‘Monitoring is not 24-hour surveillance’ UNMIN role unfinished: Martin

KATHMANDU, May 27 - Chief of United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) Ian Martin on Tuesday said the role
of his mission hasn’t yet been completed, even after the CA poll.
“My main responsibility in addressing the Security Council was to remind them of the unfinished business of the peace process,” said Martin, who returned recently after briefing the UN Security Council in New York about developments in Nepal.
“The Constituent Assembly election was a milestone, a
major achievement, in that
process, but it does not
represent the completion of the process.”
Speaking at a program organized by Reporters Club Nepal, he said there are still two armies, with widely differing views amongst political parties as to how their future is to be decided.
He said there is the urgency of addressing the issues of the future of the (Maoist) combatants so that there could be a clear exit strategy from UNMIN’s role of arms monitoring. “And yet, as we know, very little progress was made on those issues before the election and, as I said, there are significantly differing views now,” he said.
He said the transformation of the Young Communist League into a body that fully respects the legal functioning of the state and is no longer subject to criticism for engaging in its own law enforcement is also, in a way, unfinished business of the peace process.
“And there are many
other peace process
commitments as yet unfulfilled,” he said.
orture in Shaktikhor
cantonment
Responding to criticism that businessman Ram Hari Shrestha was allegedly tortured by ‘People’s Liberation Army’ men in UNMIN-monitored Shaktikhor cantonment, Chitwan, after his abduction from the capital, Martin said his office was mandated to ‘monitor’ the management of armed personnel but not to ‘supervise’ them.
“There really is a misunderstanding about this word ‘monitoring’… Monitoring meant that whenever there were reports of a violation, one investigated it actively and insisted that a proper action was taken to bring those responsible to justice and to prevent further such actions. That is exactly what UNMIN has been doing in terms of monitoring the management of armed personnel by their chains of command,” he said.
He further asked media to not confuse “monitoring” with “surveillance”.
Martin added that the management of the cantonments is the responsibility of Maoist PLA commanders.
“UNMIN’s responsibility is to monitor as best it can with limited resources, the extent to which they are fulfilling those obligations. And we do that...with 186 arms monitors,” he said. “If anyone wanted UNMIN to maintain continuous surveillance of the military sites in Nepal, Nepal would have had to ask for thousands of United Nations peacekeepers, not for a small monitoring body.” (The Kantipuronline)