Britain is wrong to roll out the red carpet for the head of a defiant army that so gravely imperils the path to democracy
Isabel Hilton
The Guardian
On Monday, Lt General Rukmangad Katuwal, the head of the army in Nepal, is scheduled to arrive in Britain for a red carpet visit organised by the Ministry of Defence. Nepal is inching through the long process of normalisation and reform, following a 10-year Maoist insurgency that cost 10,000 lives. Now the Maoists are part of the peace process and a constituent assembly will be elected in November to design Nepal’s future democratic constitution.
But the peace process could be derailed by a number of factors, including the lingering influence of a king who still dreams of a return to feudal absolutism and, crucially, the willingness of Gen Katuwal to lead his army into a democratic future. Until last April, when King Gyanendra’s absolute rule was overthrown from the street, the Royal Nepal Army was under his direct command and its officers saw their prime duty as the protection of the monarchy. Gen Katuwal himself was brought up in the palace after being collected, like a souvenir, by the late King Mahendra on one of his visits to his people. Katuwal owed everything he had to the monarchy and played a key role in King Gyanendra’s savage war against the Maoist insurgency. If Nepal is to achieve lasting peace and stability, Gen Katuwal, and the army he commands, must be willing to change loyalty and adapt to the command of civilian politicians.
Under the terms of the peace agreement, the army will have to incorporate 30,000 Maoist fighters, something the caste-bound officers find hard to swallow, and to cooperate with the demands for justice for the civilian victims of army and police violence. Amnesty International estimates that more than two-thirds of the 900 who disappeared in the conflict were victims of the security services.
With these challenges at home, it’s easy to see why Gen Katuwal might want to come to Britain for a break. It is less easy to see why the MoD should choose to honour him with an invitation. In a situation as delicate as that of Nepal at present, an invitation with full honours should be reserved for those of whom the British government has reason to approve - and Gen Katuwal does not quite make the grade.
There is, for instance, the case of the 16-year-old Maina Sunwar, from the Kabhrepalanchok district in east central Nepal. On February 17 2004, a 12-man covert army team broke down the door of her house looking for her mother, Devi, whom the army claimed was suspected of Maoist sympathies. After a fruitless search of the house, they took Maina away for “questioning” , reassuring her father that she would be sent home when the interrogation was finished.
Seven military personnel witnessed what happened to Maina in the barracks: an appalling catalogue of torture that began with submersion in water and ended with electric shocks to her wet feet and wrists until they bled. Three hours after her arrival, she was dead. The officers’ response offers some insight into the army’s attitudes to torture and to the civilian population. Maina was stripped of her clothes and buried in a pit near the officers’ mess, but not before her dead body had been shot several times and the police, then under army command, had been instructed to report that she had been shot while attempting to escape from the custody van. In response to the repeated inquiries of Maina’s parents and teachers, the army stonewalled that she had never been in the barracks.
But Nepal was changing, and Maina’s parents did not give up. Nine months after her disappearance, they had mobilised enough pressure to force the army to conduct an inquiry. Seven months later it ruled that “she was not affiliated with the Maoist party”. The officer in command was confined to barracks for six months and barred from promotion for two years. Gen Katuwal’s army congratulated itself on keeping “a clear perspective on the promotion and protection of human rights”, adding that “the image of the Royal Nepali Army must be maintained high in national and international arenas”.
There was not, nor has there been since, any commitment to refrain from the use of torture on civilians. The case remains a scandal, and many have called for the officers to be put on trial. Last September, Foreign Office minister Kim Howells raised it with Gen Katuwal. Nothing has happened. Maina’s case is not an isolated example, and the army’s impunity for the crimes it has committed against the civilian population continues to threaten Nepal’s fragile peace process. As Khagendra Sharma, a Nepali analyst, wrote: “The army had an obvious role in suppressing the public during the April [2006] uprising and the high-level probe commission had recommended punitive action against a number of senior army officers. But the government did not take any action … The army not only took it as an amnesty for the past crime but also as an encouragement for future acts of a similar nature. There is a feeling of defiance. There is a lack of respect for the transition to a full-fledged democracy from the rule of a feudal monarchy.”
Gen Katuwal’s record on security services reform, in which the UK is to play a part, is equally dismal. In June local press reported that the modernisation of the Nepali ministry of defence had begun, with the help of a security sector development assistance team from Britain’s MoD. After six months of research the UK team had identified four major problems: torture and murder were not among them. Instead, overcrowding at headquarters, a lack of adequate officers, poor communications and a lack of incentive to employees were reported. The remedy, the British team suggested, was a “new building with adequate facilities, establishment of computerised network, development of human resources and the development of the ministry’s website”. For this purpose the MoD, on behalf of the British taxpayer, will generously provide more than £150,000.
Gen Katuwal’s reforms to date include the change of name to the Nepal Army, allowing soldiers’ wives to join the association previously reserved for the wives of officers, and a ban on officers swearing at their men. On the integration of former Maoist fighters into the army, torture, the education of the army in the principles of democracy and constitutional rule, it’s business as usual.
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