The discovering follows a grievance submitted to the UN physique by the woman’s mother and father, who stated that they had exhausted all attainable avenues for securing justice and accountability at house.
Case underscores impunity
“The gravity of this case has not pale with time regardless that 18 years have handed,” said Committee member Hélène Tigroudja.
“This can be a significantly extreme case during which a baby was summarily executed. It additionally underscores the sample of abuse and rape of ladies through the civil battle, the lack of investigation and de facto impunity,” she added.
Nepal’s civil battle started in February 1996 and lasted greater than a decade. Some 15,000 individuals have been killed in combating between authorities forces and the Communist Celebration of Nepal, identified domestically because the Maoist insurgent group.
Accusation and denial
In February 2004, the sufferer, recognized solely as R.R., was dwelling together with her household within the village of Pokhari Chauri in Kavre District, an space the place many Maoists had gathered to have fun the eighth anniversary of the beginning of the battle.
On the evening of 13 February, some 20 uniformed armed troopers stormed into her house, accusing the secondary faculty scholar of being a Maoist, which she denied.
R.R. had attended the obligatory Maoist Scholar Union at college however was not concerned in every other Maoist exercise, based on the UN Committee.
Interrogation, abuse, loss of life
{The teenager} was taken outdoors, interrogated, hit with a rifle butt, thrown in opposition to a wall, and brought to a cornfield. A soldier was heard telling one other soldier to kill her, and three gunshots have been then fired.
R.R.’s mother and father discovered her physique the subsequent morning. She had been shot within the eye, head, and chest. Her salwar, or trousers, was pulled right down to mid-thigh, and her shirt was lifted as much as her neck. There have been scratches on her breasts.
The military additionally killed two different villagers that evening.
Following complaints by her household, the Nationwide Human Rights Fee in 2005 discovered that R.R. was killed by safety forces.
Though Nepal’s Supreme Courtroom endorsed the Fee’s findings in 2009 and ordered a immediate investigation, nobody has been held criminally accountable. The principal suspect was acquitted 4 years later attributable to lack of proof.
Attraction for justice
R.R.’s mother and father introduced the case to the UN Human Rights Committee which discovered that Nepal was liable for her killing and rape, and for subjecting her to bodily and psychological torture.
The Committee additionally criticized the shortage of an efficient treatment for her mother and father.
“Nepal has did not reveal how a 16-year-old unarmed woman posed any menace to a squad of twenty totally armed troopers, a lot much less justify how her rape and abstract execution might serve any official safety purpose,” stated Ms. Tigroudja.
“Such egregious crimes shall in all cases be well timed and totally investigated and their perpetrators, whoever they’re, delivered to justice and punished”, she added.
Concerning the UN Committee
The Human Rights Committee displays nations’ adherence to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
It’s made up of 18 members who’re unbiased human rights specialists from internationally, who serve of their private capability and never as representatives of any States which can be social gathering to the treaty.
Committee members are neither UN workers, nor are they paid by the Group.
