Kedar Koirala had reported on a case involving the Kavre District Administration Office on the weekly television program "Off the Beat".
(Freedom Forum/IFEX) – Freedom Forum is concerned over the death threat issued to Kedar Koirala, a journalist working with Avenues Television, in Kathmandu, Nepal on October 23, 2010.
A group of locals from Kavre, an adjacent district of Kathmandu, threatened journalist Koirala with death after he reported on the Kavre District Administration Office (DAO) refusing to register a case of a mother whose son had beaten her up, on the weekly television program “Off the Beat”.
According to Koirala, the group frequently made phone calls from different landlines and mobile phone numbers and also threatened to abduct him and his family.
Freedom Forum strongly condemns the incident and dubs it an ‘incident carried out to gag press freedom’. Freedom Forum believes that if there is any disagreement regarding the news, amicable solutions should be sought through dialogue or legal procedures, as the existing laws of Nepal clearly provide for a way of taking legal action against the media.
Freedom Forum calls on the government to take immediate action against the culprits behind the threats and bring the guilty to book.
