By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS
Kathmandu : Acting on a tip-off, rights activists Wednesday discovered what is likely to be the site where an infamous battalion of the Nepal army killed over four dozen Maoist prisoners and their suspected sympathizers and tried to destroy the corpses by setting fire to them.
The discovery of the probable massacre site in a national park, located north of Kathmandu Valley, is likely to jar Nepal’s becalmed peace negotiations between the Maoists and the government, especially since the government has ignored for nearly two years its peace accord pledge to disclose the fates of the hundreds of people missing during the insurgency and bring the killers to justice.
Advocacy Forum, one of Nepal’s leading human rights organizations, said after receiving “reliable information”, a team of its officials as well as members of Nepal’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) went to the Shivapuri National Park.
The team found burnt logs, coal, plastic sheets as well as tattered cloth, giving rise to suspicion that it could hold a mass grave.
Last year, the OHCHR made public a report that said during the insurgency, a battalion of the then Royal Nepalese Army had run secret torture camps in its barracks in Maharajgunj, at the very heart of the capital, where suspected Maoists and their sympathizers were arbitrarily detained, kept blindfolded and severely tortured.
The report also said that at least 49 detainees “disappeared” from the camps.
The guerrillas say the prisoners, including women, were taken to the Shivapuri forest, where they were shot down and buried.
Though Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, who came to power last year and signed a peace accord with the rebels, pledged the whereabouts of all missing detainees would be revealed in 60 days, almost two years later, the fate of over 1,000 people still remains unknown.
The families of the missing people have been launching frequent protest movements but to no avail.
The discovery of the potential mass grave would further embarrass the army as well as the government that failed to punish any of the army officers found guilty of gross human rights abuse.
Fearful that the army or other interested parties could try to remove or destroy the evidence, Advocacy as well as NHRC and OHCHR are asking the government to protect the site.
“Protection must be afforded to any site or evidence where it is alleged that victims of disappearances and extra-judicial executions might have been buried or cremated, as well as to any witness of such human rights violations,” the OHCHR said.
“Failure to do so jeopardizes the rights of victims to know the truth and to receive justice and reparation.”
The discovery of the likely mass grave comes after the discovery of the body of a 15-year-old schoolgirl, Maina Sunuwar, from an army-training centre, who was arrested and tortured to death by the army in 2004.
Initially, the army denied any involvement in her disappearance and then, under mounting pressure from home and abroad, sentenced three officers to six months’ imprisonment.