Yet again, an incident of press freedom violation has drawn the attention of Freedom Forum on November 24, 2011.
An office of a daily newspaper, Nigarani Dotcom in Biratnagar, eastern city in the southern plain of Nepal was vandalized by a group of some 50-60 students along with two teachers and hostel warden over the news the paper published today.
Talking to Freedom Forum's Media Monitoring Desk, Chief Editor of the daily, Hari Koirala said, "Two teachers and a hostel warden came with some 60 students from a nearby Saptakoshi Boarding School and vandalized the newspaper office- smashed window pane, broke cupboard, damaged camera and recorder- on November 24 afternoon reasoning the newspaper published a news that a teacher mercilessly beat up a student leading her to admit in the hospital."
Chief Editor Koirala added that the school had tried to hush the beating by requesting the newspaper not to publish the news yesterday.
In this way, the media is bearing brunt even from the educational institution which is responsible to teach good things.
The vandalism in the newspaper office is a condemnable act as it is obviously an attack on press freedom and people's right to information. The ill-efforts the school made to suppress the news in spite of doing wrong were threat and intimidation to journalists' rights. Therefore, Freedom Forum wants the culprits mete out justice by the concerned authorities.
For more information,
Freedom Forum
monitoring@freedomforum.org.np
01-4102030/ 4102022