Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
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CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Nepal. Some of these links may lead to websites
that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false. No attempt
has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking
for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on
this page and others to see which aspects of Torture by Authorities are of
particular interest to you. You might
be interested in exploring the moral justification for inflicting pain or
inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment in order to obtain critical
information that may save countless lives, or to elicit a confession for a
criminal act, or to punish someone to teach him a lesson outside of the
courtroom. Perhaps your paper might
focus on some of the methods of torture, like fear, extreme temperatures,
starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, suffocation, or immersion in freezing
water. On the other hand, you might
choose to write about the people acting in an official capacity who
perpetrate such cruelty. There is a
lot to the subject of Torture by Authorities.
Scan other countries as well as this one. Draw comparisons between activity in
adjacent countries and/or regions.
Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources
that are available on-line. ***
ARCHIVES *** Freedom House
Country Report 2018 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/nepal/freedom-world/2018 [accessed 18 May
2020] F2. DOES DUE PROCESS PREVAIL IN CIVIL AND CRIMINAL MATTERS? Constitutional
guarantees of due process are poorly upheld in practice. Reports of arbitrary
arrests continue. Due to heavy case backlogs and a slow appeals process,
suspects are frequently kept in pretrial detention for periods longer than
the sentences they would face if tried and convicted. 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: Nepal U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, 30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/nepal/
[accessed 29 July
2021] TORTURE AND OTHER
CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT According to human rights
activists and legal experts, police resorted to severe abuse, primarily
beatings, to force confessions. The Nepal human rights group AF also reported
that law enforcement personnel subjected violators of the COVID-19 lockdown
to inhuman and degrading treatment. Violators were detained for hours in the
sun, forced to do sit-ups, frog jumps, and crawl on the road. AF and THRDA
reported annual decreases of torture and mistreatment, although THRDA noted
that this trend did not hold in the southern portion of the country. AF
stated that police increasingly complied with the courts’ demand for
preliminary medical checks of detainees. AF reported that 19
percent of the 1,005 detainees interviewed in 2019 reported some form of
torture or ill treatment. These numbers were even higher among women (26.3
percent) and juvenile detainees (24.5 percent). Investigate
police torture of Tharu community members: AI Kathmandu Post, 19
July 2016 www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/07/nepal-torture-of-tharu-community/ www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa31/4456/2016/en/ [accessed 2 August
2016] The AI has stated
that 18 of the 19 detainees interviewed said they had been tortured from the
moment the police took them into custody. The detainees have reported beating
and torture immediately upon arrest. Some said that they were beaten until
they fell unconscious. The detainees
interviewed have reported police beating them with bamboo sticks, boots,
lathis (bamboo-made police batons), plastic pipes, and ‘whatever came to
their hand’. All detainees said
they were then forced to sign “confessions” admitting to their alleged
crimes, without even being allowed to read the document. Ram Prasad
Chaudhary, a detainee who was subjected to extensive torture, said that the
police used force to hold his hand and secure a signed “confession”. Nepal
army officer goes on trial for torture in London Worldbulletin News,
24 February 2015 www.worldbulletin.net/news/155616/nepal-army-officer-goes-on-trial-for-torture-in-london [accessed 30 March
2015] A Nepali army colonel
went on trial at London's Old Bailey on Tuesday on charges of torture during
a 10-year civil war, in a case the government of the Himalayan state has
sought in vain to keep out of the courts. Kumar Lama is
charged by British prosecutors with inflicting "severe pain or
suffering" on Nepali citizens Janak Bahadur Raut and Karam Hussain in an
army barracks in April and May 2005, according to court listings and lawyers. Lama was arrested in
the southern British town of St Leonards-on-Sea in January 2013 while on
leave from a U.N. mission in South Sudan. He was arrested under Section 134
of the Criminal Justice Act, which gives British courts universal
jurisdiction to pursue those accused of torture. Prisons
