Amnesty International (AI) faces a crisis in Nepal after eight of its national executive committee members resigned expressing dissatisfaction over the global justice movement’s inclination towards a controversial Madhesi figure.
AI-Nepal’s Vice Chair Pratap Poudel, General Secretary Deek Prasad Ghimire, Treasurer Prabin Agrawal and national executive members Arjun Adhikari, Padmini Thapa, Manju Devi Aryal, Shesh Kumari Niroula and Heramba Dev Bhattarai resigned en-masse on Saturday.
Only three national executive members of AI-Nepal, including President Surya Bahadur Adhikari, have refused to resign.
Their mass resignation comes a few days after AI Nepal’s former Presidents Krishna Pahadi and Krishna Kandel dissociated them from AI-Nepa.
Pahadi and Kandel have raised questions over the global justice movement’s inclination towards CK Raut, a Madhesi intellectual who was arrested by the police on the charge of treason in the recent past.Raut was later released on a bail.
They have also criticised Amnesty International’s ‘indifference’ towards Nanda Prasad Adhikari’s struggle for justice. Adhikari had died after 11 months of fast-unto-death, demanding justice for his son who was shot dead allegedly by Maoist cadres during the war.
Adhikari’s wife Ganga Maya, who ended her fast-unto-death after the government promised to bring to the book their son’s murderers, has warned of a fresh hunger strike. But the government is under pressure from the Maoists not to arrest those allegedly involved in their son’s murder. The Maoists warn that reopening the file of their son’s murder case will jeopardise the nearly-completed peace process.
In an interview with Himal, Kandel said: “We feel that Amnesty International is in favour of CK Raut, a person who demands a separate state and chooses violence as a means of political struggle. But it remained silent even when Nanda Prasad Adhikari died during a peaceful protest. So, it looks like Amnesty International is in favour of violence and against justice.”
Pratap Poudel, who resigned from the post of AI-Nepal’s Vice Chair, said: “We tried to draw the attention of Amnesty International’s secretariat about allegations leveled upon it about supporting Raut and showing indifference to the Adhikari couple. But we never got a response.”
Read also:
The sad saga of the Adhikari family
“We should have probably waited for a less sensitive time.”
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