Take a trip to the headquarters of Congress, Nepal's biggest political party, and you get a fuller picture. "You can't see anyone," said the doorman. "They've all been arrested." Only leading politicians have been placed under house arrest. The rank and file have been carted off to prison. The Army came here four times, said the doorman, and 42 party members were arrested. Two have escaped, and are said to have fled to India. "It's not right what the King has done in this situation," said the doorman, in the manner of a man who can no longer speak his mind without fear. However, the sacking of the unpopular Deuba Government is nothing compared to the King's declaration of a state of emergency, which has prompted the worst assault on human rights in Nepal's recent history. The people have had their most basic human rights taken away. With his newly restored medieval powers, Gyanendra has "suspended" not only the right to free speech, but freedom of thought in Nepal. He has subjected Nepal's press to strict censorship. The papers carried fawning accounts of the King's power grab. The King "suspended" the right to assemble peacefully, and the right to privacy. He also, according to the Kathmandu Post, suspended the right to own private property. Most of these rights have long been abused by the military and the Maoists. But this week Gyanendra took it a step further. He said no Nepalese citizen could even claim he had those rights any more. In a joint statement Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Commission of Jurists said: "Nepal's last state of emergency in 2001-2002 had led to an explosion of serious human rights violations, including increased extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, and a breakdown in the rule of law." The new state of emergency, the human rights groups said, put "the Nepalese people at even greater risk of gross human rights abuses". http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10009422