Stop misuse of vehicles

The government’s new measures against misuse of government vehicles on public holidays is no doubt a step in the right direction that should prevent further misuse of state owned vehicles. However, whether
the government can effectively implement the new provision by taking action against those who misuse them, is yet to be seen. Past experience shows that politicians, bureaucrats and even judicial officials hardly tend to respond positively to such directives.

It is often reported in the media that politicians have frequently used government vehicles for years without any authority. Likewise, government officials going on family recreation trips on holidays is not an altogether new thing. Had the government introduced measures to curb such misuse some time back, things would not deteriorated to this extent. Sheer lack of seriousness to fight such tendency is responsible for this problem. For, no government has ever tried to curb this misuse in the past. Nor has it ever bothered to discourage officials and politicians from continuing to possess the government vehicles illegally.

The new provisions regarding government vehicles should not be taken lightly. Effective monitoring will however be crucial. The stipulated provision that allows government vehicles to ply on the roads on holidays, by issuing special passes to them, is also not quite justifiable as it may also provide room for misuse.

Although the government has shown concern about the misuse of vehicles, the more important aspect is however its implementation. The government can ignore this only at the cost of its own credibility and image. Political leaders, too, should be aware of the fact that any misuse of taxpayer’s money — be it abusing vehicles or any other facility — is a form of corruption that must be eradicated from society. But, unfortunately, it has so far been tolerated by us. The government must take stock of its vehicles and also develop a mechanism to monitor the way vehicles of semi-government agencies are used. Besides, it also needs to keep account of vehicles acquired from different donors for "development" projects. A transparent policy defining who is eligible for vehicle facility and why, would also be in order so that misuse by party cadres can be prevented. After all, political leaders and officials have no right to misuse property acquired through taxpayers’ money.

No breakthrough in refugee talk yet

By Rakesh Chhetri

The right to return to one’s homeland is a universal right protected by various international laws including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Art. 13) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, (Art. 12). It is claimed on this basis that an individual’s attachment and allegiance to a particular territory in which he was born is a basic human right. For the last seven years, Nepal and Bhutan have been debating on the return of Bhutanese refugees to their country.

Like all past Nepal-Bhutan Joint Ministerial Level Committee Talks (JMLCT) on return of Bhutanese refugees, the four-day-long Bhutan-Nepal Foreign Secretary Level (FSL) talks held on March 12-15, 2000 also ended inconclusively. It is still a mystery why the Bhutanese delegation preferred to hold talks only after dusk till the wee hours instead of during normal working hours.

Right from the first JMLCT in 1993, through the FSL talk, the bilateral talks hinged around the establishment of ‘mechanism for verification of the four categories of refugees’ and ‘harmonising the two sides’ positions on each categories - without any success. According to the Nepalese Foreign Ministry’s press statement, the "differences persist between the two sides on a few key issues including the basic unit of verification, determination of authenticity of the documents for identification of the refugees, and creation of an appeal mechanism". It further said that "a lot of common ground" was prepared regarding "joint examination of documents, printing of the pro forma, sharing costs, outlining the work procedure of the verification team, etc, which is likely to begin after those documents have been approved and adopted by the Joint Ministerial Committee." It was also reported that "there is now no room for further consultation at the Secretary Level and, it is only through the ministerial talks that any thing can be decided." Seven precious years were just lost in failing to agree on even the first item of the agenda due to Bhutan’s arrogant, obstinate and uncompromising attitude.

Obstacle: As reported in this paper, the bone of contention between the two sides has been ‘differences over the verification process’. However, this is yet another strategy of Bhutan to prolong the verification process, thereby delaying the actual repatriation of refugees. Bhutan wants refugees’ assimilation outside Bhutan. It has also set its eye on the 56th sessions of the UN Human Rights Commission being held from March 20-April 20, 2000. It wants to deflect international scrutiny at the Commission by saying that it is already engaged in bilateral initiatives with Nepal to find a solution. Both the governments must withdraw the categorization of refugees, which has so far remained the biggest obstacle.

Verification: Bhutan must agree for the early constitution of mechanism for verification of Bhutanese refugees. The verification must be started from one of the refugee camps and should be done simultaneously in all seven refugee camps. The verification team should interview the heads of the family and not the individual members of refugee family. Bhutan keeps records of census and lands of its citizens in the name of head of the family and not on individual basis. Hence, there is no justification in interviewing every refugee when the census record that is maintained is not in his name but in the name of the head of the family. Interviewing individual refugees will prolong the process of verification. It will not take more than a year to interview and verify 12,000 or so refugee families in the camps.

The verification team should first interview refugees possessing citizenship cards issued by the Royal Government of Bhutan (RGOB). Then it should proceed with verifying other documents such as cattle, house and land tax paid receipts, employment letters issued by the RGOB, government service records, award of scholarships, school enrolment records, militia training evidences, payment of forced labour contribution tax like goongdawoola and saptolemi etc for those whose citizenship certificates were confiscated by RGOB. Refugees must be included in the verification team.

