Nepal: UN rights office again deplores excessive use of police force

United Nations human rights officials have called on the Nepalese Government to end its “deplorable” excessive use of force against demonstrators, including severe beatings, indiscriminate attacks on bystanders, some of them women and children, and “seriously unacceptable” detention conditions.

“It is time for the Government, and for all commanders of police and other security forces involved in policing demonstrations, to recognise that this level of violence against civilians is not acceptable and is against the obligations of the State,” the Nepal representative of the Office of the UH High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Ian Martin, said, also citing violent provocation by demonstrators.

“I urge the Government to reconsider its position on the right to peaceful assembly, and to give the security forces the clearest instructions to act only with the minimum necessary force in policing demonstrations,” he added in the second such statement in four days on the protests against King Gyanendra's suspension of parliamentary rule.

“And I urge demonstrators and demonstration leaders to only use peaceful means of protest,” he said, noting that security forces had sometimes shown restraint in the face of provocation and violence by demonstrators throwing rocks and bricks, destroying public property and attacking individual officers, resulting in many injuries.

“OHCHR-Nepal does not condone in any way acts of violence committed by some demonstrators.”

In Kathmandu, the capital, OHCHR monitoring teams have increasingly observed police using excessive force, including firing rubber bullets, long baton charges often aiming at the head and sometimes causing serious injury, and attacks on peaceful assemblies.

Police have also beaten people after they have been brought under control and when they pose no physical or other threat, as well as attacking bystanders, charging into houses, engaging in indiscriminate beatings and causing gratuitous damage to property, according to the OHCHR.

OHCHR-Nepal noted that its earlier statement had already voiced grave concern at shooting by a soldier from the top of a building into a crowd of demonstrators throwing stones at police in the town of Pokhara last Saturday, killing one person and injuring at least one other. Two others were reported to have died after being shot by security forces on the same day.

Citing police figures that 2,300 people had been arrested, of whom over 1,300 remained in detention, the Office said conditions “are seriously unacceptable, due to overcrowding, lack of provision for decent food and clean water, and inadequate toilet and washing facilities.

“Medical visits are infrequent and arrangements for taking those in need of medical care to hospital are delayed, which is of increased concern in a context where many of those detained have been severely beaten in the course of arrest,” it added.