Kanak Dixit’s last letter to the Hoot

IN Media Freedom | 08/03/2005
On a recent trip to India, Dixit reiterated criticism he has voiced in recent articles written for Indian and other international media. Plainclothes security personnel were waiting for him when he returned to his home on Monday evening.
 

Hoot Desk

Kanak Mani Dixit, is the face of the Nepal media for many of us in India. He is lovable, brave, incisive, humorous, and given to generating creative ideas on South Asian cooperation and development. Is is partly this vision which led him to found Himal, the South Asian magazine published from Kathmandu.

On March 7 the New York based Committee to Protect Journalists put out the news that Dixit had been taken into custody shortly after returning from India, where he delivered a talk on the political crisis in Nepal.

"Plainclothes security personnel were waiting for Dixit when he returned to his home on Monday evening, Kunda Dixit, his brother and a well-known journalist himself, told CPJ. He was taken into custody and was being held at Jawalakhel police station. Police have not informed his family of the reasons for his detention or how long they intend to keep him in custody. 

Kanak and Kunda Dixit run Himal, a publishing company that also publishes the English-language magazine Himal South Asian, which is on an unrelated hiatus. The editors support a constitutional monarchy and multi-party democracy in Nepal. Kanak Dixit is known internationally for his centrist stance on politics and his hatred of violence.

 

In an open letter posted online shortly after the February 1 takeover, Kanak Dixit called King Gyanendra’s move "drastic and ill-advised." In a February 2 essay he contributed to the U.S.-based think tank Foreign Policy in Focus, Dixit warned that "King Gyanendra’s announcement of a takeover for ‘up to three years’ provides a long window in which Nepal’s highly successful experiment with democracy of the past dozen years may be eroded."

 

In a recent trip to India, Dixit reiterated criticism he has voiced in recent articles written for Indian and other international media, according to his brother.

 

In e-mails to CPJ last week, Dixit described the efforts of Himal Khabarpatrika editors to publish critical commentary in the Kathmandu-based magazine. "We have achieved a half-way victory with the military censors," he wrote. "We are able to say quite a lot ourselves, but … the government could come down with a heavy hand at any time."

On March 3, security forces in the eastern district of Panchther arrested Labadev Dungana, executive editor of the Panchther Times and district correspondent for Rajdhani daily, according to the Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ). Officials accused Dungana, who is president of the Panchther district FNJ branch, of violating public security after he reported on student protests of the king’s proclamation.

In custody since February 22 are Arjun Prasad Shah, editor of Batabaran weekly, and Monohar Pokhrel, editor of Jana Aakrosh weekly. The two men are FNJ representatives in the southern district of Saptari. Security forces have been holding D.R. Panta, local correspondent of the Kantipur daily in the district of Dadeldhura, since February 15."  (CPJ)

 

Though efforts to contact him on telephone in Nepal in the days immediately following the coup failed, Dixit finally responded by email sometime last month. This was his last mail to the Hoot, dated February 15,2005:

"I am sorry to be late in responding. We have been fighting military censors, and finding creative ways to inform the public. For me, the most important thing was to try to continue publishing with creativity and zeal and also and get information across to the Nepali public that the international reaction to the king`s coup and undeclared martial law was in fact very negative almost across the board... And every day there are new challenges. I am sorry that I have not written anything very detailed on the media which I can send you, but let me just make this little point: the `national` press in Kathmandu will survive somehow, and it is our duty to keep pushing the envelope. The challenge of the moment is the restrictions on FM radio all over the country as well as the print media in the districts. We do not have enough information, but we do know that the district level journalists work under a lot of pressure from the military authorities, and organisations have been closed or cowed down. Most importantly, discussions and news on FM radio had become a real phenomenon like nowhere else in Southasia and it looks like we have taken a drastic backward step. The pressure for restoration of rights of FM Radio to broadcast discussions and news (reaffirmed by a Supreme Court judgement two years ago) must be sustained for when we get back from this difficult situation. In the meantime, I am forwarding some media review..."

 

 

 

Kanak

 

 

 

+++

 

 

Update Feb 12-14

 

STATE OF THE PRESS

According to Deshanter, journalists detained so far

include Bishnu Nisturi, general secretary, FNJ,

Narayan Dutta Kandel, central member FNJ, Suresh

Chandra Pokhrel of Channel Nepal and Suman Shrestha

(Pokhrel and Shrestha were arrested in Human Rights

and Peace Society protest). According to another

report in Himal Khabarpatrika, four dailies of Kailali

district Seti Samachar, Dhangadi Post, Sudhur Sandesh

and Nepal Times resumed publications from February

7th. They had been shut down on February 1st. Three

dailies from Mahendranagar Farwest Times, Abhiyan and

Chure Times had resumed publications on February 3rd.

