Attacks on the Press in 2010 - Committee to Protect Journalists

Asia: Country Summariesthe army. The Maoists refused to cooperate with his replacement, PrimeMinister Madhav Kumar Nepal, the Communist Party of Nepal (UnitedMarxist-Leninist) candidate, who officially stepped down on June 30 butcontinued to act as caretaker as repeated rounds of assembly polls failed toselect a replacement.Apparently unrelated killings of three prominent media owners shookthe journalism community. No motives were immediately disclosed in theshooting murders of Jamim Shah in Kathmandu in February, Arun Singhaniyain Dhanusa district in March, and Devi Prasad Dhital in the districtof Dang in July, according to CPJ research. Some journalists believed theywere the targets of criminal groups who extort business owners for cashand assassinate those who don’t comply.The death of Singhaniya, chairman of the Today Group, heightened thesense of vulnerability among journalists in the unstable southern Terairegion. Uma Singh, a journalist with the group’s news outlets, JanakpurToday and Radio Today, was fatally stabbed in 2009 for reporting on landseizures. No specific connection was immediately established between thetwo killings, but at least three armed groups who advocate for politicalindependence for ethnic Madhesis in the Terai plains around Dhanusaclaimed responsibility for Singhaniya’s murder. Factions of Madhesi activistsfrequently threaten journalists in relation to coverage, and a similar groupclaimed to have killed Singh. A police investigation in the Singh case, whichlooked at local Maoists as suspects, was pending in late year.On June 14, also in Dhanusa, two unidentified men on motorcycles firedshots at Mohan Gole, local correspondent for the state-owned Rastriya SamacharSamiti news agency and assistant editor of the weekly SagarmathaKhabar Saptahik, as he was riding his motorcycle with a local human rightsleader as passenger. Bullets lodged in Gole’s helmet and motorcycle, butthere were no injuries, according to local news reports. The motive for theattack was not clear.Journalists at the Kantipur group were threatened by telephone and e-mail for reporting on the murder of Jamim Shah, chairman of television andsatellite Space Time Network, Kunda Dixit, publisher of the Nepali Times,reported on the CPJ Blog. Kantipur publications reported that Shah hadlinks to Pakistani intelligence and likened his murder to that of a politician,carried out by an Indian criminal 11 years ago for alleged “anti-Indian”activities.The Kantipur group also accused the Indian Embassy of interfering withits coverage. Its English-language newspapers, Kantipur and the KathmanduPost, accused the embassy of punitively withdrawing advertisementsfrom the company, according to news reports. In June, shipments of149