Human Rights Crisis in Nepal

OSI's Burma Project/Southeast Asia Initiative hosted a presentation and discussion with Dinesh Prasain, coordinator of the Nepali national human rights and peace network Collective Campaign for Peace.

Nepal is experiencing a human rights crisis against the backdrop of a nine-year-old civil war between the Government of Nepal and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). In 1996 the CPN (Maoist) declared a "people's war" with the aim of doing away with the constitutional monarchy and establishing a people's republic. Since then, over 10,000 people have been killed, and grave human rights abuses have been committed with impunity by both parties to the conflict, including thousands of cases of unlawful killings, "disappearances," abductions, torture, and arbitrary arrest and detention. On February 1, 2005, Nepal s situation became further embroiled when King Gyanendra led a royal coup, ending Nepal s tenuous experiment with democracy. In the months that have followed, the press has been muzzled, activists and politicians jailed, and freedom of assembly and speech effectively eliminated.

Prasain, a prominent Nepali human rights advocate, is on a speaking tour cosponsored by Amnesty International USA, the International Nepal Solidarity Network, and The Advocacy Project to inform NGOs, students, policy makers, and the media about the crisis in Nepal.