Samacharpatra closure Nepal Samacharpatra, a national daily, has suspended its publication for the time being since Wednesday. Its sister publication- Mahanagar- was closed on Tuesday itself. The management of these newspapers has said it was forced to take the harsh decision following the obstructions by the hawkers. This is for the first time that a mainstream national daily has gone out of operation due to rift between the workers and the management. Since continuity is the credibility of a newspaper, this disruption is a huge blow not only to Samacharpatra but also to the free media in Nepal. Even during the draconian rule of King Gyanendra, which tried to gag the independent media, no daily newspaper went out of print for a single day. The closure of Samacharpatra should, therefore, be taken seriously by the media fraternity, civil society and the political parties. The circumstance under which these two newspapers have been forced to shut down is dubious. Samacharpatra had outsourced its distribution to Customers Solution Pvt Limited. The hawkers, who were actually employees of Customers Solution, created obstructions demanding formation of a trade union in Kamana Prakashan Samuha, the publisher of Samacharpatra. Trade union is the right of employees ensured by the law and no management can - and should - try to trample the right of the workers. But how come the employees of one company demand to form a trade union in another company? The fact that the hawkers are trying to form All Nepal Communication Press and Publications Trade Union, which is affiliated to CPN (Maoist), raises many questions. Is this the tactic of the Maoists to arm-twist the independent media? Are they trying to send a message to the independent media houses that criticism against them will invite dire consequences? Are the Maoists, who have faced the wrath of the media in recent days, making a strategic but indirect move, to cow them into submission? Minister for Information and Communications Krishna Bahadur Mahara's comment that "it is an issue to be sorted out between the management and the workers" lends credence to the suspicion that it could be a tactical move of the Maoists. Any media house or an industry is obliged to talk and negotiate with its workers but not with someone who are not even its employees. So, the obstruction by hawkers at Kamana Prakashan is not an issue between the management and the employees. If the Maoists think that they can silence growing media criticism against them by encouraging their trade union to take on the media, this is a strategy completely wrong-headed and could be counter-productive in the long run. The Maoists should not forget that Nepal's media has already demonstrated adequate fighting spirit to defend its freedom. http://kathmandupost.com/kolnews.php?&nid=113338