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Journalists in Nepal are generally free to report without government interference--unless they choose to cover the country's four-year-old Maoist insurgency, the most serious crisis facing the state. In the government's zeal to put down the guerrilla movement, authorities have targeted journalists who report on rebel activities, or who work for publications seen as sympathetic to the Maoist cause. These journalists are typically accused of having links with the insurgents, and are often subject to harassment, interrogation, and sometimes prolonged detention by authorities.

The Maoist guerrillas of Nepal model their movement after Peru's Shining Path. They aim to overthrow the country's constitutional monarchy and establish a "people's republic." Their strength is greatest in the impoverished northwest and northeast of the country, where large numbers of peasants have been exploited by feudal landlords and corrupt politicians. So far, the insurgency has claimed the lives of more than a thousand people.

In January, police raided the offices of two weekly newspapers considered supportive of the Maoist movement, seizing copies of the papers and arresting four journalists. One of the journalists was released without charge after spending three days in detention. The other three were all eventually freed on the order of the Supreme Court, which ruled that police did not have sufficient evidence to arrest them under the Preventive Detention Act. Under the Nepalese Constitution, "No person shall be held under preventive detention unless there is a sufficient ground of existence of an immediate threat to the sovereignty, integrity or law and order situation of the Kingdom of Nepal."

On April 20, police arrested Krishna Sen, editor of Janadesh, after the paper featured an interview with Baburam Bhattarai, one of the top leaders of Nepal's Maoist insurgency. Police reportedly confiscated 20,000 copies of Janadesh in order to prevent the interview from being widely read. At year's end, Sen was still in prison awaiting trial.

When Prime Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai (no relation to the rebel leader) took office in May, he said that quelling the Maoist movement would be his government's top priority. Although Bhattarai is a former newspaper editor and leader of Nepal's pro-democracy movement, he nevertheless seemed willing to clamp down on the press in pursuit of his anti-communist objective. At the end of November, the German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) reported that the government was "preparing to crack down on some unfriendly media" for their reporting on the Maoist insurgency and on the political infighting between Congress Party leaders. Sources told DPA that the administration was "devising ways under the 1992 Freedom of Expression and Publication Act to put a temporary stop to some pro-Maoist papers."

Janadesh, Mahima, and Jana Aawan were reportedly among the targets, as was the popular, privately-owned radio station Kantipur FM. Radio is the only medium in Nepal that can surmount the barriers posed by high illiteracy, extreme poverty, and geographic isolation. The nonprofit, community-based Radio Sagarmatha and Kantipur FM are both groundbreaking stations, providing independent news and public affairs programming. Technically, however, radio stations are not allowed to produce their own news programming. Until the broadcast licensing system is modified, these stations are vulnerable to government retaliation for unfavorable coverage.

you can find here the CPJ website.
http://www.cpj.org/attacks99/asia99/Nepal.html