(RSF/IFEX) – The body of journalist Ambika Timsina was found on 12 December 2002 near the village of Pathari, in the southeastern province of Koshi. He had been shot and beaten. The previous day, eight masked men had kidnapped him from his home, saying they wanted to “settle a few things” with him. Noting suspicions […]
(RSF/IFEX) – The body of journalist Ambika Timsina was found on 12 December 2002 near the village of Pathari, in the southeastern province of Koshi. He had been shot and beaten. The previous day, eight masked men had kidnapped him from his home, saying they wanted to “settle a few things” with him.
Noting suspicions that the kidnappers were Maoist rebels, RSF called on the rebels to stop attacking media workers and called for the killers to be arrested and tried.
Timsina, 26, who was to be married soon, had worked for the pro-Maoist weeklies “Janadesh” and “Mahima” but decided to surrender to security forces after a state of emergency was declared in November 2001. He and his father had been granted an amnesty, and Timsina wanted to continue working in the region.
Friends of Timsina said the killers may have been Maoists who suspected him of being an informer for the security forces and who had punished him for supposed treachery. In August, the rebels killed Nawaraj “Basant” Sharma, founder and editor of the weekly “Karnali Sandesh”, in western Nepal (see IFEX alerts of 23 and 22 August 2002).
In a March report on press freedom in Nepal, RSF stated that, under the state of emergency, the Maoists, who, since 1996, had executed dozens of members of the ruling Congress Party and more recently human rights activists, may now target journalists they accused of collaborating with the government, especially reporters working in the provinces (see IFEX alert of 27 March 2002).
