APRIL 18, 2005 Posted: April 19, 2005 Surya Thapa, Budhabar HARASSED Government officials summoned Budhabar weekly editor Surya Thapa to question him about a cartoon and article published in his magazine. Officials at the District Administration Office in Kathmandu asked Thapa to clarify the intent of a cartoon published on March 30, which compared then-recent…
New York, April 18, 2005—A French freelance journalist was being held for questioning today in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, after border police arrested him for alleged visa violations last week in the southwestern Satkhira District. The Committee to Protect Journalists is investigating the circumstances behind the arrest. Police detained Arnaud Mandagaran, 55, and his Indian…
APRIL 14, 2005 Posted: April 27, 2005 Kamran Mumtaz, Daily Mashriq ATTACKED, THREATENED Daily MashriqTHREATENED A group of five armed men stormed into the office of the Daily Mashriq in the southwestern city of Quetta around 2:30 p.m. and assaulted Mumtaz, the editor, because of the newspaper’s allegedly biased reporting about a local political party.
APRIL 12, 2005 Posted: April 13, 2005 Alberto Martinez, Radyo Natin ATTACKED, UNCONFIRMED Police began searching for two suspects responsible for the attempted murder of radio broadcaster Alberto Martinez, who was shot in the back while on his way home on the southern island of Mindanao.
Kathmandu, Nepal, April 12, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on the government of Nepal to end the harassment and imprisonment of journalists and to repeal restrictions imposed on private media in the wake of King Gyanendra’s February 1 emergency proclamation. During a press conference in Kathmandu at the end of a weeklong fact-finding…
New York, April 12, 2005 Police are searching for two suspects responsible for the attempted murder of radio broadcaster Alberto Martinez, who was shot in the back while on his way home on the southern island of Mindanao. Police Inspector Alberto Jungaya told local reporters today that unidentified gunmen shot Martinez last Sunday night…
APRIL 11, 2005 Posted: April 13, 2005 Robin Poudel, Tanahu Aawaj IMPRISONED Police in the Tanahu district in western Nepal announced they would hold a local journalist for a three-month detention. The journalist, editor Robin Poudel of Tanahu Aawaj weekly newspaper, was arrested on Friday April 8 while covering a demonstration in Damauli that had…
MARCH 2005 Posted: April 11, 2005 BBC World Service CENSORED The government began blocking news transmissions from the BBC World Service on its state-run Radio Nepal FM 103 station in the capital of Kathmandu, despite having signed an agreement to air news programs in their entirety the previous November.