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Posted
on 04-Aug-02 06:59 PM
Yet another attack on journalist by Nepalese government:
Editor of Nepalese weekly arrested
Agence France-Presse
Kathmandu, August 04
The editor of a left-leaning Nepalese language weekly was arrested on Sunday, a journalists' union said.
Nepali police arrested Kishor Shrestha, the editor of Jana Aastha, from his office, said vice president of Nepal Journalists' Federation Gopal Budhathoki.
"The reason for Shrestha's arrest was not given by the police and no one knows where he was been taken," Budhathoki told AFP.
The arrest came two days after most of Nepal's newspapers left their editorial pages blank to demand the government come clean on alleged mistreatment of journalists.
They have called for a judicial commission to investigate alleged killings, harassment or interference in the press since emergency rule was imposed in November.
Budhathoki, who edits the left-wing weekly Sanghu, said the action was coordinated "to protest the excesses against the press."
The federation is also calling for the government to disclose the whereabouts of one of its central representatives, Krishna Sen, who disappeared in May.
The Paris-based watchdog Reporters Without Borders says Sen, who edited a weekly newspaper sympathetic to Nepal's Maoist rebels, was killed in police custody.
The government has denied wrongdoing and launched an investigation into Sen's disappearance but alleges he was in fact a senior Maoist leader.
King Gyanendra on November 26 imposed emergency rule at the recommendation of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, two days after the Maoists broke a four-month ceasefire with a flurry of attacks.
The emergency gives authorities sweeping powers to detain and interrogate suspected Maoists.
More than 4,300 people have died since the guerrillas launched their "people's war" in 1996 to topple the constitutional monarchy.
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