A long wait for justice June 2011

Sometimes I wonder if this is all a dream. More than six years ago, Purnimaya Lama’s husband, Arjun, was taken by cadres of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). Witnesses say he was kept captive and paraded around for two months, and then killed. The police were reluctant to register an FIR, but a Supreme Court ruling compelled them to do so in 2008. One of the accused, Agni Sapkota, is a Maoist politburo member and, today, the country’s newly appointed minister of information and communication. Despite the Supreme Court ruling, there has been no investigation undertaken by the police, against him or anyone else.

If he is dead, let me bury him. If he is alive, let me bring him home. How long do we wait like this? Purnimaya still does not know for sure what happened to her husband, or where his remains are buried. Her need for truth and justice has driven her to campaign tirelessly, but it has taken a strong emotional toll on her.

Purnimaya, and many like her, has lived in a state of limbo for years, being unable to move on with her life. During the decade-long conflict in Nepal, 1300 people fell victim to enforced ‘disappearances’ and abductions. That is according to the official record, though many cases have gone unrecorded. Nearly five years since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, not a single person has been prosecuted for these crimes.

This level of impunity applies to all sides of the conflict, with the army and police also not being held to account for grave human-rights violations. Such blanket impunity has detrimental effects not only on the rule of law in Nepal, but also on law and order more generally. Politicians now routinely rise above the law, criminal gangs with political connections operate unopposed, and people are gunned down in the streets in broad daylight.

Today, the Nepal government is not only far from being able to guarantee, as part of the peace process, that such crimes are not repeated. It is also in danger of gravely undermining the country’s justice system itself.