Nepal: media workers harassed for covering displaced families
Event- Country
- Nepal
- Initial Date
- Oct 13, 2020
- Event Description
Reporters Chitra Mijar, Anish Tiwari and Niroj Chaulagain were misbehaved while reporting in Sindhupalchowk on October 13. Sidhupalchowk lies in Bagmati Province.
Mijar and Tiwari are affiliated to Gorkhapatra and Kantipur National dailies respecively, while Chaulagain is associated with AP1 television.
Talking to Freedom Forum's monitoring desk, reporter Tiwari shared,"We were talking to the families who were forcefully displaced after a hydropower project started road construction without their consent. Meanwhile, a group of youth approached and shouted at us saying - Is this what you called journalism! Don't you have to listen to us?"
The reporters then talked to the youth and collected the voice of both sides.
"But again the youths in a group of 20-25 encircled us for at least two hours while we were heading towards the project site. Thereafter, we returned without reporting at the hydropower project site", said Tiwari. The youths had also threatened the driver for carrying journalists and vandalized their vehicle.
Further, claiming that people threatened and obstructed them while doing their job, Tiwari wondered, "Do we even have the right to report freely?"
They have also filed a complaint at the local police station. The case is under investigation.
Freedom Forum condemns the misbehavior meted out to the reporters. Reporting on the issues of public concern is the right of journalists guaranteed by the constitution. Hence, FF strongly urges the concerned authority to apologize for the misbehavior and respect journalists' rights.
- Impact of Event
- 3
- Gender of HRD
- Man
- Violation
- Intimidation and Threats
- Rights Concerned
- Offline
- Right to healthy and safe environment
- HRD
- Media Worker
- Perpetrator-Non-State
- Non-state
- Source
- Monitoring Status
- Pending
- Event Location
Latitude: 27.80541672310648
Longitude: 85.83474189013833
- Event Location
- Summary for Publications
On 13 October 2020, Chitra Mijar, Anish Tiwari and Niroj Chaulagain, media workers, were intimidated while reporting about families forcefully displaced due to hydropower project in Sindhupalchowk District, Nepal.