Nepal: two media workers beaten up for covering COVID-19 issue
Event- Country
- Nepal
- Initial Date
- Apr 18, 2020
- Event Description
Journalists Manoj Mourbait and Sibendra Rohita were attacked on April 18 (Friday) at 8 PM on Kohalpur of Sahitnagar Municipality-9, Dhanusha. The duo journalists were assaulted by a gang of five on their way home from reporting about the COVID-19. Their laptop and camera were also seized. Dhanusha district lies in province no. 2.
Mourbait and Rohita are reporters to Janakpur Today and www.khojkendra.com (a web-based news portal) operated from Dhanusha district.
According to FF's representative Rajan Singh, a group of five people beat the duo which resulted in a deep cut in the head of journalist Rohita. Maurbait has also sustained injury due to the beating. Furthermore, they pointed towards Mayor Udaya Barbariya of Sahidnagar municipality who ordered such an attack. The duo has been admitted in Janakpur Zonal Hospital.
Rohita said, "On Friday we were making a report about the Quarantine facility of Sahid Nagar. These facilities are in a worrisome state with no proper service in place." To learn about the municipality's position on this issue, they visited the municipality office. Shortly after that, he ordered to launch an attack.
In the past too, the mayor Barbariya had threatened the Journalist Mourbait for writing news against his administration. The duo had been disclosing about the mismanagement of funds by the Barbariya's administration.
- Impact of Event
- 2
- Gender of HRD
- Man
- Violation
- Intimidation and Threats
- Violence (physical)
- Wounds and Injuries
- Rights Concerned
- #COVID-19
- Offline
- Right to healthy and safe environment
- HRD
- Media Worker
- Perpetrator-State
- Government
- Source
- Monitoring Status
- Pending
- Event Location
Latitude: 28.191675769798742
Longitude: 81.684982054474
- Event Location
- Summary for Publications
On 18 April 2020, Manoj Mourbait and Sibendra Rohita, media workers, were beaten up by a group of unknown assailants for reportig about COVID-19 in Kohalpur, Nepal.