Rastriya Samachar Samiti

Kathmandu, March 12:

The meeting of the central committee of the Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ) yesterday decided to hold the federation’s 21st general convention on May 3 and 4. The venue of the general convention will however be fixed later, the FNJ has stated in a press release issued today. The federation has fixed the slogan — ‘Peace and democracy for press freedom’ — for its 21st convention. The meeting held discussions on the situation arising out of the limitation on press freedom and freedom of expression imposed on the press in the present context of emergency when the entire press sector is suffering from censorship and all the civic liberties have been suspended, the federation stated. The federation has stated that it would undertake decent and peaceful programmes calling for an immediate end to the state of emergency and prompt restoration of the press freedom.

The meeting decided to provide free legal assistance on behalf the FNJ to the journalists who have lost their jobs or are in custody as well as other affected journalists. It also demanded not to review the policy of proportional distribution of the government advertisement to newspapers under any pretext, not to block the public interest advertisements targeting certain newspapers and to make provisions for easy and prompt payment of the amount of such advertisements. The meeting also demanded to release the amount, which the government had promised to make available to the Journalists’ Welfare Fund, the Conflict-affected Journalists’ Welfare Fund and as assistance for the construction of the branch offices of the federation.