After verification, both countries should sign a legal document of the verified refugees qualified for repatriation in the presence of the representatives of international community and the UN Human Rights Commission so that the refugees can go back home with full legal protection of both countries and international legal regime.

Infiltrators: Bhutan always claims the presence of non-Bhutanese refugees in the camps. There could definitely be its infiltrators, impersonating as Bhutanese refugees in the camps. They could be easily detected and verified. Once the Nepalese government declares the date for conducting the verification process, these infiltrators will just vanish in the air.

In order for the bilateral initiatives to be successful, Bhutan must refrain form injecting additional problems. The RGOB is fully engaged in fascist style of resettlement in the lands of refugees and bilateral options for resolution of refugee problems side by side. It must decommission the ongoing resettlement programme in the lands of refugees in southern Bhutan from other parts of the country. It should stop marginalization of the Lhotshampa population inside Bhutan and stop discriminating against Lhotshampa children inside Bhutan. Lhotshampa children are denied admission to schools in the country on the ground that they have relatives in refugee camps. Bhutan must realise that refugees cannot melt away as it had thought earlier while evicting the Lhotshampas from southern Bhutan. No community as large as the size of Bhutanese refugees can melt away or even remain refugees for a long time.

Indian militants: According to a source in Thimphu, Bhutan is facing the worst security nightmare in its entire history from the militants of India’s outlawed United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and assorted Bodo organisations. Assamese militants demanding a sovereign, independent Assam were provided safe sanctuary by the government of Bhutan in 1991 in return for their support for terrorizing the Nepali-speaking southern Bhutanese to leave Bhutan. These militants have reportedly killed more than two dozen Bhutanese army personnel in the last two months. But RGOB has not publicized the death of its army personnel. They have also been found to be moving freely in central and southeastern parts of the country. They have issued serious warnings to Bhutan against cooperating with Indian army against them.

On February 27, the Assamese militants killed Assam’s PWD minister Nagen Sarma in Nalbari, Assam. The assailants reportedly came from their hideouts in Bhutan and fled back to their camps in Bhutan. According to recent information from Thimphu, more than fifty thousand Assamese militants and their sympathizers keep moving in and out of Bhutan.

Asylum: The futility of bilateral talks have evidently left an imprint that refugees will not be able to go home unless the international community makes it happen. Hence, refugees must vigorously lobby with the international community for their return. For this, they must have their bulk presence in Europe, Canada and the United States - even by seeking legal asylum there. They should lobby with the Members of Parliament, Congress, Senate, public opinion leaders, the electronic media, including the Presidents and Prime Ministers in these countries for their return home. Many other exiled groups like the Tibetans, Burmese, Iraqis, Kurds etc are active in these countries campaigning for their cause. The refugees must realize the fact that they cannot win their freedom, democracy and home by engaging in armed militancy.

Mobile : Do you really need one ?

By Hitesh Karki

Its not uncommon anymore to see people on wheels using one hand to steer and the other to hold a mobile phone glued to their ears. Even pedestrians talk on their mobiles. And that’s not the end, one often comes across a situation where the motorcycle rider ahead of you all of sudden veers his bike to the side and takes out his mobile.

Think for a while. If the king of Gods, Brahma, created the cell phone he never told anybody. Neither Lord Krishna needed it for his flute was seductive enough for the gopinis. Even Adolf Hitler couldn’t have taken to the mobile. Had he given mobiles to his generals, you can imagine what the situation would be like. As soon as the Furher would appear in sight they would have to first shine their boots (often resorting to the usual practice of rubbing its face against the lower back of their trousers ! ) and salute "Hail Hitler". Well the bowler would have been okay but not while holding a mobile in the right hand.

That was in the past.

Today, there are people who wouldn’t be seen dead without a mobile. The newly introduced Pagers have almost become a thing of the past. And amongst them happens to be a very close and dear friend of mine. A member of the neo-rich elite class. One day as I was walking with him carrying on what I thought to be a conversation, all of sudden I was completely startled by his out of context shout. I turned around only to see that it was the mobile for which the shout was aimed at and not me. I think it would be worth mentioning one incident here. Once we were walking through Durbar Marg when three beautiful girls happened to be coming from the other end heading towards us. He immediately took out his mobile, just to flaunt it in the hope of impressing them, and started speaking but then as we were just across each other his mobile started to beep!

That’s the present.

When NTC first introduced the mobile service in the kingdom he had almost immediately begun to develop an inferiority complex just because he had not acquired one while the rest of the town was seen roaming around with their newly acquired mobiles. And when he did get hold of one, it still did not help him simply because almost no one called him. This certainly was turning out to be quite embarrassing.

