SECURITY GUARD SHOT DEAD IN BANKE Kathmandu, 22 Feb.: A security guard Indra Bahadur was shot dead over night in Banke. Two Indians have been arrested. mmm DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS WITH TWO MORE STATES Kathmandu, 2 Feb.: Diplomatic relations is being established with Uzbekistan and Samoa. The cabinet took a decision Thursday. nnnn. TOP OFFICIALS AVOIDING UN RIGHTS MEET Kathmandu, 22 Feb.: As Nepal’s human rights record comes under increasing scrutiny from international quarters, senior Nepali government officials, including Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Narayan Kaji Shrestha , Chief Secretary Lilamani Poudel and Foreign Secretary Durga Bhattarai, are all set to skip the crucial 22nd session of the UN Human Rights Council that will begin in Geneva next week, Anil Giri writes in The Kathmandu Post. . DPM Shrestha confirmed that no senior government official will be leading a Nepali delegation to the council due to the changing political scenario in the country. For the past several years, according to the importance of the theme of the annual human rights meet, either the foreign minister or the chief secretary had been leading a Nepali delegation. According to officials involved in the human rights sector in the country, this time around, Nepal’s poor human rights record is likely to dominate the meeting as the country has failed to address several outstanding issues and this has led to officials avoiding participation. After the three senior government officials refused to attend the meet, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) instructed its Geneva-based Ambassador Shanker Bairagi and Paris-based Nepali diplomat Ram Babu Dhakal to lead the delegation and defend Nepal’s position. Chief Secretary Poudel was asked to lead the Nepali delegation after DPM Shrestha rejected the idea. However, Poudel also refused and instructed Foreign Secretary Bhattarai to lead the Nepali team. Later, Bhattarai was also advised against attending the meet and the baton was passed on to Ambassador Bairagi, an official privy to the developments told the Post. “There is no difference between sending a foreign secretary or assigning an ambassador to lead the delegation,” DPM Shrestha told the Post. According to multiple sources, besides the implementation of Nepal’s human rights commitments and compensation to victims, the Nepali delegation will be grilled over issues like the failure to set up a transitional justice mechanism, statelessness, investigations into the murder of Dailekh-based journalist Dekendra Thapa, growing cases of violence against women and the government’s failure to address the situation. Some 30,000 documents on serious violations of international law during the 10-year Maoist conflict, released last October by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and the arrest of Nepal Army Col Kumar Lama by British authorities are also likely to feature in the discussions. “All preparations were ready, but all of a sudden, officials refused to attend the meeting,” said a MoFA official. Nepal’s failure to field a team of political leaders or high-level bureaucrats in the meeting could mean that the country is not ready when it comes to defending rights issues that will be raised, officials said. “We will definitely face an embarrassing situation in Geneva,” said another official. Nnnn 200 PASSPORTS MISSING Kathmandu, 22 Feb.:Over 200 passport s of Nepali migrant workers, most of which with work visa for Saudi Arabia, disappeared under mysterious circumstances while they were being brought back to the country from Bangladesh on February 8, Roshan Sedhai writes in The Kathmandu Post... The owner of recruiting agency Memorial Overseas, Lok Prasad Aryal, had been carrying the passport s sent by nine manpower companies. Work visas for Saudi Arabia are stamped in Bangladesh in the absence of the Gulf country’s embassy in Nepal. “They ( passport s) were in my luggage when I boarded a Biman Bangladesh plane for Kathmandu. However, they were not there by the time I arrived at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu,” Aryal told the Post over telephone from Bangladesh. He said there were around 110 passport s with visas, 25 without them and 60 driving licences. To save extra costs, manpower agencies usually assign one specific person to take the passport back to the country after they are stamped. Two of the nine manpower agencies in question—World Wide Manpower Agency and KL International—have claimed that at least three individuals have entered Saudi Arabia with the lost passport s. “We have confirmed that two individuals have entered Saudi with the lost passport s processed by our agency,” Pushpa Bhandari, the owner of World Wide International, told the Post over telephone from Dhaka. According to him, trans-national human traffickers may have got hold of the passport s and that they used them to smuggle Bangladeshis to Saudi Arabia. The other lost passport s were processed by Memorial Overseas Services, Nabil Overseas, Meridian Overseas, Oxford Management System Pvt Ltd, Friendship Manpower Cosultancy, Equator International and Al-Summit Manpower. Manpower agencies claim the human traffickers pay around Rs 150,000 for a Nepali passport . They said they have often found that those passport s with visas had been sold to Bangladeshi nationals for 600,000 taka (over Rs 600,000). Nepal police have arrested over 100 Bangladeshi nationals in the past few months for misusing Nepali passport s. According to the police, foreign nationals with criminal records tend to steal passport s of different nations and different routes. Aryal has not informed the Nepali mission in Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Foreign Employment of the lost passport s. “I have informed only the Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies (NAFEA) of the matter. I will inform all the offices concerned by Sunday,” said Aryal. NAFEA Chairman Bal Bahadur Tamang said the passport s could have been misused, mainly by Bangladeshi nationals. “During my recent visit to Bangladesh, I found it very insecure carrying passport s with me, as there have been incidents when people have been robbed of the documents while the passport s have later found to be misused. “Nepal’s foreign employment industry could land in deep trouble if Nepali passport s are misused,” Tamang said. He added that he has informed senior police officials and secretaries of the dangers of such a thing happening. Acting chief of the passport division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Yadav Khanal, said they usually receive complaints of a few passport s getting lost. “So far, we have not heard of anyone losing so many passport s at one go. There might be some bad intention here. We will look into the matter,” he said. nnnn