Next Door Nepal: Evading truth and reconciliation

Disagreements on amnesty for war crimes could destabilise the Left alliance.

Written by Yubaraj Ghimire | Published: December 4, 2017 12:50 am

Nepal, nepal civil war, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, human rights violations, Nepal Maoists, Communist Party of Nepal, nepal war crime, nepal government, nepal elections

The CPN-UML will have to clarify where it stands on the human rights issue.

Eleven years ago, when the then Prime Minister G.P. Koirala and Pushpa Kamal Dahal, chief of the Maoists who had waged a decade-long war against the state, signed the Comprehensive Peace Accord promising justice to victims of the conflict, they probably thought only the monarch(y) and its loyalists would go on trial. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that was to be formed in January 2007 — within 60 days of the accord — took eight years to be formed, almost after all the physical evidence of human rights violations by the state forces and the Maoists had vanished.