in East turning into ‘torture chambers’ Awadhesh Kumar JHA,
Kantipur Publications, 23 February 2015 www.ekantipur.com/2015/02/23/national/prisons-in-east-turning-into-torture-chambers/402013.html [accessed 30 March
2015] The National Human
Rights Council (NHRC) has warned that prison facilities in the country are
turning into “torture chambers”. Organising a press
meet in the district on Sunday following the conclusion of the six-day long field
supervision of prisons in eastern-Nepal, coordinator Sudip Pathak of the
national rights watchdog team said that most of the prisons that were
inspected were in dire straits without adequate food, drinking water supply
and other basic necessities. “We also found that
inmates were kept in a room without windows at the facility, often in
inhumane conditions, which is an outright denial of human rights,” Pathak
said. Torture still
common in detention centres Himalayan News
Service, Kathmandu, 25 June 2014 www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=Torture+still+common+in+detention+centres&NewsID=419354 [accessed 30 June
2014] nepalhumanrights.com/2014/06/1921.html [accessed 28 August
2016] advocacyforum.org/downloads/pdf/press-statement/2014/press-release-english-june-2014.pdf [accessed 9 January
2019] Torture and other
cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment are still common in detention centres,
says a report released today. The report titled Promising Development – Persistent
Problems: Trends and Patterns in Torture in Nepal During 2013 released by
Advocacy Forum reveals that at least 16.7 per cent detainees were tortured in
the detention centres last year. Torture and cruel,
inhuman and degrading treatment of juveniles remain a major concern, with
22.9 per cent and 25.7 per cent of juveniles below eighteen and sixteen years
of age respectively reporting that they were tortured in detention while 5.7
per cent women in detention reported torture, a rate lower than other groups
but still unacceptably high. Police torture a
Tamang family in Dhading district Asian Human Rights
Commission, 17 June 2014 www.humanrights.asia/news/urgent-appeals/AHRC-UAC-089-2014 [accessed 17 June
2014] CASE NARRATIVE - On 7 February, personnel
from the Jivanpur Police Station arrested two children, Ruben (9 years) and
Prabesh (10 years), and took them to the Police Station. The arrests followed
the complaint of theft, of money, gold, and silver, lodged by Mrs. Sunamati
and Mr. Buddhi Tamang, who happen to be relatives. The police severely
tortured the two boys. The boys were subject to common methods of torture
such as falanga (beating of the soles of the feet) and random beatings using
a plastic pipe and stick. They were also kicked and boxed on their back,
heads, and legs. The police would torture the boys for the whole day and
allow them to go home at night. Daily, the boys would be taken to the police
station and tortured. The torture continued for 9 consecutive days. The mother to the
boys, Mrs. Shanti Tamang, heard their painful and piercing cries as she
waited outside the police station, having been denied permission to meet her
children. On the 9th day, the police took them to Khanikhola Police Station
located in the same district. The boys were tortured the whole day. On the
10th day, they were forced to sign a confession statement and released. Nepali torture
victim petitions UN for justice The Himalayan Times,
Kathmandu, 20 February 2014 www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=Nepali+torture+victim+petitions+UN+for+justice+&NewsID=406582 [accessed 24 Feb
2014] [accessed 28 August
2016] Prashanta Pandey, a
Nepali victim of torture, filed a complaint at the UN Human Rights Committee
in Geneva seeking justice. He was tortured in
order to extract from him a confession on his alleged involvement in the
planning and execution of a bomb-explosion perpetrated on March 27, 2011. He
was forced to accept the accusation on April 13, 2011. During his
detention with the police, Pandey was repeatedly beaten, kept constantly
blindfolded and handcuffed, insulted and threatened, Trial said in a
statement issued today from Geneva. He was even forced to
urinate on a live electric heater, provoking a shock that made him bleed from
his genitals and faint. He never received any medical treatment or attention. Police
arbitrarily arrest and torture two men in Kathmandu Asian Human Rights
Commission - Urgent Appeals Programme Urgent Appeal Case:
AHRC-UAC-120-2013 ,16 September 2013 www.humanrights.asia/news/urgent-appeals/AHRC-UAC-120-2013 [accessed 17 Sept
2013] According to the
victims, they were then kept together in a room containing a table, chairs,
bamboo sticks and plastic pipes. Rabi was immediately blindfolded and
tortured. The three police officers present in the room punched and kicked
his face, his chest, his bottom, his thighs, his back with their police
boots. They slapped his ears, cheeks, face and eyes several times. They forced him to
stand on his head and hands and used bamboo sticks to beat the soles of his feet.
