Clipping the wings of press freedom

By Vijaya Kumar Sigdel

I got an eerie feeling when I learned that the government arbitrarily arrested Yubraj Ghimire, Kailash Sirohiya and Binod Raj Gyawali of Kantipur Publications. I felt as if I was reliving my own arrest many years ago by the police during the awful autocratic Panchayat system. As Robert F Kennedy once said: "We know that if one man’s rights are denied, the rights of all are endangered."

Since the revolution of 1990, I thought that this kind of thing would be a distant memory of the past. After all, we are not living in a totalitarian state anymore. Nepal has a democratic system; the government cannot simply choose what the press can or cannot publish. Correspondingly, it cannot say: "I don’t like this, therefore one cannot publish it. This is not good for the country. I don’t like your publication so I am going to punish you for that." This is reminiscent of the Panchayat system, it always came up with clever reasons to curtail the freedom of the press and individual freedoms, always under the guise of the greater good - they called it "national security."

I am appalled and concerned at the action taken by the Koirala government. This move is unjustified, unconscionable and undemocratic. It should also be illegal. Koirala has violated these people’s fundamental rights. He has no legal or moral authority to tell the press what it can and cannot publish. The only jurisdiction he has is to pass legislation regarding ethics and a code of conduct. Koirala can also appeal for voluntary restraints. That is all. It is pertinent to quote what one of the founding fathers of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, once said: "I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion." I am impelled to repeat, "who decides what is good for the country?"

A few bureaucrats and, maybe, some autocrats? Are they smarter than the rest of us? Are they wiser than the people who put them there? Should the role of the government be like a daddy or a big brother? These questions are as old as the origin of democratic precepts and this is how Jefferson addressed them: "The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without press, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the later." He knew then what we know now: that without freedom of speech we cannot protect all the other fundamental rights we so cherish.

The men in the government may sincerely believe that they are protecting our system where in fact, they are actually threatening it with their attempt to silence the press. The people who are capable of electing the government can certainly decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong. And, in order to make an intelligent choice, people are entitled to hear a variety of opinions, ideas and philosophies, not only those that the government condones. Therefore, we need more freedom not less. There will always be friction between the government and the press. The government will always find something in the press that it dislikes or visa versa. That is the nature of this relationship. Therefore, we should be concerned if there is ever perfect harmony between the government and the press.

I frequently find things in the press I don’t like, not only in the Nepalese media but everywhere, even in the US. Each time there is something that the government does not like and we start giving them the right to ban our freedom of speech, it erodes all of our fundamental rights. It will be a while before democracy takes root in our hearts, minds and character. In the meantime, if we allow the government to undertake such a draconian action against the press today, it will be the end of our democracy tomorrow. Our society must learn to live with the ideas and opinions it disagrees with the most. More than two thousand years ago, Plato went as far as to say, "A life without criticism is not worth living." In fact, this is one of the prerequisites of democracy.

The government does not and cannot hold a monopoly on righteousness and truth. Nobody does, including the press. Yes, our press acts very irresponsibly in more ways than one. But, we must remember that not all reporting is bad or deceptive. Our press is as imperfect as the rest of our society is, no less and no more.

Nevertheless, without the press, we really would be in the dark. I think that the Nepalese press has come a long way since the restoration of democracy. I am sure that if the government does not muzzle the press, it will improve over time and learn to be more fair and responsible. Just like the people in the government, the press must be accountable to the general public. Without the support of the public the press will not endure. Let there be no illusion that no government will make the press more responsible by imposing censorship. In a similar vein, the government will never act responsibly without proper scrutiny by the media and the people. One of the most meaningful ways people express their opinions is through the media.

Unfortunately, a significant part of the media, our radio and television, are not free; they are highly controlled and censured. They are not significantly different now from the Panchayat era. The only media that is largely left free is the print media. Their free existence is paramount. Censorship is not the way to go about it. Instead of solving the problem, it will stifle the progress of our democracy. It will further weaken our effort to create a free, independent and unbiased and, hopefully, a responsible media. To that end, our government could help to erect the pillars of democracy by making Radio Nepal and NTV completely free. Democracy is fairly new to us. Despite our initial optimism, the transition to democracy during the last ten years has, at best, proved difficult. If the past is any indication, still more difficulty lies ahead. According to Robert F Kennedy’s dictum, "Democracy is no easy form of government.

