{"id":12856,"date":"2020-01-13T15:00:57","date_gmt":"2020-01-13T06:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/2020\/jan\/13\/journalists-in-nepal-fight-new-threat-to-press-freedom"},"modified":"2020-01-13T15:00:57","modified_gmt":"2020-01-13T06:00:57","slug":"journalists-in-nepal-fight-new-threat-to-press-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=12856","title":{"rendered":"Journalists in Nepal fight new threat to press freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bills introduced by ruling Communist party will bring in heavy fines and the threat of jail to stifle debate, say critics<\/p>\n<p>Jail terms of up to five years could be imposed on people in Nepal who post \u201coffensive\u201d comment on social media sites, including Facebook and Instagram in the latest move by the government to crack down on dissent.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/hr.parliament.gov.np\/uploads\/attachments\/eucmqwyeyg3nf9ov.pdf\">information technology bill<\/a>, introduced at the end of December, imposes fines of up to 1.5m rupees (about $13,000) for anyone posting content deemed to promote hate crime or ridicule. It would apply to all social networking sites.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/2020\/jan\/13\/journalists-in-nepal-fight-new-threat-to-press-freedom\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bills introduced by ruling Communist party will bring in heavy fines and the threat of jail to stifle debate, say criticsJail terms of up to five years could be imposed on people in Nepal who post \u201coffensive\u201d comment on social media sites, including Fa&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":543,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[458,59,232,238,241,671,672,54,61,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-censorship","category-global-development","category-governance","category-media","category-nepal","category-newspapers","category-newspapers-magazines","category-press-freedom","category-south-and-central-asia","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/543"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12856"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12875,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12856\/revisions\/12875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}