Updates from Nepal: more journalists arrested

 

• The government has imposed almost 24 hour`s carfew in the major cities including Kathmandu since Friday 7. People are defying carfew order and coming to the street. It is expected more than two thousand people around the country has been arrested and detained. There are several clashes with police in the streets is going on.
• Press is also attacked by the state security force. Media has badly affected by the carfew. The government has restricted carfew pass to the private and independent media. Civilian casualties is taking place in different cities. Pokhara, where king Gynendra is staying in his private trip, one student has shot dead by army personnel. Like wise three women at Chitwan who were in side their houses got injured by army bullet, one of them has died under treatment at local hospital.
• Recently, today two journalists from Butwal, FNJ district president D.R. Ghimire and chief editor of Lumbini Daily Karna Bahadur Karki has arrested and a freelance reporter from Dailekh Mr. Sitaram Jaisi also got arrest.
• In this week more than six dozen journalists has been arrested. Some are from protest and some are from their working station. How many of them are still in detention is very hard to conform due to the carfew and telephone cut down. According to the information received from different sources more then ten journalsits are under detention including chief editor of Roadmap Weekly Mr. Kamal Koirala and the Chairman of Pachimanchal Radio Palpa Mr. Rajan Pant are still in police custody in Kathmandu.  More then one dozen journalists are heavily injured by manhandling and batten charged by security forces in different parts of the country. NUJ ( National Union of Journalists) president Mr. Tej Prakash Pandit has injured by police batten while police was betting other some journalists and he was trying to rescue them on Saturday morning.
• Numbers of vehicles of the media has been demolished by the protesters.    
• Nothing is normal.
• One good news Journalist Dipak Kumar B.K has released on bell by the court order on Friday. The appellate court Butwal has ordered to release him and the same bench of the same of the same court order to keep other journalist Hum Prasad Basyal in custody under TADO. They both were arrested on March 4 from the Resunga Press, Butwal.

     Taranath Dahal

More journalists are arrested today (9 April) in Butawal. This afternoon thousands of anti king and pro democracy demonstrators gathered in the main streets of Butawal defying curfew order imposed by the Local Administration.

At least twenty thousand agitators were moving through the main road of Butawal chanting anti king and pro democratic slogans. The irritated Royal Nepal Army, who were deployed on Butawal`s streets to control the crowd became irritated and opened random fire. Earlier police force was failed to check the flow of various groups of pro democracy demonstrators in Butawal from surrounding rural areas. As a result RNA took charge of police force.

Dozens of agitators were injured due to random firing and the mammoth crowd dispersed for a little while and took shelter in safe lanes and houses of roadside. But police chased them and arrested dozens of protestors including more than two dozens journalists who also took part in the agitation. I have collected names of 18 such journalists excluding those who were arrested from the morning`s protest rally.

The names of the arrested journalists are as follows:

1 Sher Bahadur KC. 2 Dinesh Pandey 3 Dipak Gyanwali 4 Dipendra Kuwar 5 Dipendra Baduwal 6 Top Raj Sharma 7 Amrit Giri 8 Prakash Shrestha 9 Arjun Shrestha 10 Bharat KC 11. Yuvaraj Pandey 12. Hari Sundar Basi 13. Shyam Lal Pokhrel 14. Siddhi Charan Bhattarai 15. Laxman Paudel 16. Manoranjan Sharma 17 Ramesh Pokhrel  and18 Pradeep Acharya.

Some of the journalists were beaten brutally by the policemen after arresting. The arrested journalists have been detained in Butawal Area Police Stations. The situation in Butawal is very tensed.

Dilip Bhattarai