KATHMANDU, Nepal - Between July and December, custodial torture of Nepalese women shot up to nearly 14 per cent while it had been seven per cent in the earlier months. The report said that in 2010, one of every ten women detainees in 67 prisons had complained of torture or ill treatment. While a 10-year civil war saw women suffer atrocities like gang rape and torture in Nepal, both by the state and Maoist guerrillas, their ordeal continues even after the signing of a peace accord with growing cases of torture and rape in custody.
Advocacy Forum, a leading human rights organisation that has been monitoring prisons since 2001, released a report titled Torture of women in detention: Nepal's failure to prevent and protect on the occasion of UN International Day in Support of Torture Victims Sunday.- The situation was the worst in the capital with more than 20 per cent of women detainees having undergone torture, a level as high as reported during the Maoist insurgency.
- Besides district police offices, security forces have also been using private houses as secret detention centres, especially in Kathmandu. Women from the Dalit community, regarded as untouchables, and women from the Terai plains, bore the brunt of custodial torture, the report found.
In October, Hermin Ratu Lama, arrested on suspicion of theft and drug-smuggling, was taken to such a private house in Lalitpur district, where the UN and many other NGO offices are located. She was forced to lie down on the floor and strip, with policemen stepping on her knees and beating her on the soles of her feet in the presence of her husband. Desperate to stop the torture, her husband said he was ready to make any confession the police wanted.
The most common charges against tortured women detainees were committing a public offense, drugs and murder. The most common methods are beating, sexual molestation, forcible stripping, and even giving electric shocks and rape.Ironically, most tortured women detainees were released after police failed to bring any charge against them.
Post a Comment