The torture lasted until he could not bear the pain anymore and agreed to
everything they asked. The torture then stopped and the policemen started the
interrogation again. As Rabi could not
answer those questions, the policemen handcuffed him, forced his knees
through his handcuffed hands and inserted a stick through his bended knees.
Two policemen lifted the stick and a third policeman kicked on his bottom and
back. They lifted him and let him fall down on the floor several times. Rabi
became unconscious repeatedly. The torture continued until one policeman told
the others to stop for fear that the victim would get killed. Then he was
given some water and time to rest. However, the policemen then started to
torture him again turn by turn. After the victim told them that one of his
legs had been broken in a car accident, they beat more intensively the
previously injured leg. They forced the victim to jump for a while, a way to
attenuate the appearance of blue marks due to torture. As he could not jump properly,
they kicked him and beat him again using sticks. Two policemen held him by
the arms and carried him down to the detention cell of the Metropolitan
Police Range (MPR), Hanumandhoka at around 11 pm. In the meanwhile,
Dudhraj had been tortured on the other side of the room. After he denied
knowing anything about the stolen gold, a police inspector ordered his
subordinates to torture him. Some policemen forced him to lie down on the
floor and one of them stepped on his legs with his boots. They beat on the
soles of his feet, slapped his face and made him jump. The torture continued
until 11 pm that evening where he was brought down to the MPR with Rabi. Torture against
detainees continues: Advocacy Forum Republica, Kathmandu, 25 June
2013 www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=56828 [accessed 26 June
2013] Stating that cases
of torture against detainees in the country are rampant, Advocacy Forum (AF),
a human rights organization, has urged the government bring an end to such inhuman
practice. According a report
unveiled by AF in the capital on Tuesday, 22.3% of detainees have claimed
that they were subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment in detention. “Juveniles were
found particularly vulnerable, with 34.7 % of them claiming they were
subjected to torture or other ill-treatment,” says the report. AF has said that it
monitored 57 detention centers in 20 districts across the country. The report
has stressed the need for taking initiatives to eradicate torture in the
country. “Nepal must step up
to fulfill its promise to the citizens and the international community to
address the widespread problem of torture by enacting legislation
criminalizing torture and bringing those found responsible to justice,” said
AF President Mandira Sharma, adding, “Time has come to get our act together
to end pervasive practices of torture and to reform the justice system.” Torture Still
Continues – A Brief Report on the Practice of Torture in Nepal 2006-2007 Advocacy Forum, 25
June 2007 advocacyforum.org/downloads/pdf/publications/26-June-publication.pdf [accessed 1 August
2017] EXECUTIVE SUMMARY - Despite the
abdication of absolute
rule and the
end of armed
hostilities between the Government and
the Maoists, violations
and abuses have
been rampant since
the People’s Movement. Advocacy Forum alone has documented 1,313
new cases of torture. Though the power of the military to detain civilians
has been curtailed, the Nepal Army (NA) still arrests and detains civilians
and inflicts torture upon them. AF has documented 17 cases of torture, 4
cases of rape and 6 cases of illegal detention of civilian by the military
after April 2006. Advocacy Forum’s
documentation of police
detention centres has
shown that the
People’s Movement has not
led to any significant amelioration in
detention practices. Of the
3,908 detainees interviewed since April 2006, 27.6% were subjected to
acts of torture. AF has also documented 67 cases of torture, 1 case of rape,
and 96 cases of abduction committed by the Maoists since the People’s
Movement of April 2006. Common methods of
torture include electrocution; sexual abuse and rape threats; restriction of
food, water, and use of toilet; excessive beating by iron rods and bamboo
sticks, especially on the soles of the feet and back; and death threats and
threats of indefinite detention. A Warning to
Rights Abusers Human Rights Watch,
London, 4 January 2013 www.hrw.org/news/2013/01/04/nepal-warning-rights-abusers [accessed 6 February
2013] The Nepal authorities
have failed to file a single prosecution in civilian courts concerning war
crimes, including torture, despite numerous cases in which evidence has been
presented to the authorities by victims, their families, and national and
international organizations. Although torture is
not a specific crime in Nepal, the Nepali government is bound by
international law to ensure that serious international crimes such as torture
are investigated and those responsible are prosecuted. The failure to
prosecute these cases also contradicts the Nepal government’s public
pronouncements about delivering justice for wartime atrocities and orders of
the Nepali Supreme Court to investigate and prosecute wartime abuse cases.
