Attacks on the Press - Committee to Protect Journalists

attacks on the press in 2009asia: nepalpurse strings calling for caution,” according to Foreign Policy magazine, placingresponsibility on the SEEC Media Group, which owns Caijing under the auspicesof the party-linked All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce. Althoughthe circumstances remained murky at year’s end, journalists faced the possibilitythat editorial freedom was threatened by commercial and political interests actingnot in opposition, but in concert.NEPALNepal’s news media entered 2009 in a state of crisis. <strong>Attacks</strong>on the press had escalated in late 2008 amid a climate of impunity. The Federationof Nepali Journalists (FNJ), a local press freedom group, led weeklong, nationwidedemonstrations to raise awareness about the deteriorating environment.On December 28, 2008, Maoist leaders signed a 10-point agreement to addressthe lawless situation. Clauses included a promise to create a governmental bureauto investigate press freedom violations, local news reports said.But a full year later, as 2009 was coming to an end, the agreement had yet tobe implemented and optimism was scant. The January slaying of a journalist whohad documented Maoist land seizureshad further chilled a presscorps that had grown accustomedto unpunished attacks.Nepal had made a historicpolitical shift in 2008 from amonarchy to a coalition-ruleddemocratic republic under theleadership of former Maoist rebels.During the decade-long civilwar that preceded a 2006 peaceaccord and transition to multipartydemocracy, both rebels andt o p developments»»Government fails to investigatepress freedom abuses.»»Reporter slain after covering Maoistland seizures.8thkey statisticRanking on CPJ ImpunityIndex, making it one ofworld’s worst for press.monarchists were responsible for harassment, detention, disappearances, andmurders of journalists, nearly all of which have gone unpunished. Abuses did notcease with the communist faction’s inclusion in the democratic process. Maoistsaccused of murdering journalists Birendra Shah in 2007 and J.P. Joshi in 2008remained at large. International human rights groups said the party’s Youth CommunistLeague abducted and likely murdered freelancer Prakash Singh Thakuriin 2007. Police dropped an investigation into the disappearance—Thakuri’s bodywas never recovered—in February 2009, according to FNJ.In late 2008, the Nepali-language monthly Nepali Sarokar catalogued wartimeMaoist land seizures on the Terai plains, in southern Siraha district. OnJanuary 11, as many as 15 men with knives entered the compound where thearticle’s author, Uma Singh, a print and radio reporter in her 20s, had rented aground-floor apartment. A neighbor discovered the journalist, mortally stabbed,on the veranda of her one-room dwelling. The brutal murder combined the worstof Nepal’s media climate: ineffective police investigation, alleged Maoist involvement,and ethnic tensions destabilizing the plains along the India-Nepal border.Local journalists said police ignored Singh’s profession as a possible motive forfear of political repercussions and arrested five people, including the victim’s sister-in-law.The five were accused of killing Singh over a property dispute.Property did play a role, according to an International Media Mission reportcompiled by press freedom groups that visited Nepal in February; Singh believedMaoists abducted and murdered her father and brother in 2005 and had seized familyland. Yet she defended all victims displaced in the conflict, and addressed sensitiveissues including communal violence and women’s rights in print and on air.The arrests of the five people, who included a local Maoist, did not assuagethe concerns of Singh’s colleagues, who said at least two cadres affiliated with aformer Maoist minister tied to abuses Singh documented had fled the countryafter the crime. Other suspects had links with armed groups of ethnic Madhesis,who traditionally occupy the plains and are engaged in an often-violent campaignfor political autonomy, or, at its most extreme, a separate state. The Terai EktaParishad, one of dozens of such groups, made an unverified claim to have murderedSingh, according to the international mission.“There is no denying that [Singh] may have had a personal stake in the issueof land seizures, but her journalism was exercised in the larger public interest,” themission report said. After consulting with police, family members, and colleagues,the mission concluded that, although there were several overlapping motives andactors involved, her work was a major factor in her death.Singh’s killing was not solved by late year, and its shadow hung over the Teraipress. Several journalists left the region, according to local news reports. Madhesigroups separately threatened two regional correspondents for independent mediagroup Kantipur Publications: Jitendra Khadka in January and Manika Jha inFebruary. Parsa district’s Gadhimai FM programmer Gyanendra Raj Misra waswounded in the hand in a February shooting that FNJ reported was work-related.In August, the Madhesh Terai Forum in Saptari district banned distribution ofNepali-language newspapers—the region is dominated by dialects of Hindi—and torched 15,000 copies of national newspapers, according to FNJ.After the 2008 elections, in which the Unified Communist Party of Nepal(Maoist) won a majority, the Maoist-fronted coalition government began talks126127