Nepal: Media Under Siege

Nepal's Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the government not to close a radio station after police raided its premises to prevent it from relaying a BBC interview with Maoist leader Prachanda. More than 500 journalists organised a public meeting to express their solidarity for Radio Sagarmatha in nepal capital Kathmandu on Monday. © Dinesh Wagle/United We Blog A single-bench of justice Badri Kumar...

Nepal police stormed a community FM radio station, arrested four journalists and seized equipment in order to block a BBC interview with Maoist leader Prachanda late Sunday. "The legal action has been against Radio Sagarmatha as it has been found that topics prohibited or banned has been broadcast," state-run Radio Nepal quoted a statement by the Nepal information and communications ministry as...

BUTWAL, Nov 20 - A fierce debate ensued between local journalists and a team of Press Council currently in Butwal, monitoring the code of conduct for journalists, on Sunday. Local journalists criticized the council's chairman Mathabar Singh Basnet's remark that the government was forced to introduce new media ordinance due to difficult situation in the country. Basnet in his speech had said that...

Over 2,000 professionals from various walks of life including lawyers, journalists, teachers and doctors staged demonstrations in Nepal's capital Kathmandu on Sunday to protest media repression and the recent rejection by the Supreme Court of a petition seeking a stay order on the controversial media ordinance introduced by the government in early October. Pro-democracy activists demonstrate in...

A group of journalists today called on the chief of the United Nations Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Nepal to play a pro-active in protecting Nepali media from various government offenses. In a memorandum handed over to Ian Martin, the journalists said they feared that in the aftermath the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday in relation to the media ordinance, the...

King Gyanendra, while addressing the inaugural session of the thirteenth SAARC summit in Dhaka today, said that his February 1 move was necessitated by the ground realities of the pre-Feb 1 period and was not taken at the cost of the democracy. Nepal was in the danger of turning into a failed state, but since February 1, the security situation in Nepal had improved, the King said. He said the...

The Nepalese Attorney General, Professor Pawan Kumar Ohja, has defended the legality of the recent media ordinance, claiming that it is not unconstitutional - despite having been issued by the executive in the absence of parliament. "As ordinances also hold legislative power, it can amend not only the ordinance itself, but also the existing laws and regulations made by the parliament," Ohja said...

KATHMANDU, Nov. 11: The Gorkhapatra Style Book will be amended to bring uniformity to its Nepali publications, said Executive Chairperson of the Gorkhapatra Corporation at the conclusion of the two-day refresher course organised by the corporation to its Nepali proofreaders on Friday. During the training, different speakers said that there were different dictionaries and grammar books and, thus...

The Supreme Court today declined to issue a stay order on the implementation of the controversial media ordinance. It also refused to continue the interlocutory stay order issued on October 27 ordering the government not to take further action against Kantipur FM. The court ruled there was no ground to issue a stay order in the case filed by Kantipur FM and others. A special bench of Chief Justice...

Cheju Island _ Some 70 senior journalists from 22 nations Wednesday called on the Nepalese government to take immediate steps to restore freedom of speech in the Himalayan country. ``The ongoing government crackdown on the Nepalese media is a cause for great concern for journalists committed to freedom and democracy in the Asia-Pacific region,'' they said in a statement. They adopted the statement...