Several people alleged to be responsible for these abuses from both the
Nepali security forces and the former Maoist insurgents have been promoted,
some to positions in which they can directly interfere in criminal
investigations. Agence France-Presse
AFP, www.bettercarenetwork.org/violence/search/closeup.asp?infoID=18994 [accessed 14
September 2014] www.child-nepal.com/?page_id=281 [accessed 28 August
2016] www.crin.org/en/library/news-archive/nepal-police-torture-kids-fun-rights-group [accessed 1 August
2017] The New York-based
Human Rights Watch said it had received more than 200 reports this year of
the torture in police custody of street
children or minors suspected of crimes.
"Sometimes, the torture is inflicted to extract confessions from
the children," said Human Rights Watch researcher Bede Sheppard. "At other times it appears to be
carried out purely for the entertainment of the official," Sheppard
said. The youngest alleged victim of
police torture was a 13-year-old, and methods of torture reported on the
minors included kicking, punching, forcing metal nails under toenails and
beatings with plastic pipes, the rights group said. Conclusions and
recommendations of the Committee against Torture U.N. Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment -- Doc. CAT/C/NPL/CO/2
(2007) www1.umn.edu/humanrts/cat/observations/nepal2007.html [accessed 4 March
2013] Widespread use of
torture 13. The Committee
is gravely concerned about the exceedingly large number of consistent and reliable
reports concerning the widespread use of torture and ill-treatment by law
enforcement personnel, and in particular the Royal Nepalese Army, the Armed
Police Force and the Police, and the absence of measures to ensure the
effective protection of all members of society (arts. 2 and 11). The State party
should publicly condemn the practice of torture and take effective measures
to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction. The State party should also take all
measures, as appropriate, to protect all members of society from acts of
torture. Detention 14. The Committee
is also concerned about: (a) The number of
detainees in prolonged detention without trial under the Public Security Act
and the Terrorist and Disruptive (Control and Punishment) Ordnance (TADO) of
2004; (b) The extensive
resort to pretrial detention lasting up to 15 months and the lack of
fundamental guarantees under the Terrorist and Disruptive (Control and
Punishment) Ordnance 2005 of the rights of persons deprived of liberty,
including the right to challenge arrest, resulting in numerous alleged cases
of incommunicado detention. The State party
should bring the practice of pretrial detention into line with international
human rights norms and ensure that the fundamental rights of persons deprived
of liberty are guaranteed, including the right to habeas corpus, the right to
inform a relative, and the right of access to a lawyer and a doctor of one’s
choice. The State party should ensure
that any measure taken to combat terrorism is in accordance with Security
Council resolutions 1373 (2001) and 1566 (2004), which require that
anti-terrorist measures be carried out with full respect for, inter alia,
international human rights law, including the Convention. The State party should provide to the
Committee information on the number of people still in pretrial detention. AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL From an old article -- URL not available Article was
published sometime prior to 2015 TORTURE AND OTHER
ILL-TREATMENT Despite acceding to
the UN Convention against Torture in 1991, Nepal had not defined torture as a
crime under national law. In April, the Council of Ministers announced plans
for a bill to criminalize torture, but this had not been completed by the
time the Constituent Assembly was dissolved. In July, the UN Human Rights
Committee reminded Nepal of its obligation to enact a law defining and
criminalizing torture, and to repeal all laws granting impunity to alleged
perpetrators of torture and enforced disappearance. Torture and other
ill-treatment of men, women and children in police custody remained
widespread. The UN Committee against Torture concluded in its annual report
that torture in Nepal was habitual, widespread and deliberate, and was
ultimately practised systematically. IMPUNITY Efforts to ensure
accountability for human rights violations and victims’ rights to justice,
truth and reparation were seriously undermined by the government’s promotion of
individuals alleged to have committed human rights violations to senior
