Ex-child soldier from Nepal now fights with words. 'It is important that Tilburg students receive my story'
Ex-child soldier from Nepal now fights with words. 'It is important that Tilburg students receive my story'
TILBURG - For seven years, Lenin Bista from Nepal was a child soldier. Now, at the risk of his own life, he stands up for human rights and the interests of 3,000 other former child soldiers in the country. Shelter City brought him to Tilburg.
Nepal, 2003. As an explorer of the Maoist People's Liberation Army, Lenin Bista (then 12 years old, now 28) goes from village to village to gather information and control the inhabitants. The child soldier serves the party for seven years until the 2006 peace agreement with the government is signed.
On Thursday afternoon, June 13, Lenin will speak at a mini-symposium on human rights at Tilburg University. About his experiences as a child soldier, but especially about how he fights for the rights of other ex-child soldiers and human rights in general. Lenin spent the past two months in Tilburg. To take a break from the situation in his homeland, to follow a training in digital security and to expand his network. It is part of the Shelter City project, in which Tilburg, like eleven other Dutch cities, offers shelter to human rights defenders.
Kidnapped and in the cell
Because his work in Nepal is not without danger. Lenin faced threats, vandalism to his home and the office of his organization, was kidnapped and had to go to jail for a year. Partly for his own safety, the Nepalese spoke recently with organizations and people in Geneva, Antwerp, Brussels, Paris and Amsterdam. “I have had many different conversations to expand and connect my network. The government in Nepal is powerful and something can always happen to me, such as a fake accident . Then it helps that people know me and my story. I am not afraid, but in the evening in bed I think about it. Especially since I now have a wife and child. ”
"Here in Europe, few people have an idea about the situation in Nepal," says Lenin, who praises architecture and the Dutch education system. "That is also the way to improve the situation in Nepal. To provide education to young people and then keep them in the country. ”
Many false promises
Under the banner of the Discharged People's Liberation Army Nepal (D-PLAN), Lenin stands up primarily for the interests of the nearly 3,000 ex-child soldiers like himself, who were forcibly recruited during the uprising and are now unskilled, sometimes traumatized and community-ridden are being looked at with the neck, even after the new constitution in 2015. ,, There have always been many false promises, but we want (financial) support and recognition. I continue to fight for justice and equality, but now peacefully and in a good way. We also need the help of other countries for that. We used to fight with weapons, now with words. This should not happen again. ”
The mini-symposium on human rights is at Tilburg University from 4 pm to 6 pm on Thursday afternoons. Lenin puts his hopes on his listeners. "It is important that they get this story, because these are the people who will be in influential positions in five or ten years."
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