Nepal is on the edge of a precipice. The isolated south Asian kingdom went through 10 years of brutal civil war after Maoist guerillas declared war on the monarchy. The country nearly slipped into total chaos when King Gyanendra engineered a 2005 coup against the country’s weak civilian government. Security forces flowed into the cities, arresting opposition leaders and human rights defenders and student activists, sending many into exile.
A year later, a widespread “people’s movement” managed to overthrow the king’s puppet government, reinstall the parliament, and initiate peace talks between all parties, including the Maoists. It seemed like a miracle, and hope flourished. Elections for a constituent assembly, establishing a new framework for the country – including whether to abolish the monarchy and declare a republic – were scheduled for November 2007.
But a month before the elections were to take place, Nepalis are worried again. The elections have been postponed indefinitely. The multiparty government has not followed through on its promises, the military has thwarted attempts to hold anyone accountable for abuses, and the Maoists have just pulled out of the peace talks. The country is once again facing a stormy and uncertain future.
Mandira Sharma patrols this treacherous landscape, visiting Nepal’s streets and courts, attempting to provide relief to victims of social strife and government persecution. She also spends a lot of time just trying to get the word out. Nepal is hardly a focus for international media, and there has been little international pressure to build a more peaceful society in Nepal. Sharma works with the media, the United Nations, and with non-governmental organizations, including Human Rights Watch, to publicize the worst of Nepal’s human rights abuses. It’s an uphill climb.
“People were being raped in the villages. No one would pay attention,” Sharma said. “The first time I went to the United Nations in Geneva for a human rights convention, I thought everyone knew what was happening. I was literally shocked – people didn’t know what was happening at all. The first thing I did when I came back I would send cases to the UN, to committees. I just had hopes that international organizations and media would listen.”
Sharma’s efforts began to pay off, and are now seen as critical to the pursuit of justice for abuses committed by both the former Royal Nepali Army and the Maoists. The situation is entrenched, and dire. The Nepali courts system, in particular, is twisted by corruption and political pressure. Sharma often trudges to court to file cases on behalf of colleagues, human rights workers who’ve chosen to pursue a human rights agenda despite the gathering danger. Human rights activists in Nepal have been targeted for arbitrary detention, outright assassinations, and torture.
Sharma brought to light the widespread use of torture in Nepal. Recognizing the effects of torture on an individual – and a society – shook her. “The first time [I] realized how torture breaks the people, which is happening from both sides, how torture devastates, how torture destroys the personality of the person” was shattering, she said.
One man’s story in particular moved Sharma to embark on her campaign to transform Nepal into a safe place to raise children, go to work and live in peace. In the 1990s, Sharma, then a young law student, got to know Samal, a law professor who had disappeared for some time. Sharma met Samal at a health center for physically and psychologically damaged victims of abuses. “He was a teacher, a pro-democracy person, and thus a target,” said Sharma.
Sharma felt a sense of responsibility, a burden to do something significant with her degree. “Samal was arrested by military, put in an ice box, given electric shocks. He was beaten on the soles of his feet, hung upside down. They broke him,” said Sharma. “This man’s story was the first time I realized how torture breaks the people. That why I do my work.”
Sharma had first thought about training to become a doctor or nurse, which her mother encouraged her to pursue. But she chose to become a lawyer. Soon after leaving law school, she co-founded Advocacy Forum, one of Nepal’s most respected and effective human rights organizations, after starting her work at detention centers, where some of the worst human rights abuses in Nepal happen. Confronting extreme political instability and routine violence in Nepal, Sharma struggles to ensure that human rights defenders remain free and that perpetrators of abuse are brought to justice. Sharma’s efforts are especially important today, as a lasting ceasefire in Nepal may rely on effective monitoring by unbiased groups like Advocacy Forum.
“If you know what is happening, you must speak out. My responsibility is to speak out, to fight,” said Sharma. “Some people think I’m crazy; it’s not normal for a woman to do this kind of work in Nepal. But once you get into it, I get all my strength from my experiences.”
At times physically intervening to protect clients from detention or attack, Sharma’s courage in the face of enormous personal risk puts her in a special category.
“Judges used to ask us, please don’t bring a human rights case before us. Everyone feels threatened in this environment,” said Sharma, who ignored the judges and “shamed the courts” with her strategy. She took her writs of habeas corpus, and went straight to the Supreme Court. The publicity, then, was too great for anyone to ignore.
Sharma’s efforts exemplify one of the greatest resources in Nepal: a small but vibrant civil society that uses modern communications and old-fashioned field work to protect human rights. Nepal, and its conflict, may seem remote, but Sharma and her colleagues have placed themselves at the center of the international struggle for human rights because that international support is essential for helping Nepal’s war-ravaged citizenry achieve a peaceful and more representative society.
Read a transcript from a recent interview with Mandira Sharma
Sam Zarifi:
You and Advocacy Forum have established yourselves as one of the eminent human rights organizations in Nepal. Mandira, tell how you started Advocacy Forum and why?
Mandira Sharma:
I started Advocacy Forum with a couple of friends in 2001, when the country was really engulfed in the violent armed conflict. We used to hear every day in the press that people had been killed in encounters with security forces, but people in Kathmandu really didn’t know what was going on in the villages and how these encounters really take place.
We started documenting those stories; we found that people were arrested, taken into custody and executed. So we started documenting these cases. People living in the villages had no protection, no place to go to report their cases. People were not able to speak, and we had documented a number of cases where the family members of people who were arrested or detained illegally went to the police or the court to make their complaint – were disappeared.
So we really had to figure that out, and let people know what was happening. The extent of the problem was so great, that [Nepal] is reported for being the country with the highest number of disappearances [worldwide].
Sam Zarifi:
But Mandira, as you said, you started this work at a time when there was very severe repression and an armed conflict that was raging out of control – what allowed you and other lawyers to do this work, and what were the problems you faced in raising these issues with the government?
Mandira Sharma:
The biggest problems we faced were access to places [where human rights abuses had occurred], the threats to human rights defenders and lawyers, and the threats to victims who wanted to report their cases to human rights groups or other institutions.
Initially, it was very difficult for us. When we found victims who were making these complaints were subsequently arrested, we started helping them through [other] institutions, and those institutions were also pressurized; I remember a number of times we had to relocate our friends [who were working on these cases out in the field]. Lawyers were arrested, detained, tortured, and even disappeared.
In that context, we started bringing cases to the Supreme Court directly because it was very difficult for us to protect lawyers in the districts.
When we started bringing cases to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court was not ready [for us] – especially in cases against the military. The military was engaged in operations in the field, but they were the ones arresting people and detaining people in communicado in their barracks. Hundreds of people were disappeared from military barracks.
Sam Zarifi:
Mandira – can you explain – with the problem of disappearances, what’s been happening now that the peace process has [started]?
Mandira Sharma:
The victims of the disappeared, the families of the disappeared are continuously denied justice. Almost every household has a family member who has been arrested, killed, or disappeared.
For example, in Bardiya, one of the districts – almost all male members of families [there] have disappeared. The remaining family members have no [sense] where they should report [this] –so these cases have not been reported.
The government has formed commissions in the past, making [the names of] disappeared persons public, but those commissions were not able to bring any facts forward because their mandates were very narrow.
It’s been constantly difficult for victims. We work now with more than 8,000 victims and their families.