public positions. Kuber Singh Rana, the
subject of ongoing criminal investigations into the 2003 enforced disappearance and extrajudicial execution of five students
in Dhanusha district, was promoted to the rank of
Inspector General of Police in September. The promotion of
Raju Basnet, a colonel suspected of involvement in war crimes, to the rank of
Brigadier General in October was widely condemned by human rights activists
and put on hold following a stay order issued by the Supreme Court in the
same month. The government
continued to request the withdrawal of criminal cases against individuals
affiliated with political parties, as part of a commitment under the
Comprehensive Peace Agreement and subsequent agreements to withdraw cases of
a “political” nature. No clear definition of a “political case” was provided,
and many cases recommended for withdrawal involved murder, abduction and
other serious crimes. ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Freedom House
Country Report - Political Rights: 4 Civil Liberties: 4 Status: Partly Free 2009 Edition www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2009/nepal [accessed 6 February
2013] LONG
URL ç 2009 Country Reports begin on Page 21 [accessed 13 May
2020] In ordinary criminal
cases, police at times commit extrajudicial killings and cause the
disappearance of suspects in custody. They also occasionally torture and beat
suspects to punish them or to extract confessions. In November 2008, Human
Rights Watch reported that police had beaten over 200 children while in
custody for petty crimes in 2008. The government generally has refused to
conduct thorough investigations or take serious disciplinary measures against
officers accused of brutality. Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61709.htm [accessed 6 February
2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61709.htm [accessed 4 July
2019] TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – The law
prohibits torture, beating, and mutilation; however, security forces
regularly engaged in such activities to punish suspects or to extract
confessions. The Center for Victims of Torture (CVICT), a local NGO, reported
that blindfolding and beating the soles of feet were commonly used methods.
The government failed to conduct thorough and independent investigations of
reports of security force brutality and generally did not take significant
disciplinary action against those involved. Citizens were afraid to bring
cases against the police or the army for fear of reprisals. On September 16,
the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture concluded that the police, APF, and RNA
systematically practiced torture and ill-treatment in order to extract
confessions and to obtain intelligence against Maoists. The government
insisted it was committed to preventing human rights abuses and indicated
that disciplinary action had been taken against the guilty. The RNA stated it
had looked into 179 cases of alleged torture presented by the UN. The NHRC
has not received information regarding disciplinary action taken by the RNA
in these cases. The law provides
for compensation for victims of torture. According to CVICT, 9 persons filed
for compensation under the act during the year, and of the 184 cases filed
since the act was created in 1996, the court made a decision to award
compensation in 26 cases, but at year's end, compensated only one claimant. On July 24, six
armed plainclothes security forces took Lokendra Khadka from his house in Kathmandu with his hands tied
behind his back and a hood over his head. Security forces threatened to kill
him and used water torture, beatings, and electric shocks to force him to
admit to being a Maoist. On September 12,
Shiv Bohora, 23, acting president of the Nepal
Student Union at Mahendra Ratna
Campus, Kathmandu, claimed that police beat him with batons, boots, and the
butts of their rifles, causing him to lose control of his bladder and bowels,
and ultimately lose consciousness after he was arrested for throwing stones
in a campus protest. Police were investigating the incident, and the case
remained open at year's end. There were numerous
allegations of torture by Maoists insurgents (see section 1.g.). All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this
webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, "Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance
& Other Ill Treatment in the early years of the 21st Century-
Nepal", http://gvnet.com/torture/Nepal.htm, [accessed <date>] |
