The truth is that Bhutan carried out a horrific ethnic cleansing in the 1980s and 1990s–one of the biggest in history. A large part of the population, 6 percent, was sent into exile.
Devendra Bhattarai | CIJ, Nepal
KATHMANDU: Former Bhutanese Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay, in a video message, recently wished the Nepali-speaking people on the occasion of the Hindu festival, Dashain, and commented that the country was ‘happy’ because of its monarchy.
The message came as a surprise for the Nepali-speaking Bhutanese (Lhotshampas) around the world forcefully evicted from their homeland in the 1990s.
Only a few months earlier, Lhotshampas around the world vocally protested against the Japanese government’s decision in April to confer its special national honour, The Order of the Rising Sun, on former Bhutanese Home Minister Dago Tshering. The award is ‘on hold’ following the protests.
Togbay, the former prime minister, was the third elected prime minister since 2013, when the country entered the democratic era. He is fully aware that more than 100,000 Nepali-speaking people, labelled as ‘traitors’, were evicted from their homeland in the 90s.
Former Home Minister Dago Tshering, meanwhile, was Bhutan’s interior minister for seven consecutive years since 1991, when the Lhotshampas were driven out. He also led the Bhutanese side in bilateral talks with Nepal on resolving the refugee problem.
It was in recognition of Dago Tshering’s success in driving out more than 100,000 Lhotshampas, that King Jigme Khesar Namgyel appointed him ambassador to Japan, where he was stationed from 1999 to 2008.
Ram Karki, who left his home farm in Samtse, Bhutan, now tells the world the tales of the ordeal of Lhotshampas from the Hague in the western Netherlands. “On August 19, 1990, I had to leave my hostel unexpectedly when we were receiving training on primary education at the National Institute of Education.”
“We were all evicted from the hostel because we were Lhotshampas. Ninety-one of us, including Gaurishankar Niraula (now lives in Australia) and Bhim Khapangi (now lives in the US) arrived in Nepal for the first time in February 1991 as Bhutanese refugees.”
Bhutanese refugee rights activist Karki, who recently became coordinator of the Global Campaign for the Release of Political Prisoners in Bhutan, has been speaking out at the European Union, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and other human rights bodies in Brussels against the atrocities committed against the Nepali-speaking Bhutanese.
“Since the voices of political prisoners in Bhutan’s prisons have not been heard since the 1990s, I have been trying to do that,” Karki said. “We see that the former prime minister of Bhutan is greeting the people on the occasion of Dashain and Tihar in Nepali language. But when we were in Bhutan, we were not allowed to speak in Nepali, let alone celebrate Dashain and Tihar.”
“On the other hand, a highly respected democratic country such as Japan is conferring one of its highest honours on a former home minister who drove away 100,000 Lhotshampas. We are surprised that the world has forgotten a page of history on ethnic cleansing in Bhutan.”
Happy country
In 1972, the then King of Bhutan Jigme Singye Wangchuck, propounded the idea of Gross National Happiness (GNH) index. He said that GNH is more important than GDP as the level of people’s happiness is determined by non-economic factors.
The United Nations adopted the definition, propounded by an autocratic king, with a special resolution in 2011, calling on the world community to adopt Bhutan’s happiness standards in ensuring “overall access to development”.
Stating that the ultimate goal of the Human Development Index is to create a “basis of national happiness”, the United Nations has rewarded Bhutan for its “ethnic cleansing” of more than 100,000 citizens on the basis of their language, dress and culture.
Soon after, in 2012, Bhutanese Prime Minister Jigme Thinley and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon jointly convened a high-level meeting on the “New Economic Foundation for Prosperous Life and Happiness” agenda. The same meeting passed the first Global Happiness Index (GNH Report) and decided to celebrate March 20 every year as the International Day of Happiness. The four main pillars of GNH are sustainable and equitable socio-economic development, environmental protection, preservation and promotion of culture and good governance.
According to the GNH report released in 2019, Bhutan is the 95th most successful nation out of 156 countries and ranks first in South Asia and Asia. Finland, Denmark and Switzerland top the list.
“How can a country be ‘happy’ if it imprisons people based on their politics for years and carries the black stain of ethnic cleansing of Lhotshampas?” asks political analyst Hari Sharma. “This is the biggest irony of the whole idea of democracy. It has made a mockery of good governance.”
Questioning himself over his inability to form an opinion on the so-called happy nation-state despite working as an advisor to the Nepal government, Sharma said: “Where were we when this scandal happened? Why didn’t we speak out against it?”
Sharma is surprised that Nepal never raised the issue of political prisoners detained for years, at the annual human rights meeting in Geneva.
According to Kanak Dixit, a journalist who writes about South Asian issues, especially the atrocities against the Lhotshampas in Bhutan, Thimphu has created confusions in the outside world due to the ‘Shangri-la image’ and the turning of a blind eye by the West also didn’t help the cause.
