(IPS) The editor of a popular Nepali weekly, Janaastha, was taken into custody last week by Nepali security forces for exposing alleged corruption in the Royal Nepal Army.

A month earlier, three other publishers and editors faced the same fate for writing unflattering reports about the government and Nepal's constitutional monarchy.

Though all the arrested journalists were released after 48 hours in detention, the apparent crackdown on the media has sent a chilling message: The constitutional guarantee of press freedom is not going to deter the government from trying to muzzle media in these times of emergency rule.

Government ministers in this Himalayan kingdom, meanwhile, reject the charge that the media freedom is being curtailed. "We have not put any restrictions on the press," asserts Minister for Information and Communication Jaya Prakash Gupta. "We do urge them however to write sensitively during the emergency."

But the fact is that since emergency rule was imposed on Nov 26 in the face of growing Maoist attacks on security forces, more than three dozen journalists have been rounded up. More than half of a dozen of these have been locked up indefinitely on charges of being aligned with the Maoist "terrorists".

Softer voices

The crackdown has raised fears among Nepal's diverse press. Many say that if there is one area that has visibly progressed after the restoration of multiparty democracy in 1990, then it is the press.

Where once there was only the state-owned press and a handful of party-affiliated tabloids, the Nepali press scene today boasts more than half a dozen big newspapers and hundreds of independent colourful tabloids which together provide a cacophony of voices.

But the emergency rule is making these voices softer.

"It is difficult to operate in these times when the security forces are breathing down your neck," says a senior editor from Janaastha. "We are trudging carefully now, lest we give the government another opportunity to arrest us."

Elsewhere, such an attitude would be labelled "self censorship", but here in Nepal, it is survival strategy.

The emergency measures imposed by the government has not only labelled the Maoist rebels as "terrorists", but has also suspended all civil rights, including the right to press freedom.

Under emergency rules, the government can seize a publishing house, confiscate its presses and throw its journalists in jail if it wants to, causing many publishers and editors to scale down their anti-government reporting.

Armys role

Most of the current worries stem from the active role that the Royal Nepal Army has been granted by the emergency measures.

The soldiers, who were sent to fight the rebels for the first time in Nepal's history, have zealously guarded their operational areas. The only news of the operation allowed in the papers are bland press releases, issued by the Defence Ministry, that provide little information.

Any reporting outside the ambit of the Defence Ministry is strictly frowned upon, as journalists from Kantipur, Nepal's largest newspaper group, found out in the early days of the emergency when its reporters were rounded up from the western jungles of Nepal and ordered to return back to the capital.

Even more worrisome, many of the detained journalists have found out, is that it is not the civil administration or the police who detain and question them.

Rather, arrested journalists are quickly handed over to the army, which interrogates them at the army headquarters in Kathmandu where civil administrators are not present.

"This is only an emergency, not martial law so we don't understand why the army is taking matters into its own hands," says a recently released journalist who did not want to be named.

International pressure

The tough restrictions and sporadic arrests of journalists have worried the Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ).

"The press has played a leading role in restoring democracy in Nepal. To see some of the leaders who themselves were hounded by an autocratic regime before now try to control the press can only be termed as sad and depressing," says TN Dahal, the FNJ's secretary general.

"The government thinks that any independent reporting is beneficial to the Maoists. This is the wrong sort of thinking,'' he points out.

As news media restrictions gather pace, international media watchdog groups have also chipped in their support for Nepal's embattled journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Sans Frontieres, as well as a host of other media groups, have urged the Nepali government to stop harassing the press and release all arrested journalists.

Such condemnation is having some impact. Under local and international criticism, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba was forced to draw a distinction between a civil emergency and martial law.

Speaking last week in Kathmandu, Deuba said, "The civil government is very much in charge. This is not martial law. The security forces are operating under the civilian government's control."