The dance of filing a First Information Report

Filing a report in my country is pretty straight forward. I have a complaint of some sort, I go down to the police station and leave the details or make a statement. I might be irritated that I have to wait a bit, but in general it is pretty straight forward. Not so in Nepal.

PBI-Nepal has a partnership with local human rights defenders(HRDs). We do a variety of things but one very practical aspect of our work is(per request as is always the case)is accompanying them to police staions to file reports related to issues and crimes committed primarily during the conflict between the maoists and the Nepali state that left between 13 000-17 000 people dead, many still missing and many tortured and abused.

Ok, this is what often happends in practice. We meet the HRDs and while our mandate which clearly states that we are a non-partisan organisation that do not interfer in the work of the partner, we are clearly supportive in their right to investigate alledged human rights crimes and have a right to ask the local authorites to help bring justice to the victims. Therefor we put on our vests and walk with the HRDs when they attempt to file their first FIR(First Information Report),because according to us as well as analysis done by local UN organs such as UNMIN, UNOCHA,UNHCR and intentional and national human right organisations the treaths these laywers are receiving are at the level that they can potentially be killed. For filing a report...

The reasons might need some explanation. The people being mentioned in these reports are sometimes high politicias. Or highly ranked police or military men(or women). They might be local people that are now in a postion of power and do not want to be investigate and brought to trial or they might simple be the local rich entrepreneur that has paid off the staff in the local police station.

So, off we go to together. We wait outside while our partners attemp to file the actual paper FIR. Which in theory means that it needs to be investigated, warrants issued leading up to a possible trial and sentence. Often they are denied. To exemplify, our partners tried to use December 10 last year, Human Rights Day to file these first reports all over Nepal and in ALL(not just some, but ALL cases) they were not received. The reason given was often be that the superior officer wasn't in the office so very sorry but...

The next step is often to go to the Appellate or Supreme court, asking for an order to be issued to the specific officer or station. A mandamus is the correct legal term. Sometimes the court refuses. Sometimes the file is still not files. So the HRDs start again, back to the high court, new mandamus. Maybe the FIRs are actually filed. But not investigated. As has been mentioned before, not ONE single case related to human rights abuse has so far been processed and received a sentence. Not one.