Human Rights Watch, a New York based international non-governmental organization, has brought into attention the torture of children under police custody in Nepal.
HRW said in a statement marking the Nepali Children’s Day on Nov. 21 that the government should urgently address the torture and ill-treatment of children under police custody. So far, in 2008, the group has received 200 cases of tortures or abuses of children by the Nepali police; most of the victims are as young as 13.
According to the reports received by the organization from reliable sources including first-person testimony from children, the various forms of torture involve kicking; fist blows to the body; inserting metal nails under children’s toenails; and hitting the soles of feet, thighs, upper arms, backs of hands, and the back with bamboo sticks and plastic pipes.
HRW, in its statement, said most children abused by the police are suspected of committing petty crimes, or are children living or working on the streets.
However, the Home Ministry of Nepal denied that any children were being held by the police or abused.
According to the Associated Press, Ekmani Nepal, senior official at the Home Ministry, said they have no reports of children being tortured by police.
Bede Sheppard, Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch’s Children’s Rights Division, said the Nepali police should be responsible to “protect the children and prevent crime” than committing crime by torturing them.
Torture is prohibited under Nepal’s Constitution, but is not defined as a crime under the country’s civil code.
“If the government takes children’s rights seriously, then it should use Children’s Day to condemn police torture of children and bring the perpetrators to justice,” Sheppard said. “Nepal’s government should commit that by next year’s Children’s Day, torture will be a criminal offence, punishable with a proportionate penalty.”