Govt record says 1,530 disappeared
KATHMANDU, April 15: The Commission for Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons (CIEDP) has started receiving complaints from the victims of the 10 year-long insurgency.
The commission received 15 complaints on the first day of the two-month long complaints registration period, the commission officials said. "We are yet to obtain details from various district peace committee offices, which have already registered around one hundred complaints from victims. They will forward the complaints to us," said CIEDP spokesman Bishnu Pathak.
The commission informed that four complaints have been registered at Banke peace committee, three complaints each in Bardiya and Dolakha peace committees; two were registered at CIEDP head office in the capital, and one each in Kavrepalanchowk, Kaski and Kailali peace committees.
Victims can register their complaints during office hours at district peace committee offices in all 75 districts and also at the CIEDP head office at Pulchowk in Lalitpur. The commission has asked the complainants to provide the name, address and physical particulars of the missing, the area from where s/he went missing, details of suspected perpetrators, and information on any verdict or ruling by a court of law concerning the case.
The commission will start filling ante-mortem forms and preliminary investigation after the expiry of the complaints registration deadline, which ends in 60 days from April 14.
Meanwhile, CIEDP spokesman Pathak also said that the commission's term is for two years and those victims who are unable to register their complaints within the two-month deadline can register the complaints till six months before the commission's term expires.
From mid-June, the commission will deploy trained inspectors to the addresses of each of the complainants for investigations.
The commission has, in a draft bill on punishment for the perpetrators, proposed that any individual who was disappeared for at 30 days during the insurgency, can be identified as enforced disappeared person. Similarly, the draft bill has also proposed providing reparations to the victims who were disappeared for 30 days or more. The draft bill, which is currently in the Ministry of Law, has yet to be finalized, according to commission officials. CIEDP officials complained that the Ministry of Law has been dillydallying over the bill.
Insurgency-era disappeared victims would get financial support from the government as grant and soft loan, and free education for the victim's children till they graduate from college.
Different government agencies have separate statistics on the number of the persons disappeared during the insurgency-era (February 13, 1996 to November 21, 2006). However, the Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction puts the number of disappeared at 1,530. "We fear that many victims in remote areas could not register details either out of fear or lack of access," Pathak said. "Now the number of enforced disappeared victims would exceed up to 10,000."
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