The announcement that King Gyanendra had lifted Nepal’s state of emergency late Friday caught most observers by surprise but left few confident that the country would see the immediate restoration of human rights — including freedom of expression for its media.

King Gyanendra issued a royal decree lifting the state of emergency late 29 April, but it is not clear what changes will result. There was no sign he would restore multi-party democracy. The original 1 February press censorship notice said it would apply for six months and thus technically has another three months to run.

“If media censorship too has been lifted, the government ought to issue a clear announcement,” Narayan Wagle, editor of Kantipur, the largest circulated daily in Nepal told Indian media.

The king dismissed the government on 1 February, saying it had failed to deal with Nepal´s Maoist insurgency in which some 11,000 people have died. Hundreds of politicians were jailed, protests banned and civil liberties suspended, including press freedom.

The king prohibited all criticism of the government and army and told the media was told not to report news about the underground Maoist insurgents unless it came from the army, provoking international condemnation.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has reported the detention of dozens of journalists, their patriotism questioned and their safety threatened. The government has utterly shut down news reporting on FM radio, a primary source of information in Nepal, especially in rural and remote areas of the countryside.

“Blank pages in magazines and newspapers reflected sweeping bans on news reporting, and the censors´ insidious hand continues to suppress coverage every day,” said the CPJ.

Efforts by the independent Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ) and others secured the release last week of five of the suspected 10 journalists held by security forces as of 11 April. However, the FNJ says two women reporters are still being held. They are Surya Thapa of Hank and Tulasha Acharya of Janakpur, who security personnel say are being held for ‘political activities’.

The censorship of foreign news includes the refusal to allow local re-broadcast the BBC World Service programming in Nepali, the cutting of Indian and foreign TV news channels from Nepal cable TV services and the blocking of foreign websites carrying independent news from Nepal.

A Media Monitoring Committee keeps tabs on the press and the government uses its power of commercial patronage by refusing to post official advertisements in publications critical of its methods. Gopal Budhathoki, vice-president of FNJ, told the IANS news agency that his group had toured five rural districts and found national security officers staffing many local media outlets.

The media is not the only source of independent information that has been censored. Shobhakar Budhathoki, general secretary of the Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Studies in Kathmandu told Index on Censorship that the work of human rights defenders has been severely obstructed by the King´s directives, and their freedom to travel outside the Kathmandu Valley controlled.

In addition, the Security Sub-Committee has instructed the Ministry of Women, Children, and Social Welfare to prepare a “code of conduct” to control and regulate international and national NGOs, particularly human rights organizations.

“Due to the suppression of freedom to information and expression they are unable to monitor effectively and make their findings known,” he wrote in a recent article for Index on Censorship. “Who then is protecting the victims? Who is able to call for justice? Who is able to protect and demand adherence to the democratic principles that so many in Nepal have worked for and have sacrificed so much?”