Small arms proliferation at large

Saleha Fakir was working on her farm when her neighbour came with the devastating news. The Maoist militants had shot dead her husband Salim and his two elder brothers Jama and Namdan. The brothers had been dragged from their home in Mahadiyama to the nearby marketplace of Masina Village Development Committee (MVDC) near Buddha’s birthplace Lumbini, 300 km southwest of the Nepali capital, Kathmandu. They were killed in broad daylight in front of hundreds of spectators as a chilling warning to villagers not to defy the rebels, witnesses claim. “I don’t know why they were killed. They were just hard working farmers who had nothing against the Maoists,” explained Saleha, still in shocked disbelief they were accused of working with a vigilante group. Human rights activists report that the vigilantes, known as village defence forces, have received support from security forces in their campaign to flush out Maoists from. In retaliation, the Maoists have been hunting vigilante members. But in this war of vengeance, many innocent civilians, such as the Fakir brothers, have become victims, especially in the southern plains of Nepal. The incident last year prompted hundreds of young men to flee the village to bordering states Uttar Pradesh and Bihar of India, with whom Nepal shares an open border, leaving behind wives, daughters and sisters to survive on their own. Each household in the village has five to 10 members and all live in difficult conditions. Saleha and her two sisters-in-law are struggling to care for 29 extended family members, including children and elderly relatives, all of whom live in one house. “We only eat rice and salt, with nothing else,” Saleha said. In a desperate attempt to support the family, she was forced to take her 12-year-old son Kamrauddin out of school and send him to Mumbai in India to work as a cheap labourer. Like Saleha, thousands of Nepali families have lost family members as a result of violent armed Maoist conflict against the state. According to local human rights organisation Insec, 12,809 people have died since 1996. Most were killed by small arms or light weapons, the country’s anti-arms activists claim. Saleha’s husband and his brothers were killed with a homemade Indian pistol. “Small arms are so easily smuggled into Nepal from India. They [are] cheap and their supply hardly goes noticed,” said anti-arms activist and conflict analyst Bishnu Upreti. “This is not just a military issue but the leading cause of human rights abuse and humanitarian crisis in our country,” he added. “Small arms control has to be given priority while addressing human protection issues.” In Nepal, the chief weapons used by the Maoists, security forces and vigilante groups are not big machine-guns but homemade guns, pistols, land explosives, pressure-cooker bombs and other small arms, activists claim. The latest report to the UN General Assembly by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) expressed concerns about gross violations of human rights by security forces and Maoist rebels. The OHCHR mission in Nepal (OHCHR-Nepal) received reports of extra-judicial killings, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, threats and other violations by state authorities. Similarly, it learned of summary executions, killings of civilians, abductions, extortion, torture, forced recruitment – often of children – and the bombing of civilian buildings by Maoists. The mission also received reports of human rights abuses and other crimes by vigilantes. OHCHR-Nepal is investigating reports of groups having the direct or indirect support of security forces. Activists said the possession of arms, whether legally by security forces or illegally by Maoist rebels and vigilantes, is growing rapidly and desperately requires government intervention. “The civilians are the ones who have to live in constant insecurity and fear,” said another anti-arms activist, Faroq Fassel. “How can the government talk of national security when civilians are surrounded by guns available without much difficulty?” He said the government had failed to station sufficient security forces to halt the smuggling of small arms across Nepal’s porous 1,700 km border. Local NGO, Friends for Peace, reported the bulk of small arms smuggled into Nepal come from India’s bordering illegal arms bazaar. It said light weapons like katuwa (homemade guns), bharuwa (muzzle loader), 12-bore guns, 22-bore guns, air guns, rifles and shotguns were easily brought into Nepal, mostly by criminals and sold to Maoist militants. “Even the raw materials for socket bombs and land explosives that have seriously injured and killed many civilians were smuggled from India,” said a police officer in Lumbini, requesting anonymity. “We have strong laws to arrest people illegally supplying arms across the border but that’s not enough,” he argued, adding the only way to control the supply was through bilateral cooperation between India and Nepal. All anti-arms initiatives are now being led by the region’s nongovernmental (NGO) sector through the South Asia Small Arms Network (SASANET) but activists feel they alone cannot achieve much. “We have to realise that without involving the government, small arms control is impossible,” said Fassel. Activists are concerned the Nepal government has not taken small arms proliferation seriously and failed to commit to global reduction efforts. Indeed, they claim Kathmandu’s decision in 2003 to arm villagers against the Maoists has increased the danger posed by armed civilians. “The state providing arms to civilians is a very dangerous trend,” said another anti-arms activist, Shobha Gautam. SASANET-Nepal coordinator Shobha Shrestha said her network would continue to urge the Nepal government to control the illegal supply of arms “so that civilians can live in security”. She and other SASANET-Nepal members are planning a series of public awareness and education programmes. But ominously, the government is reportedly planning to arm more people and provide military training as part of its soon-to-be-launched Peace Volunteer programme. “If this plan is implemented, a large-scale civil war will start and the human rights violations will be uncontrollable,” Upreti warned.