Looking for Trouble

Hard times for journalists in Nepal

A Nepali journalist emailed this morning, saying that these are hard times for news media in Nepal. Deepak Adhikari, a reporter with the Kantipur Daily, said, “The editors and publishers of the publication where I work have been threatened by an unidentified group.” He directed me to an article he just published with Media Helping Media, and organization that “ has been set up to provide training resources and a voice for those involved in the media in transition states, post-conflict countries and areas where freedom of expression and media freedom is under threat.”

In his article Deepak said, “Publishers and editors of Kantipur Publications in Nepal have been told to stop reporting on the circumstances surrounding the murder last week of Nepali media entrepreneur Jamim Shah.

“Shah was assassinated on Sunday 7 February in the capital Kathmandu.

“Kailash Sirohiya, the publisher and Managing Director of Kantipur Publications, Nepal’s largest media conglomerate, says he received a threatening email in which he was warned that he must stop the coverage of Jamim Shah’s murder or face the consequences.

“Sudheer Sharma, the editor of Kantipur Daily, Nepal’s largest circulation newspaper and Ahilesh Upadhyay, the editor of The Kathmandu Post, received phone calls in their offices in which a male caller with an Indian accent threatened to take action against them and their publications.

“The threats have caused concern for journalists working in the country where violence against the media is on the rise. As a result, there is now an atmosphere of fear in many of the country’s newsrooms.”

No one is accusing anyone, at this point, but journalists and journalists’ organizations are urging the government to fully investigate this and other attacks on journalists.

Following the killing of Jamim Shah, the Committee to Protect Journalists on Feb. 10 joined with its colleague in the Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ) to demand an end to what it described as “the impunity surrounding attacks on journalists in Nepal.”

The committee’s statement said, “The FNJ made the demands today in Kathmandu during a protest rally that came two days after the shooting death of Jamim Shah, the chairman of the Nepalese television station and satellite network Space Time Network.
“Local and international media reports say Shah, a successful entrepreneur with many media and other business interests was killed Sunday evening by two masked gunmen on motorbikes in Kathmandu’s Lazimpat district…

At the time, Bob Dietz, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, said, “The government has yet to make good on its assurances that it made when it came to power that killers of journalists will not receive political protection.”

Nepal ranks eighth on CPJ’s Global Impunity Index, with at least five journalists’ murders currently unsolved.

The CPJ is an independent, nonprofit organization founded in 1981 to “promote press freedom worldwide by defending the rights of journalists to report the news without fear of reprisal.”

From March to August, 2008, Deepak worked at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on an Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship, a cultural and professional exchange program for journalists. Here are some links for Deepak:

Deepak’s Diary

His LinkedIn profile

His Twitter

Torture is feared in arrest of Iraqi woman blogger in Baghdad

This email just in from the BRussells Tribunal: A blogger in Baghdad, Hiba Al-Shamaree, has been arrested by Iraqi security forces.

The email included a post from another blogger, Layla Anwar.

“Following my previous post here (on the tribunal site), I just received fresh information regarding Hiba Al-Shamaree, the fellow Iraqi woman writer/blogger who has been kidnapped/arrested by the Iraqi forces on the 20th of January 2010 in the Sayyediya neighborhood in Baghdad.

“Her sister has just updated her blog with the following.”

“Hiba Al-Shamaree is arrested and detained by Baghdad’s security forces on the charges of supporting the Iraqi Resistance (through her writings), she will be presented to the Criminal/Penal Court…

“I am now authorized by Hiba to reveal her true identity to you.

“Her name : Hanan Ali Ahmad Al Mashadani
Age : 33 years old
Profession: Doctor in Ophthalmology

“The charges pressed against her : Inciting to violence and supporting the Resistance and according to informed sources this is a charge that falls under the clause of Terrorism as per the Iraqi law.

“Hiba lived in Amman with us, but she insisted on going to Baghdad on a humanitarian mission/assignment, for a project financed by an Indian NGO called HMOK and which dealt with deaf and mute Iraqi children. Hiba was working as a consultant for this Indian NGO.

