabilitation Unit at the MoPR has set a criterion of allocating Rs. 100,000 to the family of every single person killed during the conflict. A total of 16,719 people have been reported dead in the conflict.

“We have already sent necessary relief fund of 14,064 deceased persons to District Administrative Offices concerned to provide relief to their families,” said RRB Division Chief at MoPR Ganesh Prasad Upadhaya. “The remaining will soon get the relief package.”

The relief package costs the state more than Rs. 1 billion for those affected by the conflict, including disabled, disappeared, abducted, dependents, including children and widows. Only 29,000 internally displaced persons out of 78,675 have received nominal relief and compensation from the government and have been resettled in their own place. It has already cost the state at least Rs. 340 million, and the remaining two thirds will certainly cost nearly twice the amount.

At least Rs. 100 million has been used as compensation for some 11,775 cases of physical infrastructure destroyed. Likewise, Rs. 130 million has been expended as relief to the kith and kin of 1302 people who disappeared. The amount has been mobilised through Nepal Peace Trust Fund, a donor-funded Trust to address the post-conflict relief and rehabilitation issues.

An account of the victims in different categories had been prepared by the RRU, based in MoPR, with the help of inter-governmental agencies and the relief fund has been distributed through the local channel. Upadhaya, however, said that RRU had faced the challenge of identifying the true victims of the conflict.

In addition to the relief package, a whopping 5,560 physical infrastructure had been destroyed during the conflict. Only 1,968 has been rebuilt at a cost of more than Rs. 3.7 billion from the coffers.

NEPAL: Relatives of the missing struggle with legal void, social taboos

Photo: Brendan Brady/IRIN

Nepali widow, Belrani

BARDIA, 29 December 2010 (IRIN) - The economic and emotional toll of seeking answers continues for families of more than 1,000 missing during Nepal’s decade-long civil conflict which ended four years ago. While legal answers are proving elusive, widow-headed households are turning to NGOs for economic help. 

Eight years ago when Belrani Tharu’s husband applied for a job with the army, local commanders believed he was an enemy spy and arrested him - at least, this is what she was told by a man who said he had been her husband’s prison cellmate. 

Belrani, 35, lives in a small village in Bardia, a district in southern Nepal which in the mid-1990s turned from bucolic idyll into a conflict zone. 

“We searched everywhere for him. I’ve been waiting for my husband; I believe one day he will come,” she said. 

Suspected of being enemy collaborators, thousands of civilians were detained, interrogated and killed in Nepal’s 1996-2006 conflict between government troops and Maoist insurgents. 

Four years after the signing of a peace treaty, the fate of at least 1,370 individuals remains unknown, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). 

Rights groups assume most of the unaccounted for are dead. However, the status of the “missing” is officially unresolved until their bodily remains are produced or conclusive testimony concerning their death is provided. 
Families and rights groups are demanding answers - and legal recourse - but pursuing accountability is fraught with difficulty. 

Under Nepalese law, crimes such as kidnapping and murder during the civil war cannot be applied to state soldiers. Initial legislation to address disappearances granted amnesty to perpetrators. 

Legal impasse
Earlier in 2010, activists successfully lobbied for a bill with provisions for criminal prosecutions, but efforts to expedite it have been frustrated by the same political deadlock that has left Nepal with only a caretaker prime minister and no ruling party. 

But even if new legislation is passed, questions will remain about enforcement. 

“Unless there is political will, the legislation will mean nothing,” said Mandira Sharma, executive director of Advocacy Forum, a Kathmandu-based NGO providing pro-bono legal representation to families of missing persons in civilian courts. 

Four years waiting, asking

Families want answers to cases of the disappeared

Widespread disappearances still unresolved despite peace

Families of disappeared call for action

Families demand to know fate of missing relatives

Families of the disappeared demand justice

Economic help 

In 2008, the Maoist-led government gave the equivalent of US$1,385 in temporary compensation to families with missing relatives. Though this is roughly three times per capita gross domestic product, it is still insufficient for the long-term problems widows face. 

More than two-thirds of disappeared persons were married men. 

Like Belrani, most wives of disappeared persons come from isolated, rural communities, where fighting was fiercest. 

In these areas, tradition dictates that a woman should care for her family instead of earning income. As a result, it is difficult - even taboo - for a widowed woman to support herself and her children. 

Since 2007 the ICRC has assisted 600 of the most economically vulnerable families of the disappeared through assets which include livestock and agricultural materials. Belrani received a cow through this programme, and she sells the milk to supplement her meagre income. 

The ICRC is emphatic in branding the assistance “interim relief”. “Reparations would [wrongly] suggest the situation has been resolved, and of course it hasn’t,” said Jamila Hammami, with the ICRC in Kathmandu. 

Hindu customs, which are often strictly enforced in these communities, prohibit widows from remarrying until they receive official confirmation of their husband’s death. 

In the absence of such confirmation, by Nepalese law, a wife is unable to assume control of family property until 12 years after her suspected-to-be-dead-husband was last sighted. 

Through confidential interviews with both the Nepal Army and Maoist fighters, the ICRC is attempting to obtain information for families about burial sites which could contain the remains of their abducted relatives. 

bb/pt/cb 

Theme (s): Conflict, Economy, Gender Issues, Human Rights,

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

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