Freedom Forum has been concerned over an anti-press incident occurred at Dharan, a city in the hilly region of the eastern part of Nepal on July 4, 2011.
An organization, Janasarokar Manch Nepal, burnt the two local daily newspapers, the Fast Times, and the Morning Times, reasoning that they published biased news about the report on property tax on July 2.
The organization burnt down the papers in public.
Talking to Freedom Forum's media monitoring desk, Editor of the Fast Times, Keshav Ghimire said the organization burnt down the papers on Monday over the news they published about 'a baseless report on property tax submitted to the Dharan Municipality'. The news was not biased at all, he claimed.
Freedom Forum expresses grave concern to the incident which violated media freedom and disheartened the working journalists to carry out their works. The burning came as a threat to media thereby suppressing people's right to information. It was not the way to resort to as there could be legal recourse if the news was baseless. So, Freedom Forum urges the concerned authorities to deter and control such untoward activities towards free press.
For more information,
Freedom Forum
monitoring@freedomforum.org.np
01-4102030/ 4102022