Ward Chair at a rural municipality in Parbat issued threat of attack to journalist Laxman Sunar for news reporting on May 31. Parbat lies in Gandaki Province of Nepal.
Sunar is executive editor at https://nayannews.com/ (online news portal).
Editor Sunar shared with Freedom Forum that he had reported news about Mahashila rural municipality's ward chair Ram Bahadur Sunar cheating elder citizens in distribution of senior citizen's allowance. He had also recorded video of the complaint from victims.
"Ward chair Sunar then, threatened to cut my fingers and break hands and legs for writing news against him at the voting center on the day of election. He also accused me of defaming him during the election. Following his threat, I shared the incident with fellow journalists", he said.
"Today (June 2), I will file a complaint at the District Police Office, Parbat", he informed.
Freedom Forum condemns the incident. Threatening and abusing journalists at the public place is sheer violation of press freedom. The chairperson should have adopted legitimate ways, had he any dissatisfaction over published news.
Hence, FF strongly urges the concerned authority to apologize for his behavior and assure to respect journalists right to free reporting in future.
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Freedom Forum
monitoring@freedomforum.org.np