Few nations have been able to sustain it. For it requires that we take the chances of freedom; that the liberating play of reason be brought to bear on events filled with passion; that dissent be allowed to make its appeal for acceptance; that men chance error in their search for the truth." The government would serve us better if it tried to silence Babu Ram Bhattarai’s guns, instead of his pen. Moreover, the government has an overriding obligation to defend his right to free speech. Ultimately, if we follow the path of censorship, there will be a whole lot of people who might take up arms in Nepal. Still, what I have not understood is why our government is transpired by this lunatic’s propaganda, giving such credence, so much so, that it must be censored, putting our whole democratic system in question. Worldwide condolences for the royal family’s sudden death are being followed by condemnations for our government’s action against the journalists. What is the government so afraid of, the facts or fiction? Babu Ram has gone on a killing spree since people refused to pay any attention to what he was preaching. His hands are soaked in blood with his carnage of so many lives.

Why would people listen to him now? Let him speak his lungs out. If Kantipur had not published that article, it would have appeared somewhere else. At any event, Yubraj did not even write it; he was simply a messenger. The government cannot locate Babu Ram. Instead, it found journalists who were doing their jobs and punished them. This is just ludicrous. History has shown that successful democracies have not followed the direction of press censorship. For example, the US has never suspended the fundamental rights and freedom of the press enshrined in the Constitution even during the worst crisis of its history. And it has surpassed through myriad crises. This is a lesson we can ill-afford to ignore.

All for guerrilla’s words ?

By Bhupendra Rawat

Thanks to the shot fired by Girija Prasad Koirala’s administration and heard around the world, I recently wondered whether the most powerful man in Nepal is Dr Babu Ram Bhattarai — a leader of the Maoist guerrillas. What made me think like that? Easy.

How else is one to characterize a man, whose 1000-odd-word ranting and raving — published in this newspapers sister publication last week — so shook the Koirala government that it felt justified in arresting the editor, the publisher and the managing director of the newspaper on charges of treason? Treason ... now, the very word conjures up images highly-placed officials selling state secrets to foreign government sa la Kim Philby and other such characters out of the Cold War.

Some say that it would have been a civilized act had our representative government expressed its displeasure, say, by way of a statement or perhaps through a civil lawsuit. And that its throwing the newspapers top staff into jail, when the whole world was looking, made it appear all the more raw, crude, autocratic, undemocratic, helpless, and, yes, powerless. Then again, what were those people thinking? After all, in one form or the other, the Koirala government has always been that way anyway: raw, crude and totally undemocratic.

In that sense, it deserves praise for carrying on with what comes to it impulsively. Other than by giving excessive importance to Dr Bhattarai’s article, Girija and Company have also unwittingly assured Maoist supporters that, yes, Maoist words are influential enough to start suspending the freedom of the press. No wonder Babu Ram always thinks that his adversaries are strategic idiots. Meantime, having missed that issue of Kantipur, I ended up shelling out twenty bucks for a photocopied text at a newsstand in Baneshwor.

In all honesty, though, I found Dr Bhattarai’s article to be merely a work of horror-fiction. True, Dr Bhattarai writes in a thriller-like fashion, and that he lets his imagination run wild. But, ultimately, anyone who thinks that the CIA is a part of the FBI makes you think that the guy has been underground for far too long. Still, being an optimist, I decided that should Maoism go the way of the Dodo, Dr Bhattarai could – given his love for the macabre, passion for bizarrely twisted plots and a dazzlingly flowing writing style – easily switch careers to become the King of Nepal . . .. um, the Stephen King of Nepal.

To be sure, Dr Bhattarai likes to think big —taking, as he does, a gnarled view of history to demolish the arguments of his less knowledgeable critics. He fancies that he and his rebels are fighting a just war against the greedy Imperialists and friendly, neighbourhood Expansionists — all in an effort to save this wretched nation. But ultimately his patriotism starts to sound like that of a scoundrel. That’s because when the Maoists have to kill, as they have, hundreds of poverty-stricken Nepalis to ostensibly square off against some alleged outside forces and punish dissenters within their own ranks, you become certain that were the power to go to the Maoists, they too would have no qualms about crushing all dissent and making everyone sing the bhajan of their to-be-blindly-obeyed Comrade Prachand and other Commanders.

Yes, Girija and Company deserve all the outrage for imprisoning the newspaper’s staff. But at this time, democratic Nepalis should also be wary of Babu Ram and his ilk using democratic arguments to now press for the releases of the editors. They are doing so not for democracy, but to suit their own needs now. After all, pretty soon, given their history, they’ll be seen denouncing the same democracy that gives them, at least in theory, the freedom to publish their views in a national newspaper.

