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Nepal

To discourage child recruits from surrendering, Maoist commanders informed children that they will be tortured if captured by the army.  Child soldiers also fear violence to themselves or their families if they attempt to surrender.

Eighteen-year-old Padma told Human Rights Watch that her superiors tried to discourage her from ever surrendering, warning her about the treatment she would receive from the Nepali army:

The commanders told us never to surrender. They told us to throw the grenade that we had into the troops and run away. When I said that I wouldn’t be able to do that, they said that the army would then arrest me, and if I surrender the army would torture and rape me.

When Padma and several other Maoists, including children, were followed by government forces after the battle of Tensen, the group sought shelter in a house in a village.  Harried by government helicopters, their commanders first told them not to surrender and then essentially abandoned them:

We were staying in the house with our commanders; they went out and started firing at the helicopter, and they also told the others to come out. Then, when the second helicopter arrived, the commanders just threw their weapons in the house and left. The commanders told us to run and not to surrender, but we said we would surrender to the army. The commanders were outside of the house, still trying to convince us to run, saying, ‘You are going to surrender, we cannot let this happen—we would rather kill you.’ And then they shot at the house once from a submachine gun, and ran away.

See: Children in the Ranks: The Maoists’ Use of Child Soldiers in Nepal, February 2007, http://hrw.org/reports/2007/nepal0207/

April 2008

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