by Prakash Dubey

Dozens of people demonstrate peacefully. We are not asking the government to release our loved ones but to tell us where they are and whether they are still alive, says the mother of a detained young man.

Kathmandu (AsiaNews) – Dozens of women, elderly and children held a peaceful, candlelit rally to ask the government to reveal where their relatives are being held after they disappeared in raids by security forces. Demonstrators carried pictures of their loved ones.

"This peaceful demonstration with candles won't have any effect on the arrogance and conceit of the authorities who think they are invincible," human rights activist Ram Ekbal Choudhary told AsiaNews. "It is however a message for the Western world, to say that the despotic government of Nepal is killing people like flies".

"The demonstration is peaceful. Violent protests won't find a sympathetic echo in international public opinion because people will think that Maoist guerrillas are involved," he noted, "but this peaceful, candlelit rally is telling the world that these people need help, and only an international humanitarian intervention can force the government to tell the families what happened to those who disappeared."

"We are not looking for those who disappeared in mysterious ways," said Krishna Rai, rally coordinator. "All we want is to know what happened to those who were picked up by security forces in front of witnesses. No government authority has told us where they are and whether any are still alive."

"We are not asking this blood thirsty government to release our loved ones," said Umadevi Acharya, a 68-year-old woman whose son was taken by the military two years ago. "We only want to know where they are. If they were killed they should tell us so that we can perform the last rights for our loved ones and get used to the idea that they are no longer of this world. But they tell us nothing."

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