Refugee forum appeals for release of rights activist

HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE

KATHMANDU: Peoples Forum for Human Rights and Development ( PFHRD), an independent human rights organization of the Bhutanese refugees, appeals for immediate release of its General Secretary SK Pradhan, also a Bhutanese Human Rights activist who was arrested by Nepali policemen in plain clothes from Kathmandu on September 19 last year.

He is now in the district prison of Jhapa accused of murdering RK Budathoki, leader of Bhutan People’s Party ( BPP), who was killed by a refugee student. PFHRD accused the murder to be committed by Ram Chandra Subedi, a refugee student at the camp in the afternoon of September 9, 2001 at Damak, Jhapa during a closed-door meeting of the party with the refugee students.

In an appeal to the chairperson of the fifty-eighth session of UN Commission on Human Rights, PFHRD pledges that Pradhan has been made a victim of conspiracy as he was in Kathmandu when the murder was committed and had just returned two days ago from World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa. He was a regular participant of the sessions of UN Commission on Human Rights and he also used to be at the forefront of the Bhutanese movement for democracy and human rights for the last twelve years. He has been in detention for the last seven months due to the erroneous decision taken by the Nepali court.