Kathmandu, March 5:

The National Human Rights Commission today said families of those who have disappeared are continuing with their protests on the NHRC premises even though they agreed to settle the matter.

The protesters include relatives of those persons whose whereabouts have already been traced, the NHRC said.

However, the protestors have reportedly initiated a signature campaign reagarding the issue of disappearances. They have plan to forward the signatures to the UN Convention on Human Rights in Geneva.

Durga KC, wife of Krishna KC, former vice-president of All Nepal National Independent Students Union - Revolutionary, who no longer is in the list of people disappeared, is part of the ongoing protest programme, said the NHRC. Krishna KC is being detained in Nakkhu jail. “They are continuing their protests even though their representatives signed a written agreement with us,” said NHRC chairman Nain Bahadur Khatri. The NHRC asked the protesters to name two persons for representing them in a five-member panel to look into the matter of disappeared people, they suggested Sundar Mani Dixit, Padma Ratna Tuladhar and Nepal Bar Association president Shambhu Thapa be included in the panel.

“We agreed that they can bring any two members of their choice in the panel but some of them stayed back and continued with the protest saying

that an eighty-year-old woman was hell bent in continuing with the protest until her demands were met,” said Khatri at a press meet organised by the NHRC here today.

He further spelt out that the NHRC neither mistreated the protestors nor used any force against them as reported in the media and that the commission has been working hard concerning the issue of disappearance. The commission has already traced 116 missing individuals between January 29 to March 3 thus the missing individuals yet to be accounted for as per the NHRC data are 775.

Meanwhile, protestors blocking the main entrance of the NHRC demanded the government make public the whereabouts of all people who have disappeared and also clear the rumour concerning the mass killing of 47 detainees of Bhairabnath barrack in Shivapuri jungle on January 20. “We will soon be forwarding signatures of one million people to the UN Geneva Convention through the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights concerning the disappearance issue,”said Bhim Bahadur Basnet, joint coordinator of the Association of the Families of the Disappeared People while talking to journalists.