KATHMANDU, JUNE 11
The Supreme Court has admitted a writ petition filed by nine former Maoist child soldiers, including Lenin Bista, seeking to punish Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal and former prime minister Baburam Bhattarai for alleged war crimes. The first hearing of the case has been scheduled for June 13.
Stating that CPN-Maoist Centre should take responsibility for inducting minors into its army, starting the people's war and causing loss of lives and property, the petitioners said they should be given enough reparation and long-term assistance for the time they were compelled to work as child soldiers.
Stating that they were given the tag of ineligible combatants before they were disqualified by the UNMIN, the petitioners said they were forcibly drafted into the Maoist army in clear violation of international human rights laws, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Conventions on the Rights of the Child.
Bista, who has been on the warpath with the CPN-MC stated in the petition that he was falsely implicated in theft and call bypass cases to discourage him from pursuing the case of child soldiers.
Bista said he continued to face security threats and urged the court to make provisions for his security.
Forcing an innocent child to carry guns, to work as spy and to carry war materials is defined as war crime in international law, they said in their petition. The petitioners said they could depose before the international court if the perpetrators of human rights violations were tried there.
The petitioners also urged the court to direct the concerned agencies to prosecute PM Dahal and Bhattarai under war crimes laws. They sought interim order to suspend the PM until the war crime case against him was adjudicated.
They have also named the National Human Rights Commission, home ministry, Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons, and others as defendants.
The petitioners filed the petition at the SC after a single bench of Justice Ananda Mohan Bhattarai quashed the SC registrar's decision not to admit the writ.
Former Attorney General Mukti Pradhan, who is close to CPN-MC, said that the issue raised by the petitioners was an issue of the peace process which was under the jurisdiction of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It's been 16 years since the peace process was signed.
Pradhan said the issue of peace process cannot be raised by way of writ petition after 16 years. The state had already completed major tasks of the peace process, including the integration of Maoist army and has already promulgated a new constitution, he added.
UNMIN had disqualified 2,973 child soldiers.
Meanwhile, Rastriya Prajatantra Party lawmaker Gyan Bahadur Shahi demanded that the PM resign on moral grounds to face allegation of war crimes.
"These are not minor charges. These are serious charges against an individual and not the state so the PM should resign to contest the court case," Shahi said. CPN-MC lawmaker Madhav Sapkota countered Shahi for unfounded remarks against the PM. He demanded that Shahi's remarks against the PM be removed from the records of the book.
A version of this article appears in the print on June 12, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.