“They discovered her pen name Hiba Al Shamaree because when they arrested her she had her laptop with her which they confiscated and they saw the articles she has been posting on her blog.”

The tribunal ended their email with this plea:
PLEASE, THIS IS AN URGENT PLEA –THEY WILL DESTROY HER. THEY WILL PUT HER THROUGH THE MOST HORRENDOUS OF TORTURES, including RAPE. I KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT. I KNOW.

The BRussells Tribunal is a group of “intellectuals, artists and activists who denounce the logic of permanent war promoted by the American government and its allies, affecting for the time being particularly one region in the world: the Middle East. It started with a people’s court against the PNAC (the right-wing Project for a New American Century) and its role in the illegal invasion of Iraq, but continued ever since. It tries to be a bridge between the intellectual resistance in the Arab World and the Western peace movements.”

‘Disappeared’ Pakistani woman convicted of attempted murder charges in New York City

Aafia Siddiqui, a U.S.-trained Pakistani scientist was convicted Wednesday of charges that she tried to kill Americans while detained in Afghanistan in 2008. The Associated Press reported that Siddiqui, 37, was convicted on two counts of attempted murder, though the crime was not found by the jury to be premeditated. She was also convicted of armed assault, using and carrying a firearm, and assault of U.S. officers and employees.

The three-week trial made it sound like Siddiqui, who U.S. authorities had previously described as an al-Qaida sympathizer, had suddenly appeared in Afghanistan where she was arrested and then interrogated by Afghan and U.S. officials. (It was during that interrogation that Siddiqui allegedly staged her attack using a rifle a U.S. officer had left unattended in the room.)

The truth is Siddiqui had been “disappeared” in Pakistan by Pakistani intelligence forces in 2003 (She likely was picked up because U.S. intelligence agencies were saying she had terrorist links).

A report in the Pakistani press said that Siddiqui and her kids, then 7, 5, and 6 months old, had been seen being detained by Pakistani authorities. Days later, a spokesman for Pakistan’s interior ministry and two unnamed U.S. officials confirmed that she was in custody and being interrogated. Several days later, however, Pakistani and American officials apparently changed their minds, saying it was unlikely she was being held.

Siddiqui’s mother, Ismet, has said that a few days after Siddiqui’s disappearance, a man on a motorcycle arrived at her house and told her Aafia was being held and that she should keep quiet if she ever wanted to see her daughter and grandchildren again.

Interestingly enough, on July 7, 2008, only a few weeks before Siddiqui’s arrest in Afghanistan, Yvonne Ridley, an award-winning British journalist and patron of Cage Prisoners, a human rights organization, had sparked an uproar by calling a press conference in Islamabad to demand that the United States hand over an unidentified female prisoner being held at the U.S.-run Bagram prison in Afghanistan.

Ridley said the woman, whom she called the “Gray Lady of Bagram,” had been held in solitary confinement for years. And while no one knew for sure the identity of that prisoner, Ridley said she thought it was Siddiqui. Several former U.S. captives have also reported that a female prisoner, known only as prisoner 650, was being held in Bagram. And according to news reports, the former captives said she had lost her sanity, and cried all the time.

Ridley had written previously about “Prisoner 650″ and her four-year ordeal of torture and repeated rapes, saying that her cries had prompted the male prisoners to go on a hunger strike. And, at the Islamabad press conference, Ridley said she called her a “Gray Lady” because she was almost a “ghost, a specter whose cries and screams continue to haunt those who heard her.”

At her trial in New York, Siddiqui said she had been tortured and held in a secret prison before her detention. AP reported that she said charges that she attacked U.S. personnel who wanted to interrogate her were “crazy.” “It’s just ridiculous,” Siddiqui told the court.

And it is ridiculous. More likely this woman has been charged, and now convicted, of these crimes to cover up years of U.S. torture. The United States will never regain a position of trust in the world as long as a miscarriage of justice like this is unchallenged and uncorrected.