Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard, who is currently on a Nepal visit, has said that Kantipur Media Group Chairman Kailash Sirohiya should not have been detained in the first place, but now that he is in detention, he should be released immediately.

“I learned that the publisher of The Kathmandu Post Kailash Sirohiya has been arrested. This has sent alarms to me and many of you, no doubt. He is a respected media person. The charges on citizenship should be investigated but I repeat this, as I have done to Nepali officials, those charges do not require him to be in custody,” she said, speaking at a programme moderated by journalist Dil Bhushan Pathak in Kathmandu.

“He [Sirohiya] should not have been detained and he should be released immediately. The fact that he has not been released even though we were promised he would [be] very shortly does suggest that there might have been an attempt to intimidate him and his colleagues… It may constitute a form of retaliation for the independent reporting they [Kantipur Media Group] are doing,” she said.

She asked why the authorities were spending so much energy on an individual “for a crime that, if he committed it, is not harming anybody” while calling out police for not registering serious crimes citing many victims she had met in Nepal.

Describing the situation as a red flag or warning, she suggested that the media fraternity and others keep pressure on the authorities to correct their ways. “It is important to react in the strongest possible way to this kind of action and really to demonstrate to the authorities that you won’t sit idly while your colleagues are being arrested,” Callamard added.

She also said that she was concerned that journalists in other parts of the country were detained arbitrarily and intimidated. “All of this creates an atmosphere of fear and it doesn’t encourage reporting in a professional, independent and impartial way and that eventually impacts the society negatively,” Callamard shared her observation.

“When journalists are silenced, the entire society is silenced because your right to information is being denied,” she added.

Meanwhile, General Secretary Callamard also raised the issue during her meeting with Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal on Friday. According to an adviser to the prime minister, she had inquired about the reason behind KMG chair Sirohiya’s detention.

“Why did you arrest and detain KMG chair Sirohiya?” the adviser quoted her as asking the prime minister. Dahal had replied that he would be released after an investigation lasting two–three days.

Amnesty International’s reaction on the issue comes a day after various global media bodies took serious exception to Sirohiya’s arrest.

On Thursday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the United States-based Society of Professional Journalists expressed their serious objections to the incident and termed the government action as vengeful.

Police arrested Sirohiya from his office at the KMG headquarters in Thapathali, Kathmandu on Tuesday. The security personnel subsequently took him to Dhanusha, where a complaint was filed against him.

The Dhanusha District Court on Friday extended the remand by three days.