INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Authors: Super User KATHMANDU, June 18:Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Chairman Surya Kiran Gurung has said that the commission
will take international law into consideration while investigating conflict-era cases.Speaking at an interaction program organized by the
Social Justice and Human Rights Committee of Parliament on Friday, Chairman Gurung said that the core values of international law should not
be ignored during the investigation of cases from the conflict era
"A situation might arise tomorrow when our leaders cannot visit foreign countries freely if conflict-era cases are internationalized by the
victims," he said.Referring to the nine-point agreement reached between ruling parties CPN-UML and CPN (Maoist Center) on amending laws
concerning transitional justice, Gurung said that the commission is guided by law and regulations and is not swayed by any political
agreement.Discussing the practice of transitional justice in Nepal and its challenges, Chairman of the Commission for Investigation of
Enforced Disappeared Persons (CIEDP), Lokendra Mallick, claimed that the commission will try to complete all the investigations in the
remaining eight months before the deadline set for the commission by law."If we fail to complete the task, we will obviously ask for an
extension of the deadline by one year in line with the legal provision for this," said Mallick.Human rights activist and advocate Gobinda
Sharma Bandi said that the ongoing discourse on transitional justice in Nepal is itself problematic."The transitional justice mechanism
should find out the root causes of the conflict as well as the nature of the human rights violations, but we are focusing only on
identifying the victims and perpetrators and prosecuting the perpetrators," said Bandi.He said that the CIEDP and TRC Act has some
ambiguous, vague and incomplete provisions and these should be amended in line with Supreme Court verdicts in conflict-era cases."The
question of transparency in the formation of the commissions is itself a challenge and the commissions suffer from a trust deficit," said
He also said that the absence of law criminalizing torture and enforced disappearance as well as the statute of limitations in rape cases
are challenges ahead for the transitional justice mechanisms
