DIFFICULT RETURN TO CIVILIAN LIFE

Lenin Bista is now involved in other child soldiers - in Nepal and worldwide. © zvg

NEPALDIFFICULT RETURN TO CIVILIAN LIFE

By Emilie Mathys. Published in «AMNESTY - Magazin der Menschenrechte» from August 2019.

Lenin Bista had fought for the Maoist guerrillas in Nepal, now he fights for justice - for himself and others who have experienced the same thing. Encounter with a former child soldier.

Lenin Bista arrives at the Amnesty office almost an hour before our appointment. Hardly got in the door, the 28-year-old begins to tell us his story and the purpose of his stay in Geneva: In his pocket, he has a petition he launched to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, justice for the former child soldiers soldiers of Nepal calls.

Violence and humiliation

With his fashionable glasses and wide laugh, it is difficult to imagine Lenin Bista as one of the thousands of children whom the Maoist guerrillas had recruited as soldiers during the Nepalese civil war. A war in which the monarchy and government stood on the one hand and the Communist Party on the other and lasted from 1996 to 2006. Bista was only 12 when he first encountered the Maoist movement's recruiting section. Her message moved him, the movement primarily addressed the poorest sections of the population. So he joined her as a fighter. Bista was assigned to the intelligence service. "My job was to collect enough information for the next attack," he says.
Four years passed in which the boy was the victim of humiliation and violence. After the «Nepalese People's War» officially came to an end with a peace agreement in November 2006, only the United Nations took care of the reintegration of child soldiers. "The government has completely let us down," Bista emphasizes with bitterness. The former fighter was sent to a camp controlled by the United Nations, where he and other former soldiers were asked to choose between integration into the national army and release from civilian life. A plan that was rejected by the government on official grounds that Lenin Bista and other child soldiers were out of the question because they were still minors at the time the peace agreement was signed.

Abandoned

Lenin Bista was without a job perspective. "I had missed four years of school," he says, "and therefore poor conditions for reintegrating into society and finding work." Bista recalls that unemployment affects several generations, since adult fighters are also poorly reintegrated into society and their children are disadvantaged. He says that some of his former comrades even committed suicide because they failed to find a place in Nepalese society and were excluded. Nobody cares about them, despite the experiences and traumas that they should have been through, Bista said. But he decided to make up for what he had missed, plunged into distance learning and graduated with a university degree. But he and the other former child soldiers remain socially excluded, and there is no rehabilitation for the approximately 3,000 former child soldiers. So he decided to found the Discharged People's Liberation Army Nepal. The organization, which is now called Peace Envisioners Nepal, works for former child soldiers, for their recognition, security and reintegration and above all for their education.
However, this commitment does not please either the Maoists or the government. Bista was even kidnapped to prevent him from launching a campaign. In August 2018, the government also prohibited him from traveling to Thailand, where he should have attended a peace conference. With his petition, Bista wants to draw the United Nations' attention to his concerns so that the UN puts pressure on Nepal. All former child soldiers should become a political priority and experience justice - everyone, worldwide. "It's a global problem," Bista says.
At the end of our conversation, the question of what he wanted for his future. "I would like to continue to inform the public about this issue so that justice can be achieved," he replies. "And maybe some land and work, for a simple life," he adds before setting off for his next stop - the goal is Paris.

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NEPAL'S CHILDREN AT WAR

From 1996 to 2006 the country was in a civil war in the Himalayas, the Maoist Communist Party of Nepal fought against the monarchy and the Hindu caste system. According to the post-war government, more than 16,000 people were killed in the guerrilla war, including many civilians who died as a result of the fighting or from mines. The civilian population was wiped out between the warring parties and in some cases targeted by combatants, as Amnesty International stated in a 2005 report; children and adolescents were also tortured, executed or sexually abused. Many girls were made into sex slaves and some were also sold abroad. The Maoists had employed more than 3,000 child soldiers in their army. The war ended with a peace agreement,

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CHILD SOLDIERS WORLDWIDE

According to Unicef, around 250,000 girls and boys in more than 20 countries around the world are deployed as child soldiers in armed conflicts, according to international estimates. Most children and adolescents are first kidnapped and finally recruited, only a few join the armed groups out of ideological conviction. Some do this simply out of necessity, because this is the only way to get food and protection. Within the troops, however, they are usually subjected to violence and are forced to follow the orders - although they are often used as unsuspecting assassins. Children are not only used for fighting, but also for example as a scout, cook or porter. Girls in particular - but not only - are often sexually exploited.


https://www.amnesty.ch/de/ueber-amnesty/publikationen/magazin-amnesty/2019-3/kindersoldat-nepal-lenin-bista