“Bhutan emerged as a happy nation with the resettlement of Bhutanese refugees in third countries,” says Dixit. “The most perplexing thing is that Nepal didn’t speak about the political prisoners in Bhutan. Why did international agencies remain mum on the prisoners, recognised by the International Committee of the Red Cross? This silence is meaningful.”
He recalled the moment when Bhutanese refugees began resettlement in countries, including the United States, more quickly so after the 9/11 attacks. He is of the view that Bhutanese refugees have found a significant place in resettlement as countries prefer to resettle vulnerable communities Hindu/Buddhist communities over muslims.
Journalist Dixit, like political analyst Sharma, shared the common view that “Bhutan has sin in its heart and that is why it feels small.”
“In any case, the Bhutanese people in the outside world today are raising their voices. The world will one day listen to the tales of ethnic cleansing committed by Bhutan,” Dixit said.
“There are two ways of committing injustice–first to commit injustice and second, to not talk about it. The second intensified the first. It is worthless for Bhutan to raise the issue of human development. Bhutan has been regarded as one of the happiest nations in the world, but that its political prisoners have not yet been released disproves the definition of ‘happiness’.”
Organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have long spoken out about detainees in Bhutan. “We have been calling for the unconditional release of all political prisoners,” said Nirajan Thapaliya, Amnesty International’s Nepal director.
“We are working on a strategy to secure the release of prisoners through our regional Colombo office, following the release of detailed information about the political prisoners in Chemgang. We want a blanket amnesty for all political prisoners.”
India’s support and silence
In recent years, India has emerged as a unique ‘shield’ in the face of military confrontation and uneasy geopolitical tensions at the Indo-Bhutan border point of Doklam. “Where was Bhutan in Doklam?” asks Tilak Katuwal, a journalist from Jaigaon, India.
“It was India who faced China for 73 days. Recently, however, China and Bhutan have agreed to create a roadmap for the resolution of border issues, including Doklam,” Katuwal, who was born in Bhutan, but was displaced in 1991 said.
Hari Sharma, the political analyst, recalls the 1993 human rights summit in Vienna. “I was part of the Nepali delegation at the summit.” The authors of the report on Bhutan wanted to include the term ‘post-displacement’ in reference to the Bhutanese refugees, but India did not allow that. The Indian authorities did not allow the word to be included as it is associated with Kashmir, where a mass exodus happened in the early 90s.
“Another problem was that the Americans didn’t agree with the ‘post-displacement’ rhetoric because of the Red-Indian issues and the British because they displaced millions of people when they ruled the world,” said Sharma.
Norway, Denmark and other Nordic countries thought that the then Nepali Congress government of Nepal was backed by India, a country with great influence in South Asia.
“On top of that, the then Prime Minister Girija Prasad was considered India’s man. That is why the issue of Bhutanese ethnic cleansing and refugees couldn’t get prominence.”
Sharma understands that this issue is somewhat obscured as Nepali-speaking Bhutanese are always linked to ‘cultural nationalism’. “The Lhotshampa’s political nationalism has been weakening; the Bhutanese refugee problem has not been understood in terms of politics and geo-strategy rather than a humanitarian one,” he said.
According to him, the story and narrative of the Lhotshampas has been lost due to the cover-up being done by the national and international bodies.
Even in the Bhutan section of the US State Department’s annual report, there is no mention of the ‘secret state’ of the last regime and its political prisoners. According to the 2016 edition of the report, there were 57 detainees held in Bhutan under Bhutan’s National Security Act.
Citing the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (2019), and CIVICUS, a civil society group, the State Department said in a report that detainees will be sentenced to life imprisonment unless an unconditional amnesty is granted. The 2021 edition of the report praised Bhutan as a “democratic constitutional monarchy” and said that 71 percent of the official electorate voted “free-fair” in the 2018 general elections.
The report states that there are no extrajudicial killings, detentions or official disappearances, and that 683 detainees are held in 12 open air prisons.
Happiness on the ground
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the only body that officially knows about the Lhotshampa political prisoners, does not want to talk about it openly. When we contacted the ICRC’s office in Kathmandu, the officials gave limited information on the Bhutan case only by ‘coordinating with the Delhi office’.
ICRC Nepal Coordinator Sandesh Shrestha said that the ICRC has not been informed about the prisons in Bhutan except the Central Chemgang since 2012. “Relatives in the Jhapa camp used to go to Bhutan four times a year to meet the relatives of the prisoners in Chemgang. It has been closed for two years due to Covid-19,” said Shrestha.
Dilkumar Rai, who was born and raised in Samtse, Bhutan, is among the people held in Chemgang for 20 years and 11 months with the tag of ‘political prisoner’. “How can Bhutan be a happy country by imprisoning, oppressing and torturing the common people? Only the royal family or the ministers may be happy. Who else is happy?” says Rai who now lives in Jhapa’s refugee camp. If you can’t speak, you can’t write, and you can’t wear the clothes you want, how can you be happy?
Dr. Bhampa Rai, a refugee rights activist, is also convinced that the world will one day learn about Bhutan’s ‘denial’ that it expelled its citizens on the one hand and calling itself a happy nation on the other will one day come to an end.
