Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, March 22:

Reporteurs Sans Frontiers (RSF) today expressed dismay over the killing of Dhana Bahadur Rokka Magar, a presenter with the state-run Radio Nepal, by Maoists on January 30, 2003.

The Maoists had killed Magar on January 30, six months after his abduction from Jaluke region of Surkhet on August 1, 2002. The international press body has labelled the killing as a tragic illustration of the politics of terror that the Maoists have been imposing in the zones under their control. “Even if public media journalists make themselves the sounding board of government policies, it is horrifying that they should be systematically accused of being spies and murdered like this,” it said in a statement today.

The revelation about Magar’s killing came after his widow Dil Kumari Rokka Magar told a member of Radio Nepal’s management in Surkhet on March 17 that the Maoists during a meeting on October 22, 2004, had said that they killed her husband. An information obtained by RWB suggested that Magar was killed by party’s armed militants in Khawang jungle of Rukum district. Magar, who was a news anchor for a Magar-language programme Kham, was kidnapped by the Maoists from a bus he was travelling in. Nothing had been heard of him then after. In should be recalled that the Maoists had on August 16, 2004, admitted to killing another Radio Nepal reporter, Dekendra Raj Thapa.

Following the killing of Thapa, Maoist leader Krishna Bahadur Mahara in September 2004 apologised for the killing. Mahara had also announced that he had instructed all Maoist groups to release all kidnapped journalists. However, the Maoists are still holding one journalist. Kul Bahadur Malla, a correspondent with Karnali Sandesh, who was abducted by the Maoists in June 2003, has not yet been released by the Maoists.