Excerpts from an interview with Kapil Shrestha, member of the National Human Rights Commission.

On the timing of the emergency and deployment of the army:

The deployment of troops was long overdue and no one has protested it. The government was late in doing this and had run out of options at one stage. The army was not mobilised even after 54 police posts had been destroyed and police were being killed like sacrificial lambs-even then the government just stood and watched.

Yet, why declare an emergency just because troops needed to be deployed? Was the emergency necessary to get the army out? If we have a similar situation tomorrow, does that mean we continue with the emergency? It is said that one tends to be addicted to bad things, not good things. If that is true, then we cannot say that we will not have an emergency again at a later date. Should we continue with more emergencies if tomorrow we are unable to resolve the Maoist problem or if another insurgent group takes up arms? We need political efforts if we want to resolve both the problem, and also the emergency. What part of democracy remains if you do not give the people their basic freedoms and rights? That is why we should not give the army too much power. an emergency means (giving someone) absolute powers.

So the army should not be given as much power as it has.
That (the army getting more power) happens the moment you have an emergency. But if the forces that are charged with repressing such movements are given absolute powers for long, that does no one any good. Absolute powers are absolute.

What is the response of the National Human Rights Commission?
We have not been able to go outside (to the districts). We have been unable to go to where human rights are being violated. All sources of information have been controlled, we haven't been able to do/ find out anything about that either. People are being needlessly killed and human rights are being violated. We have been unable to get first-hand information. When civil rights have been usurped, what is the point of talking about other issues?

The government says the emergency is aimed only at the Maoists.
No one can forward the cause of the Maoists after what they have done. Nepali Maoists resemble Pol Pot. I would like to challenge all Maoists here, including Baburam Bhattarai, on this count. It is also mindless to think that you can achieve something through violence now. What I want to say is that no one should try to achieve something by violating human rights. The problems we face today cannot be solved by the discredited ideology of Baburam or Prachanda. Yet they defy the constitution and are pressing ahead. They do not abide by this constitution, and so are unaffected by the emergency. Knowing this full well, this impotent government has wrested away from the people their rights. It has no right to do this. The government should have been more sensitive about this, it should have remembered what it and its supporters went through in the past.

Does the emergency threaten democracy?
Yes, it does. Democratic forces become weak during an emergency; and people begin to lose hope. Because of this, there is the danger that anti-democratic forces will begin raising their heads. The emergency has taken away the right of citizens to protest against such forces. The newspapers have been controlled, and transparency suffers. When there is no one to expose the wrongs, it is only natural that the situation becomes more dangerous. All such developments weaken the system from within.