| Nepalese security services accused of murdering editor of opposition paper
By Daniel Lak, BBC correspondent in Kathmandu
28 June 2002
The government of Nepal is being accused of colluding in the torture and killing of a newspaper editor who was also a prominent member of the country's underground Maoist rebel movement.
Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), the journalists' group based in Paris, believes 37-year-old Krishna Sen, former editor of two now-banned Maoist newspapers, was killed by the security forces while being tortured.
"The Nepalese government ... has allowed torture of journalists and human rights activists to become commonplace," said Robert Ménard, general secretary of RSF, in a letter of protest to Sher Bahadur Deuba, the Nepalese Prime Minister.
"The death of a journalist under torture, even if he supported the Maoist movement, can in no way be justified by the war against terror," Mr Ménard said. "We urge you to order the security forces to stop these acts of torture. We also call on you to promptly investigate the circumstances of this murder."
Concern over human rights abuses has been growing among countries supporting the Nepalese government against the rebels, and is embarrassing for Britain, which last week announced aid for the government to fight the rebels. The Foreign Office minister Mike O'Brien said: "The Maoists must be made to realise that this is a war they cannot win and that the only way forward is through peaceful negotiation."
The Royal Nepal Army has been leading the fight against the Maoists since November.
The allegation, and the refusal of the government or the army to comment on the matter has enraged the usually cautious and quarrelsome journalistic profession in Kathmandu. "If they [the authorities] continue to maintain silence, it will ... compel us to launch a campaign demanding more information," said Taranath Dahal of the government-funded Federation of Nepalese Journalists.
Krishna Sen was arrested on 20 May and his body was handed over to his family for cremation two weeks ago, according to RSF. A diplomat in Kathmandu said at the time: "There is a body and it has marks consistent with torture."
Nepalese press reports quote unnamed police officials as saying they were not behind the arrest of Mr Sen, who was linked with the banned and widely feared Maoist guerrilla movement. He edited two newspapers that were blatant organs of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) – the official name of the rebel group. Both reprinted statements of Maoist leaders verbatim and ran front-page stories that cast rebel attacks on the police and politicians as "victories for the Peoples' War".
Mr Sen disappeared from public view in November, when a state of emergency was declared. Nepalese security officials said he had become a member of the Maoist Revolutionary Council, which styled itself as the alternative government to the constitutional monarchy in Kathmandu.
Amnesty International and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists say more than 100 reporters and editors have been arrested since the state of emergency began on 26 November last year. Nearly 40 remain in custody. |
