“Like We Are Not Nepali” Protest and Police Crackdown in the Terai Region of Nepal
They fired teargas shells, scared the children.
Everyone here is very scared, scared of the police. The women and children
don’t want to go out of the house. We are being treated inhumanely,
like second-class citizens. Like we are not Nepalis, like we’re criminals
or terrorists. –A witness of police violence in Mahottari district,
September 2015
If an APF [Armed Police Force] personnel is obstructed
from discharging his duties or is physically attacked, he may use
necessary or final force in order to defend self, maintain law
and order and to arrest the attacker. –Section 8, article 58(3) of the Nepali government's July 7
Armed Police Force regulation
On September 11, 2015, police used teargas and opened fire
on a group of protesters who were walking through the Mills Area neighborhood
on their way toward the center of Janakpur, a town in southern Nepal. Bullet
marks on the houses testify to the use of live ammunition. According to
residents, police chased fleeing protesters into residential compounds and
attacked them there, even opening fire inside one man’s home.
Fourteen-year-old Nitu Yadav was among the protesters. He
attempted to hide from the police in some bushes. Four separate eyewitnesses
described what happened next. In front of onlookers he was dragged from his
hiding place by police officers, thrown to the ground, and, while an officer
stood on his legs, shot dead in the face at point-blank range. Doctors who
subsequently examined Yadav’s body confirmed that it bore injuries consistent
with this account.
Another protester, Sanjay Chaudhari, was hiding nearby.
According to witnesses, he was shot in the back moments later as he attempted
to flee. He died shortly after reaching hospital. Approximately 45 people were killed in the violent protests
staged over Nepal’s new constitution during the months of August and September,
almost all of which took place in Nepal’s southern region known as the Terai.
This report documents the killings of 25 people, including 9 police officers
and 16 members of the public, in five Terai districts between August 24 and
September 11, 2015. Human Rights Watch found no evidence that any of these
victims, including the police, was posing a threat to another at the time he
were killed.
The nine police officers were killed in two separate
incidents, eight of them on August 24 in Tikapur, when an angry mob of
protesters encircled and viciously attacked a small group of police with
handmade weapons. That same day an unknown assailant, probably associated with
the group that killed the eight police officers, shot and killed the
18-month-old child of another officer.
The remaining 15 victims were all shot dead by the police.
They include six people who witnesses described as bystanders not participating
in any protest. Two victims, Ram Bibek Yadav in Jaleswar and Hifajat Miya in
Kalaiya, had already been injured when numerous witnesses state that they saw
police deliberately kill them as they lay on the ground. In another disturbing
case, 12-year-old Bikas Yadav was allegedly shot and wounded in Janakpur while
he attempted to give water to an injured man.
In all five districts Human Rights Watch visited we heard
allegations of police breaking into homes to beat the occupants, including
women and elderly people; police using racial insults during violent incidents
or threatening to kill members of the public; and police arbitrarily beating
passers-by and harassing villagers belonging to communities which are seen as
opposing the new constitution. In Birgunj, two eyewitnesses described how a
police officer deliberately opened fire into a hospital. Both eyewitnesses
sustained injuries during the incident.
There is, in short, compelling evidence of criminal attacks
on defenseless police by protesters, and abundant evidence in several cases of
serious crimes by police against protesters and bystanders, including
disproportionate use of force and extrajudicial killings. In addition to the
deaths, hundreds of people have been injured, some of them grievously.
Protesters also vandalized a number of vehicles and
buildings. Meanwhile, strikes imposed by the protesters, in effect since
mid-August, as well as curfew orders and “prohibited zones” declared by the
government, have had a crippling effect on normal life and caused intense
economic hardship.
Since late September the passage of goods across the border
with India has been significantly curtailed, leading to severe shortages of
fuel and other essentials across the country. The Nepali government has blamed
India for the shortages, claiming that India is imposing an unofficial blockade
in order to force the government to amend the constitution in line with the
Madhesi demands. India has denied this charge, claiming that the shortages are
due to protester blockades and a general lack of security for the trucks
ferrying the goods.
A Controversial Constitution
The protests began in the final weeks of Nepal’s protracted
constitution drafting process. Drafting a constitution through an elected
Constituent Assembly was a central plank of the peace agreement signed in 2006
to end a decade-long Maoist insurgency and civil war. The first Constituent
Assembly was elected in 2008, but it failed to complete the new charter, in
large part due to differences over the delineation of federal provinces. A
second Constituent Assembly elected in 2013 was also deadlocked for over a
year. However, in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake which struck
Nepal in April 2015, four major political parties reached an agreement to
complete the charter by a “fast track” process.
However, marginalized groups in the Terai—the lowland region
that stretches across southern Nepal between the Indian border and the
foothills of the Himalayas—objected to this “fast track” process and the
constitution which emerged from it. Once again, the delineation of federal
provinces was the most contentious issue. In particular, protests against the
new constitution involved two relatively large ethnic or social groups:
Madhesis, concentrated in the eastern and central Terai; and Tharus,
concentrated in the far western Terai. They objected to the new federal
boundaries and to other aspects of the new constitution which they claim
abrogate previous commitments made to their communities and create
“second-class” citizens. Objections include the unequal distribution of
parliamentary constituencies and restrictions on the right of women to pass
citizenship to their children.
Underlying these grievances is a long-standing history of
discrimination by successive governments, which remains dominated by
traditional social elites from Nepal’s hilly regions, against marginalized
groups including Madhesis and Tharus...
read more: https://www.hrw.org/node/282267
Dilip Simeon // Madhu Sarin (March 2006):
