Perspective (Spotlight Weekly)

Stop Violence and Human Rights Abuses: Whose War is It Anyway?

By Bipin Adhikari

In the past four weeks, after the breakdown of the ceasefire between Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and the Government, almost 300 people have died in gun battles, bombings and assassinations.

The Maoist strategy of conducting small scale hit-and-run operations against vulnerable outposts of state authority, such as local police and small military detachments, has given way to attacks and killings of non-combatants, such as politicians, senior army officials in non-military settings, local landlords, journalists, etc as a means of bringing their cause to the attention of local population and to show them the vulnerability of the government. Setting off a bomb in a government office, taking important individuals as hostage, the assassination of individual political figures or the sabotage of public property are being done by the Maoists to pressurise the state to concede to their demands. Not only the need to safeguard human rights has been ignored, but also the body of principles and norms intended to limit human suffering in times of armed conflict has been disregarded.

The policy of liquidation of specific individuals in the non-combat situation also shows the war fatigue on the part of the Maoists. In other words, the inability to continue to attack and seize the territory and keep hold of it has been increasingly realised. A number of recent killings also show features of summary executions. Anybody killed by Maoists is by definition a spy of the security forces. Adding to the pressure, the rebels called a 72-hour general strike and closure on September 18-20. Several people died simply because they could not be taken to the hospital due to the Maoist closure and the subsequent imposition of curfew. The pledge of the insurgents to make people sovereign, and ensure fundamental moral justification to their war, really makes the recent development a mockery of worst type.

The military response of the establishment has also become harsh after the failure of the dialogue. The reaction of the army to the arrestees of the Ramecchap search operations was genocidal. This sort of grave violation of human rights was not expected from the public security system of a civilian government. While the political parties kept mum on the massacre, the press did not do enough to help bring the perpetrators to justice. The Royal Nepal Army has not as of today brought to the press how it is taking action against those who were responsible for the killing. There are too many spineless professional leaders, politicians and analysts in Nepal feeding the public with false information concerning, among other things, the rationale for so called war as well as the expected outcomes and purported rearrangement of things in the country. Civil liberties and legal defense groups are also bothered by the string of cases, and say the government soon will be routinely using anti-insurgency laws against ordinary lawbreakers. Critics also say the government has gone too far in charging common people as terrorist. The government is constantly trying to expand its jurisdictions, and it needs to be watched very, very closely.

The dream of both the parties to the conflict of winning the battle is without question the worst kind of self-delusion. They appear grossly under-informed, unabashedly ignorant and brashly arrogant in their estimation of this country's might and utopian sense of freedom and liberty for all.

Looting and plundering now seem to have reached epidemic proportions throughout the country bordering on anarchy. Normal life in the countryside has ceased to exist. The state apparatus has collapsed, and there are no legitimate law enforcement agencies in sight. With it have disappeared the norms of civilized existence so necessary to ensure the citizens' enjoyment of life, liberty and material possessions. In this situation there is no one the harried and tormented people can turn to for relief and succour, not even the Maoists. The immediate task is to protect the rights of the victims, stop violence and end human suffering by rushing essential supplies and making the law and order functional. Neither task is possible in a situation of anarchy and chaos. The imposition of curfew everywhere, and a shoot-at-sight order, cannot help.

Strangely enough, even the Maoists are losing the base areas that they used to rest in, grow their food, train and recruit. They no longer have places that are secure and stable. Most of those people who continue to support them do so only because of fear and retaliation. The Maoist war can be secure only if and when the local population supports their initiative and enters into it. It can be stable only if and when the basic human rights are the norm. This is not the case. These series of barbaric acts hardly explain what good things the violence is pursuing; what have they accomplished, and what are they fighting for today? The Maoist methods are undoubtedly ethically and morally questionable. Their ideology has not been challenged enough by those who disagree with them, but instead has been "appeased" by them knowingly or unknowingly to the point of their self-destruction. It is a terrible question indeed: “whose war is it anyway?”

[Adhikari is a lawyer. He can be accessed at human_rights_nepal@yahoo.co.uk]