The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Nepal today released reports of two investigations into possible violations of international human rights and humanitarian law and condemned the violence that led to the investigations.
The first report pertained to two attacks on public buses during which civilians were killed - one in the district of Chitwan on 6 June and the second in Kabhrepalanchok on 10 June - and the other condemned the violent abduction, abuse and murder of six civilians (three women, two men and a one-year old child) in Banbehda in the early hours of 14 June.
Praveen Randhawa of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights told a press conference in Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital, that the investigation found the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists) to be responsible for the killing of civilians and to have violated of its international humanitarian law obligations.
The investigation also found the State authorities in breach of its international their humanitarian law responsibilities through their failure to take precautions to protect the civilian population, in the context of the Royal Nepalese Army's repeated and regular use of public transportation facilities.
The Office has not been able to reach a conclusion as to the identity of the perpetrators of the attacks mentioned in the two reports, but in its report it noted that the acts suggested a level of premeditation and organization.
The report also urged the police to continue their own criminal investigation and calls upon the CPN (Maoists) to conduct an enquiry, to establish whether any of its local cadres were involved and to make its findings public.