Right to information

By Pratyoush Onta

In the aftermath of the 1 June Royal massacre, two themes have concerned us a lot: our right to information regarding what happened on that fateful night inside the Narayanhity Palace and freedom of the press. Almost every commentator of some worth has already expressed his views on these two themes. I wish to reiterate some of what has already been said by them. Then I want to suggest that our right to information and the freedom of the press are derivatives of a more fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution of Nepal, 1990: our freedom of thought and expression.

First let us discuss our right to information. As has been correctly pointed out by several commentators, citizens of Nepal have the right to information regarding all aspects of what happened in the Narayanhity Palace on 1 June. Article Sixteen of our Constitution gives every Nepali citizen the right to demand and receive information about all subjects of public importance. Had the information bureaucracy of the Palace or the government been better managed, this right of the Nepali people would have been honoured through an initial announcement early in the morning on 2 June stating the known facts of the case. This announcement could have been made via all forms of the state-owned media and it could have encompassed details about who had been killed, who had been injured, and where they were being treated. Such an announcement could have also indicated where the event had taken place (the physical location and social occasion) and when. It could have also stated then that the details about how such an event unfolded would be made available to the Nepali people at a later occasion after the concerned constitutional bodies had had a chance to meet and decide the course of inquiry.

In the absence of such an announcement from relevant official quarters, Nepali people resorted to means that were accessible to them to exercise their right to information. Phone calls to sources in the know or just ones relatives, consumption of international electronic media (TV, radio and the internet), face-to-face discussions to exchange information and similar activities must be seen in this light. When these activities too could not satiate demands for information, people came on the streets asking for more. Instead of calling these people udanda and arajak (as the government did) or rumour-spreaders (as some respectable media commentators have done), we should interpret their actions as sovereign agents seeking means to exercise their right to information. That both the Palace and the state did not have institutional capacity to respond to their demands can hardly be construed as the fault of the people who came on the streets. And those who quote the last seven lines of Bhupi Sherchan’s immortal 70-line poem on ours being a country of rumours on their way to a patronizing analysis of so-called rumour-spreaders, might want to reread its first 48 lines to think about how the best of our poets characterized the process that give rise to hallas.

Second let us now pay some attention to freedom of the press as a concept. There is no point in rehearsing all the arguments that have been made on behalf of or against the arrest of the editor and publishers of Kantipur following its publication of an article by the Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai related to the Narayanhity massacre. However for the purposes of this analysis, it is important to divide what has been said in some broad categories. The first set of pro-state commentators have said that Kantipur does not have the right to publish an opinion-piece in which "objectionable" conclusions have been drawn regarding what caused the events of 1 June. They add that such writings could generate grave actions from the people and hence to protect them, freedom of the press must be limited. The second set of commentators have said that freedom of the press must not be limited but the editor of Kantipur made a mistake in publishing Bhattarai’s article at a time when the "nation was undergoing a crisis." The third set of commentators have defended Kantipur’s right to publish even objectionable opinion pieces as an instance of the freedom of the press.

There might be other ways to evaluate these three positions but I would like to suggest that the most pertinent way to do so is to ask what in fact is the basis for the freedom of the press. Although I am not a lawyer or a student of constitutional niceties, it seems to me that the freedom of the press is a derivative of the more fundamental freedom that guarantees our freedom of thought and expression. This latter freedom emanates, in my opinion, from the constitutional location of the sovereignty of Nepal with its people. Interpreted this way, the first two of the above positions are hardly tenable. The provision regarding freedom of thought and expression, to be of any worth, must guarantee the freedom to say the most absurd, outrageous, illogical, and stupid of things, irrespective of the timing. People’s sovereignty means that their intelligence must be respected. They must be trusted to judge how convincing or stupid anyone’s argument is and any attempt to patronizingly offer them "protection" from such arguments must be construed as a violation of their position as sovereign agents guaranteed by our Constitution. The people must be expected to challenge the soundness of any analysis through alternate analyses and any legal arrangements that qualify this position must be seen as unconstitutional and challenged as such.

To conclude then, I want to emphasize that if we want to preserve some of our hard-own rights as citizens of Nepal, we need to go back to debating and promoting the fundamental bases of those rights and not be caught in the war of words regarding their relatively less important derivatives.