Freedom Forum's attention has been drawn seriously towards an incident occurred at Nepalgunj, a city in the Midwest of Nepal on January 3, 2012.
A reporter with the local Bheri FM, Tirtha Jaishee was beaten up and looted by an unknown gang while he was on a way to the office.
Talking to Freedom Forum's media monitoring desk, journo Jaishee said, "When I was coming to the FM early morning from Kailali district, a gang all of a sudden spoke foul to me, beat up and looted my bag containing pen, tape recorder, pen drive and a diary. I got minor injury on my ear too."
It is quite condemnable that journalists in Nepal are being the butt of attack from various sectors including unknown gang. It clearly depicts how fragile the security situation is.
Such incidents are responsible for creating psychological fear resulting in the self-censorship among journalist, and the self-censorship is a key to limiting the scope of freedom of expression.
Freedom Forum therefore urges the concerned bodies to seek the assailants and bring them to book.
UPDATE:
Freedom Forum welcomes the arrest of a person involved in the beating of journalist in Nepalgunj the same day on January 4, 2012.
Police in Banke district had arrested 21-year-old Santosh Bam of Ramnagar of Nepalgunj-7 Wednesday evening who was in the gang to beat up and rob journalist Tirtha Jaishee affiliated to the Bheri FM.
The police act is laudable which obviously helps create secured environment for the journalists to work, and check impunity as well.
For more information,
Freedom Forum
monitoring@freedomforum.org.np
01-4102030/ 4102022