(CEHURDES/IFEX) – CEHURDES condemns the act of burning of copies of a leading newspaper by a religious group and the manhandling of a photojournalist by police personnel. On 24 May 2006, a group of protesters stopped a vehicle belonging to Kantipur Publications Ltd. at Parawanipur, some 15 kilometres from the southern town of Birgunj. They […]
(CEHURDES/IFEX) – CEHURDES condemns the act of burning of copies of a leading newspaper by a religious group and the manhandling of a photojournalist by police personnel.
On 24 May 2006, a group of protesters stopped a vehicle belonging to Kantipur Publications Ltd. at Parawanipur, some 15 kilometres from the southern town of Birgunj. They took out all 1,700 copies of the newspaper and burnt them. The demonstrators were protesting the proclamation by the reinstated House of Representatives (HoR) to change the world’s only Hindu kingdom into a secular state. They accused “Kantipur” – a leading private sector daily – of supporting the HoR’s move. In its editorial on 22 May, the daily said there was no rationale for keeping the state as a Hindu state, and that practices like caste discrimination and so-called ‘untouchability’ were being propagated in the pretext of religion.
The HoR proclamation on 18 May also curtailed the powers of the Nepalese monarch drastically and brought the army under the purview of the parliament, among other things.
CEHURDES condemns the burning of the copies of a newspaper by pro-Hindu activists, a direct violation of the media’s right to express its views on any issue of public importance. “Kantipur” has played an exemplary role in upholding press freedom and freedom of expression in the country and has been targeted in the past for exposing the misdeeds of the royal regime. We call upon religious groups and other members of the community to express their reservations in a peaceful and dignified manner, and not to target media organizations and newspapers for expressing their views.
In a separate incident, policemen mistreated Kumar Shrestha, a photographer with Nepalnews.com, while he was covering an act of vandalism targeting Everest Nursing Home, a private medical facility, in the capital, Kathmandu, on 24 May. Policemen, who had gone to control an irate mob that was vandalizing the hospital property following a controversy over the death of a patient, tried to stop Shrestha from taking pictures of the incident and treated him roughly.
CEHURDES condemns the police’s action in barring a photojournalist from carrying out his duties, and demands an apology from the police department regarding the incident. Such police behaviour shows that security personnel still regard media as an unnecessary hindrance to their work, despite the restoration of democracy in the country.
It may be recalled that a group of Maoist activists had threatened and harassed Shrestha, along with two other reporters, while he was covering their public meeting in Kathmandu on 28 April. Shrestha was also hit in the arm by a rubber bullet while he was covering the pro-democracy movement in Gongabu, Kathmandu, on 11 April. He resumed his professional work with the bullet still lodged in his arm.