The papers have not written anything against the royal

proclamation or on the Maoist activities since. Khem

Bhandari of Abhiyan had written an editorial entitled

"King becomes strong if people are strong" (a saying

by king Prithivi Narayan Shah) after which he was

detained for 30 hours. The Farwest Times had been

published poetry in its editorial slot almost every

day after February 1st.

 

PRESS REVIEW

Deshanter (Feb 13) weekly had a front page story

asking "Would democracy be restored within 100 days"?

The story was an analysis on the remarks by the

American Ambassador James Moriarty on Feb 11. The

ambassador said the king had asked for three months to

let his government perform. He added, we will wait and

observe the government activities (before taking a

decision on aid). The paper also reported detention of

J.P. Gupta and had a separate story on what the

parties were doing in terms of planning opposition

against the February 1 takeover by the king.

 

Deshanter editorialised on press freedoms, even though

it stopped short of demanding and end to the

restrictions. It said, "Censorship during emergency is

not new the world over…"adding, that "agreement and

disagreement were also as essential for democracy".

The paper also carried an op-ed piece that touched

upon the reactions by foreign governments and added

that a long term resolution of the Maoist insurgency

was not possible by sidelining the parties.

 

Sunday`s Chalphal weekly reported the work of parties

towards making a new strategy and also wrote about the

leaders/ party workers in detention or house arrest.

It editorialized on press freedoms, attempting to

impress on the rulers reasons why the press needed the

freedoms that are currently curtailed. Page five of

the paper provided a timeline of what happened in

Kathmandu after the royal proclamation. Conspicuous by

its absence was the commentary by various politicians

of the UML, something that had largely regular in the

paper before the February 1 takeover.

 

Himal Khabarpatrika (Feb 12-26, 2005) came with an

editorial notice explaining that some articles could

be "imbalanced" because of the "special censorship"

(meaning, not only that done by editors themselves in

accordance with a government notice issued earlier).

The 72-page fortnightly had about 28 "holes" marking

spots where the censors had deleted the text. Some

stories had a few lines missing, while others had lost

almost everything. The one-page article by Kanak Mani

Dixit, which attempted to report the international

reactions to the royal proclamation, had 10 holes

where the comments about need to restore democracy and

free political leaders from detention were deleted.

The censors did not even spare a story on Cambodia,

which had lost a paragraph. The censors also seemed to

have looked at the profiles of the new ministers quite

closely—the story on the foreign minister did not have

a headline, and chunks of text were missing from the

write-ups on others members of the cabinet.

 

Among the dailies, Rajdhani, had a page one story on a

press statement by the Nepali Congress party

announcing non-violent protests for the restoration of

democracy to begin on February 18, Democracy Day

(Falgun 7th). It was on Falgun 7th that the then

banned political parties had launched the movement for

the restoration of democracy in 1990. The report said

that the UML and the NC (Democratic) were also

planning protests.

 

Sanghu weekly on February 14th reported that the

parliamentary parties were not going to side with the

Maoists, and also had a report on UML`s efforts to

dialogue and reach agreement with other parties (on

opposing the royal move). The stories essentially

summarized what had happened the week before, and also

included the comments made by the American Ambassador

to Nepal. The paper reported on an appeal by the UML

calling on all parties to come together to tackle the

crisis facing Nepal, and also called on the Maoists to

immediately stop attacking political workers and to

review their past policy of attacking party workers.

Sanghu  editorialised on infectious diseases that could

spread during the hot dry months.

 

Not all newspapers have hinted of opposition to the

royal move. Among the supporters include, Jana Bhawana

(February 14) which had a headline asking "who were

those spreading rumours among the foreigners" and

reported the stories that had appeared in Chinese

papers after the royal takeover and explained the

positive changes taken place after February 1. The

paper also had a report on leaders of different

parties and civil society preparing a collective

statement in support of the royal move. The paper also

carried a long list of government officials who it

said were supporters of the Nepali Congress and UML.

Its editorial was fully support of the royal move, and

warned ministers to guard against making promises and

concentrate on rectifying what had gone wrong in the

past.

 

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