APRIL 18, 2005 Posted: April 19, 2005 Surya Thapa, Budhabar HARASSED Government officials summoned Budhabar weekly editor Surya Thapa to question him about a cartoon and article published in his magazine. Officials at the District Administration Office in Kathmandu asked Thapa to clarify the intent of a cartoon published on March 30, which compared then-recent…
Kathmandu, Nepal, April 12, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on the government of Nepal to end the harassment and imprisonment of journalists and to repeal restrictions imposed on private media in the wake of King Gyanendra’s February 1 emergency proclamation. During a press conference in Kathmandu at the end of a weeklong fact-finding…
APRIL 11, 2005 Posted: April 13, 2005 Robin Poudel, Tanahu Aawaj IMPRISONED Police in the Tanahu district in western Nepal announced they would hold a local journalist for a three-month detention. The journalist, editor Robin Poudel of Tanahu Aawaj weekly newspaper, was arrested on Friday April 8 while covering a demonstration in Damauli that had…
MARCH 2005 Posted: April 11, 2005 BBC World Service CENSORED The government began blocking news transmissions from the BBC World Service on its state-run Radio Nepal FM 103 station in the capital of Kathmandu, despite having signed an agreement to air news programs in their entirety the previous November.
New York, April 11, 2005 – Police in the Tanahu district in western Nepal are holding a local journalist for a three-month detention. The journalist, editor Robin Poudel of Tanahu Aawaj weekly newspaper, was arrested on Friday while covering a demonstration in Damauli that was called to protest the state of emergency established by King…
New York, April 8, 2005 – The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the Nepalese government’s abrupt decision to stop publishing all ads in private media—an action that CPJ interprets as an attempt to stifle critical coverage. According to a copy of a government memo reproduced on April 6 in the weekly Jana Aastha, the new…
APRIL 4, 2005 Posted: April 7, 2005 Prabhakar Ghimire, Kantipur Narayan Sharma, Kantipur Khuman Singh Tamang, Kantipur HARASSED, THREATENED The three reporters for Kantipur, the country’s largest circulation Nepali-language daily, were called in for questioning by police in the southern city of Chitwan after their April 3 article, citing unnamed police sources, described the torching…
New York, April 4, 2005 – A critically wounded Nepali editor died last Friday, according to local news reports. Khagendra Shrestha, editor and publisher of Dharan Today newspaper, was shot in the head by unidentified gunmen just over two weeks ago. The assailants overtook him in his Dharan office, 335 miles east of Kathmandu. Shrestha,…
Your Majesty: In the Royal Proclamation of February 1, Your Majesty dismissed the government, declared a state of emergency and curtailed civil liberties. In early February, we visited Nepal’s ambassador to the United States, Kedar Bhakta Shrestha, who assured us that restrictions on the press were temporary and that Your Majesty was committed to democracy and free expression.