The suppression of free speech

If ‘orders from above’ supersede constitutional rights, free speech in Nepal will come under grave threat.

On Wednesday afternoon, Daya Dudraj, a reporter for Kantipur Daily , a sister publication of the Post , was trying to document the plight of evicted landless squatters living under tarpaulin sheets in the rain, in the rehabilitation centre in Kirtipur, when a municipal police personnel officer grabbed him by the arm and issued a demand for the deletion of recorded footage. When he questioned the legal basis for such a restriction, the response was a refrain that has become the hallmark of the current administration: Orders from above. The encounter reached a pinnacle of absurdity when a police officer compared the possession of a press identification card to the possession of a firearm, asking if the presence of a gun meant it should be fired indiscriminately. Dudraj’s case is not an isolated one. TV journalists duo Sikha Shrestha and Shyam Shrestha were targeted by the police while covering the demolition of encroached structures at a squatter settlement along the Manohara riverbank. These two recent ordeals faced by journalists serve as a manifesto of this new era of suppression.