Blanket amnesty?

We are alarmed by the last-minute twists being given to the proposed separate bills on a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and a Disappearance Commission. Details about what is being changed and why remain murky, but what has come out in public leaves us deeply worried. Until a few days ago the party leaders had agreed to form two separate commissions to address the issues of truth and reconciliation and disappearances. They had also agreed that there would be no blanket amnesty to the perpetrators of serious human rights violations.



The leaders had even agreed on the list of crimes, including rape, murder under captivity, enforced disappearances and arson, that are off-limits for amnesty. The proposed TRC bill was pro-victim in the sense that the victims or their families could decide whether or not they wanted to see the perpetrators being amnestied. And an exception was made in cases of grievous human rights violations. The commission would have to take up these latter cases irrespective of whether victims or their families agreed to amnesty.



But lawmakers involved in the preparation of the bills now confide that these are being revised at the eleventh hour, without boarder consultations or even their own consent, and with an aim of providing blanket amnesty to all perpetrators of human rights violations, irrespective of the severity of their crimes. Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai is learned to have sent the bills to the Ministry of Law and Justice following an agreement among top leaders from the three major parties—Maoist, NC and UML— on the revisions.



The two separate bills will now be combined into one and just one commission will be formed, instead of two, to take up the issues of truth and reconciliation as well as disappearances. Such a commission will have sweeping powers to decide which human rights violations will be tried in a court of law and which will be amnestied. In the revised bill, according to the lawmakers, the victims will have no say whatsoever on the issue of amnesty.



We seriously oppose any such revision and wish to remind political leaders that providing sweeping powers to the proposed commission with an aim of giving amnesty to all perpetrators of human rights violations amounts to a travesty of justice. It will not just be against a number of international treaties and covenants that Nepal is signatory to but also against the spirit of the Interim Constitution and the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). Failure to bring to book the perpetrators of conflict-era inhuman crimes will also mean compromising with our ideals of peace, justice and rule of law.

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