(CEHURDES/IFEX) – The Center for Human Rights and Democratic Studies (CEHURDES) – a Kathmandu-based freedom of expression monitoring group – condemns the detention of over a dozen artists, poets and writers and manhandling of journalists in Kathmandu on 21 January 2006. Police intervened in a peaceful event organized to recite pro-democracy poems at New Baneswore […]
(CEHURDES/IFEX) – The Center for Human Rights and Democratic Studies (CEHURDES) – a Kathmandu-based freedom of expression monitoring group – condemns the detention of over a dozen artists, poets and writers and manhandling of journalists in Kathmandu on 21 January 2006.
Police intervened in a peaceful event organized to recite pro-democracy poems at New Baneswore in the capital and arrested over a dozen writers. They also manhandled and forced two journalists, Tanka Panta and Prakash Silwal, into a van. They were freed after other journalists protested the police action.
All the arrested writers were released later in the day.
Similarly, police manhandled a group of journalists while they were covering a protest organized by the seven party opposition alliance at Basantapur, in the capital, on the same day. Journalist Deepesh Das Shrestha, affiliated with “Kantipur Online”, was injured during a skirmish between the police and demonstrators. A couple of human rights monitors were also injured during the scuffle.
CEHURDES condemns the arrest of writers and manhandling of journalists and human rights activists by the royal government. These incidences are clearly in violation of the rights to peaceful assembly and to freedom of expression as guaranteed by the country’s constitution and various international treaties to which Nepal is a signatory.
CEHURDES urges His Majesty’s Government of Nepal not to repeat such incidences in future and to honor its commitment to press freedom and freedom of expression.
