State still unclear about insurgency death toll

KATHMANDU, April 15: A decade has passed since the Maoist insurgency ended in the country in which thousands of people from both the state and the rebel sides died. However, the government still doesn"t have the actual figure on the lives lost in the war so far.

At a time when the government agencies and human rights groups have been claiming that more than 17,000 people died due to the insurgency, a fresh study by the Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction (MoPR) has trimmed down the figure by about three thousand.So far, four different task forces formed by the government to study the deaths have submitted their reports and a fifth one is working to collect the data on insurgency victims.

The latest task force has estimated the deaths at 17,886. However, evidences for only the deaths of 14,379 individuals have been collected, according to unit for rehabilitation and reparation under the MoPR.

"Names of the same deceased have been registered from different places, one under nom de guerre and another real name," said Hari Krishna Gyawali, chief of rehabilitation and reparation unit.

The ministry has formed another task force to find out the actual data of the war victims, deceased and disappeared, following a report by a tracing team mobilized by the ministry itself. A fifth task force formed on January 19 has been given three months time to complete its work.

The trace team by the ministry had visited 20 districts to find out whether the families of deceased are missing from taking reparation or not.

"Though we cannot claim anything with certainty before gathering data from all 75 districts, it seems that nearly 3,000 deceased were either registered twice or their identity could not be ascertained," said Dhruba Paudel, chief of Emergency Peace Support Project under the ministry.

According to officers at the ministry, chances of not having proper evidences was slim as local peace committees, non government organizations and other government bodies had assisted in collecting the data. "Except the cases of negligence from families of the deceased, lapses in data collection was not possible as the ministry was working on victim-friendly environment," claims Gyawali.

Government has provided Rs 300,000 to each family of the deceased so far. However, government has been failing to provide additional Rs 200,000 as per its commitment. According to the data provided by the ministry, government has spent Rs 6.40 billion on reparation to all kinds of war victims so far.

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