JUNE 22-23, 2005
Posted: June 30, 2005
Kishor Karki, Blast TimeKishor Shrestha, Jana Aastha
HARASSED
Police questioned Kishor Karki, editor of Blast Time, a daily newspaper based in the town of Dharan, about his reporting on a clash between the government and Maoist rebels, according to the Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ).
Citing orders from the chief district officer, a police inspector questioned Karki for two hours on June 23 in an effort to compel him to reveal the source for his reporting on violence in eastern Bhojpur district on June 22, the FNJ said in a written statement. The editor did not disclose his source.
In a separate incident on June 22, two plainclothes military officers entered the offices of the Kathmandu-based weekly Jana Aastha three times to question staff members about a June 22 article on the activities of a general in the Nepalese army, editor Kishor Shrestha told the Committee to Protest Journalists. Shrestha said that he also received a phone call at his home.
Military officers demanded that Shrestha and other journalists at the newspaper reveal the source for the June 22 article, the editor said. The reporter who wrote the story was not in Kathmandu, and other Jana Aastha journalists refused to disclose the source. Officers left only after threatening to return.
“The staff were very much afraid,” Shrestha told CPJ. “The officers said, ‘We’re not going to forgive you. There’s no excuse for this.'”