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Analysis Report

Nepal: strong resemblance to the past

Our correspondent in Nepal, Advocacy Forum, issued his last report entitled "Torture of juveniles in Nepal : a continuing challenge".

Despite the ratification of six key international human rights treaties by Nepal, AF lawyers have witnessed numerous cases of ill-treatments and tortures in police detention centers, where those behaviors have been proven to be more likely to happen.

To AF, the implementation of these legal instruments, supposed to protect citizens and ensure a state of law, is still very challenging. The organization shows that around 20% of detained juveniles declared to have been subject to torture or ill-treatment on the hands of police officers.

The report then dives into the history of torture as commonly used in Nepal – especially during the armed conflict that took place between 1996 and 2006 –, but it also sheds light on more recent events, providing thorough description of methods used on juveniles in order to extract information for investigation-led purposes. Such examples tend to prove that most of the recent accounts show high resemblance to the past…

Death threats have been reported

Physical torture

Advocacy Forum’s account relies on precise statements as well as case studies. Chilling descriptions report widely used torture methods such as “beating with plastic pipes and sticks, verbal abuses, slapping on face and kicking with police boots”, but also “beating on the soles of [detainees]’ feet and other parts of the body with iron inserted plastic pipes”. The following is no better: “some detainees also reported being restrained, either by lying down or being suspended between objects before being beaten with a stick, punched or kicked”.

Covering up the foot kicks

Such allegations are extremely serious, and officials know these actions to be illegal. Advocacy Forum reveals that officers “often force victims to jump up and down after they have been beaten severely on the soles of feet, to avoid blood clotting”. This practice is supposed to foster the blood circulation and lessen the physical evidence of torture. But torture can also be psychological. Death threats have been reported: “in one particular case, a 14-year-old boy was held at gunpoint during interrogation for the investigation concerning a mobile phone theft”. Moreover, other detainees were forced to witness the torturing performed on others. A few cases of sleep deprivation have been reported as well.

Advocacy forum’s officials share their deep concerns with this report. To them, such findings suggest that “the Nepal government has failed to fulfill its obligations both under the CAT1 and CRC2”.

  1. United Nations Convention Against Torture ↩

  2. United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child ↩

For more in-depth information

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Advocacy Forum

NGO

Advocacy Forum regularly visits police detention centers, collects data by interviewing detainees and documents cases of serious human rights violations in police detention centers. Detainees who request it are provided legal, medical and psychosocial support.

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