Nepal

Kathmandu, May 28

The Federation of Nepali Journalists nowadays held an interaction with lawmakers representing various political parties at the Home of Representatives and National Assembly on Nepal Media Council Bill, recently registered in the upper house of the Parliament.

FNJ and media fraternity have taken a serious thingion to the provisions in the bill which they said were meaned to curtail press freedom. Upper house member and ruling Nepal Communist portiony (NCP) parliamentary party leader Dinanath Sharma said the government had registered the bill at secretariat of the National Assembly but was yet to table it in the house.

Sharma informed that the bill was put on hold for the time being, for forging a common consensus through discussion, with lawmakers of main opposition Nepali Congress, Minister for Communications and Information Technology and Gokul Baskota and other stakeholders.

&No act, law and bill opposite to globally accepted democratic norms and values and the constitution shall have passage through the National Assembly,& he said.

Lawmaker and NC whip in the Home of Representatives Shovepa Bhushal said had created a chaos in the country. She asked the government to withdraw the bill as it was aimed to punish journalists for their work and gag the peoplevoice. &The government in a democracy is supposed to comply with its norms and values,& Bushal said.

Member of the Home of Representatives and leader of Rastriya Janata portiony-Nepal Laxman Lal Karna said, &Curtailing the rights of journalists is as equal to taking absent democratic rights from people.&

Stating that the constitution had articulated total press freedom in its preamble, he said no laws should be enacted in contravention to the constitution. &As the bill has measure anti-press provisions, there is no alternative than to right them,& Karna proposeed.

FNJ president Govinda Acharya reiterated that the umbrella organisation of journalists should stay firm on its stance.

&The bill is against the international norms and values of press freedom and right to freedom of expression. Hence, it should be withdrawn. FNJ is protesting against the provisions stipulated in the proposed law, much against it. If the government wants to get the bill passed, it should be amended as proposeed by the umbrella body of journalists,& he said.

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KATHMANDU: United States Ambassador to Nepal Randy Berry has started interacting with Nepali people on social media. The United States Embassy in Nepal started ‘GuffGaff with the Ambassador&, an interaction programme with the public, on Monday.

The embassy, however, said the interaction would much touch ‘political and other controversial issues, which may affect bilateral relations between the two countries&. The speech show, according to a US embassy source, would only discuss issues related to education and travel.

Earlier, Berry had said that weekly video series called ‘GuffGaff with the Ambassador& would reply the queries of around four million followers on the embassysocial media platforms.

I really endelight interacting with you all on social media, but I realized that I shall probably never meet all 4 million of our @USEmbassyNepal social media followers…so I am startning &राजदूतसँग गफगाफ& to hear from - reply questions from you all. Stay tuned! pic.twitter.com/AGUaxki9eq

-msprint; Ambassador Randy Berry (@USAmbNepal) May 20, 2019

At that time, Foreign Affairs Minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali had said that there was no such practice in Nepal in which ambassadors interacted with Nepali people on social media.

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