The day 23 Tibetans exiles were handed over to the immigration authority for defying prohibitory orders and staging a protest against China, the United States released a damning report on China’s human rights record. Republica reports:

The United States criticized China´s “worsening” human rights record accusing the communist country of torturing Tibetan “repatriated from Nepal” as well as “repression” of Uighur activists in Xinjiang province.

“Tibetans repatriated from Nepal reportedly suffered torture, including electric shocks, exposure to cold and severe beatings, and were forced to perform heavy physical labor,” a US State Department´s annual human rights report said Thursday.

The report has also noted concern over Maoists’ engagement in violence in Nepal:

Maoist militias engaged in arbitrary and unlawful use of lethal force and abduction. Violence, extortion, and intimidation continued throughout the year. Numerous armed groups, largely in the Terai region in the lowland area near the Indian border, attacked civilians, government officials, members of particular ethnic groups, each other, or Maoist militias. Impunity for human rights violators, threats against the media, arbitrary arrest, and lengthy pretrial detention were serious problems.

At home, Chief of Army Staff, Chhatra Man Singh Gurung rejected bulk integration of Maoist combatants into the national army during a conversation with UN Under Secretary General B Lynn Pascoe. Nepalnews writes:

Gurung…told Pascoe that Maoists combatants are “politically indoctrinated” and it will be difficult to integrate them into the “disciplined, professional, competitive and apolitical” Nepal Army. He warned that not only will the group entry of those Maoist combatants break up the organizational unity of the national army, but it will cause “politicization” of the army that could possibly even lead to disintegration of the country.

In response to Gurung’s statement, Maoist spokersperson Dinanath Sharma said the army was trying to invite a civil war and impose a military dictatorship in the country.

While on the subject of Nepal Army: locals of Hariharpur in Surkhet have accused the army of raping three females, including a 12-year-old girl, and killing them. Kantipur reports:

Army personnel shot three civilians, including a 12-year-old girl, dead inside Bardia National Park in Bardia district on Wednesday night. Nepal Army has claimed that the three female victims were poachers and they were killed in self defence.

On Friday, the victims’ family members said the soldiers forced all the men to leave and killed the women after raping them while they were taking shelter in the forest. The men who survived the incident claim that the women were shot two hours after they were caught.

An eye-witness, who says was hiding near the spot of the incident, said the soldiers raped the women after threatening the men to leave. He showed his amputated hand and said, “A disabled man survives, but all the women die. What kind of confronation is that?”