So what he did was gave me his number and asked me to call him at certain times. The timings would be such that he would be at one of the discotheques, parties or attending a meeting with his boss. For him it was a much better way of telling the world that he also possessed one and it was meant for business and not just for showing off. Little beeps of the phone and he would easily interpret in any which way he preferred to the people around him while I at the other end would be saying something completely silly like bhaat khayis!

I am very sorry but I have to stop here. I have to call him, obviously at his mobile, because he is right now hosting a dinner for some foreigners at Soaltee Crowne Plaza.

Was life really that difficult without a mobile?

Making our prisons better

By Ronald Peter Nash

It is a sad thing that people have to be locked up in prisons. Through the courts, the State has the right to punish individuals for social transgressions, and such punishment can be in various forms, be it fines, imprisonment or other forms.

Yet, under the human rights law, the punishment in the case of imprisonment is in the form of restrictions on the right of the individual’s freedom of movement for a fixed period. Having been deprived of the freedom of movement through incarceration for the designated period, the culprit has theoretically paid his or her debt to society and should once again be a free and full member of society.

This means that individuals punished with imprisonment go to prison as punishment. The restriction in personal liberties brought about by denial of free movement is punishment enough. Individuals do not go to prison for punishment. This is to say they do not go to prison for further deprivations over and above the restriction on their free movement. They certainly do not go to prison for torture; and indeed in the case of Nepal, this is not one of the more common problems for prisoners.

But nor do prisoners go there to suffer other deprivations brought about through the inadequacies or lack of material resources of the state. Such shortcomings include overcrowded or insanitary conditions, lack of access to proper medical resources, undernutrition, lack of access to proper judicial processes or failure to provide adequate protection for vulnerable groups such as women as women and juveniles. In Nepal, it seems to me from the work of PRI and CVICT, as well as from my own visits to prisons, there are many dedicated individuals working on behalf of the State as well as informal groups such as NGOs. The human rights problems we see here tend to fall in the category which I have described above, ie sins of omission by the State rather than deliberate commission. They are indeed areas where few states can claim perfection.

It is encouraging that at a multi disciplinary workshop run by PRI and CVICT at the Hotel Himalaya in March 2000 government, NGOs, academics and the media and others came together to tackle these issues and set out a strategy for the way ahead. It was a privilege for the British Government to support that exercise.

Let us look at some of the social and other costs of the prison process.

In many countries imprisonment has come to be the main punishment for criminal offences. Yet prison is a deformed society reflecting many of the weaknesses of the world outside. For society at large, prison permits the dream of locking up our problems and throwing away the keys.

But look what happens in the hidden world behind the bars. In a rich country, a woman whose husband has abandoned her is locked up for credit card default, a desperate measure which had been her only means to look after her children. In a poor country, the same may happen to a woman who attempted an illegal abortion. In both cases, families are left dysfunctional, children untended. The system for which we as public officials are responsible has weakened the very communities it should be strengthening, and paradoxically, we may have scattered the seeds of future crime.

Elsewhere, behind those same bars, we may see that women and even sometimes children are deprived of the separated accommodation they need for protection and simple decency. Juveniles may be bullied to the point of suicide. Everywhere there is the danger that the weakest groups, women, children, various minorities, the poor and the mentally retarded suffer most in getting their basic rights. Prisons often reduce, rather than increase, the prospects for an offender to reform and reintegrate into society and to play a useful and fulfilling role.

In my country there has been a public outcry over many years against levels of crime, particularly violent crime. Many, egged on by the media, want this countered by higher imprisonment levels, tougher correctional regimes. And when the state can’t pay, there is a movement towards privatised prisons. We see such discussions in many countries. They complicate the environment in which Prison Services carry out their difficult and often thankless work. And they render more difficult the discussion of penal reform by government and informed society.

The ideal should be to work towards imprisonment as a means of keeping away from the public only genuinely dangerous individuals. We should try where possible to maximise other non custodial responses such as rehabilitation and community service and mediation. Various of these are already being used to good effect in different countries around the world, with a particularly interesting experience in parts of Africa, for example Zimbabwe, where community involvement, including the use of community orders as an alternative to prison, has brought wider public awareness of responsibilities in the fight against crime. Such solutions can be better for society at large, including very importantly for the victims of crime. And such approaches, far from being costly, can be inexpensive and fairly straightforward for developing countries to implement.

There is another important aspect. A regional Conference on Penal Reform in South Asia, held in Kathmandu in November 1999, noted among other things that very high levels of pre trial prisoners up to 75 percent of the prison population in parts of the region was an important element in prison overcrowding. The Conference noted that this called for improvements in other areas of the criminal justice system, for example concerning the effectiveness of the judicial process.

I hope that the group of dedicated professionals who gathered at the Hotel Himalaya in March will be able develop approaches based on best existing Nepalese practice which will lead to a reduction in both the number of inmates and the degree of hardship of those in this country. There are a number of imaginative approaches and strategies at hand, and I look forward to seeing these efforts brought to fruition.

(The author is the British ambassador to Nepal)