“Bhutan should understand that the problem is not solved, the problem has just started,” Rai, whom we met in Damak, Jhapa, told Kantipur: “If Bhutan had the ability to provide rights to its people, we wouldn’t have had to leave the country. In Bhutan, everything is dictated by the king, the prime minister or the democracy is just a sham. India is there to provide security, and the international community is also patting Bhutan on the back. What a shame this is.”
‘Cat shall come out of the bag one day’
Kulchandra Gautam
Former Assistant Secretary General, United Nations
I have visited Bhutan twice, once in 1992 and the next time in 2020. During my visits I could sense the signs of oppression, abuse and discomfort there. My first visit was as a representative of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and I was briefed on Bhutan’s commitment and progress in the field of child rights and child welfare. Bhutan’s efforts and progress in this area were commendable.
However, at the same time, I was somewhat aware of the widespread repression and atrocities against the Nepali-speaking Lhotshampa in southern Bhutan, but there was little formal discussion on it. During my visit, I also met and talked with some Lhotshampa teachers. I learned that the students in South Bhutan had been deprived of access to school, and that the teachers couldn’t even enroll their children in their own schools. The main reason was that the Bhutanese government deprived the Lhotshampas, who had lived there for generations, of citizenship.
As far as I know, the children of the Lhotshampa in southern Bhutan could not even get school certificates to go out and study. The children of Nepali-speaking teachers or government employees were restricted to southern Bhutan.
They also had to be careful about sending emails or contacting the outside world.
When I visited again in 2020, I found that the situation had improved. I have received information that Lhotshampas, who are now living in Bhutan, are being treated well and even forgetting the scars of the past.
The truth is that Bhutan carried out a horrific ethnic cleansing in the 1980s and 1990s–one of the biggest in history. A large part of the population, 96 percent, was sent into exile.
Top Bhutanese government officials, high-ranking officials and politicians are so ‘sophisticated’ that they can easily cover up history and events. The views and positions held by the Bhutanese delegates at international conferences and forums reflect amazing self-confidence.
Whatever they say, they speak in a sweet language that the outside world can believe. Nepal’s presentations are not comparable. The same thing happened during talks on resolving the Bhutanese refugee problem. They misled Nepalis about classifying Bhutanese citizens, and stalled the process. Bhutanese ‘negotiation skills’ relies on creating confusion.
According to Bhutan’s idea of Gross National Happiness (GNH), per capita income alone (GDP) can’t be the basis for development and prosperity. This is nothing new. However, in the case of GNH, Bhutan was able to market and sell the package. In a way, this is what Bhutan wants to do and show.
They have also made significant progress in the meantime. We (Nepalis) just talk, they show by work. Bhutan has made great strides in the areas of environmental awareness, education and health.
Even if the country is described as happy with the slogans of sustainable development, democracy and good governance, in reality, the deportation of its own Lhotshampa citizens seems to be difficult to cover up.
Organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are raising questions about the more than 100,000 Bhutanese deported from Bhutan. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has also acknowledged and addressed the refugee situation in diplomatic language. A refugee council in Australia has called the GNH a “gross national hypocrisy.”
Notable incidents of such human rights violations are also being raised in the international arenas, but they are not being heard at the highest level. The reason for this is clear: Nepal has not raised this issue anywhere, or does not want to raise it.
Besides, India also wants to cover up the incident. And, another neighbor, China, has never spoken on the issue. Bhutan’s neighbors do not want to address the issue of ethnic cleansing. Standing in the UN forum, when Nepal has to talk about Bhutan, its language is vague and abstract.
In the past, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Sadamo Ogata raised the issue of Bhutanese refugees and human rights. When the issue of refugee resettlement was raised, voices at all levels became muted. On the other hand, the Bhutanese authorities stood in the international arena and tried to confuse us with sweet words, saying, “We are negotiating with Nepal. If it is proven that they are Bhutanese citizens, we will repatriate them.”
Coincidentally, when the current Rohingya crisis erupted, the Burmese government said the same thing — if they are our citizens, they will be allowed to return home. Yes, this is the ‘trick’ they learned from Bhutan.
Citizens who were suddenly evicted from their homes were not likely to return after being certified. Just as a single Bhutanese citizen could not return home, no Rohingya has been allowed in Myanmar.
However, today 120,000 Bhutanese citizens have reached different countries of the world. Now they can raise the issue of Bhutanese human rights violations in the future. There is a possibility that these immigrants will reach the US Congress as State Counselors.
The largest massacre in the world during the First World War was committed on the Armenians by the Turks. However, Turkey has never acknowledged the genocide. Turkey, along with the US, had a significant lobby in the UN.
But now, a century after the incident, the United States has blamed Turkey for the massacre in Armenia. Therefore, incidents hidden in history will come out one day.
Of course, compensation is no longer possible in that case, but ‘confessions’ have been extracted. I think Bhutan will one day own up to the atrocities committed against the Lhotshampas.
