Ethnic Nepali political prisoners in Bhutan await justice after decades behind bars

Rai is one of many Bhutanese who came to Nepal after completing their prison terms and are among a few thousand refugees still there.
But dozens of other men like Rai – who are considered political prisoners after being handed lengthy jail terms – are still being held in Bhutan’s jails, according to rights organisations and former political prisoners that This Week in Asia spoke with.
Dil Kumar Rai was released in 2017 after spending 21 years in Bhutan’s jail. He was arrested and convicted of being an “extremist and anti-national”. Photo: Ram Karki/Global Campaign for the Release of Political Prisoners in Bhutan

Human Rights Watch said in a 2023 report that it had collected information on 37 political prisoners in Bhutan detained between 1990 and 2010 – the number could be much higher. Of those, 24 were serving life sentences while others were jailed between 15 and 43 years.

“Bhutan’s publicly promoted principle of ‘Gross National Happiness’ doesn’t account for these wrongfully convicted political prisoners who have been behind bars for decades,” Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in the report, referring to the country’s happiness measurement.

The Bhutanese authorities should “urgently remedy the situation,” she added.

A dark past

The eviction of Bhutan’s ethnic Nepalis, known as Lhotshampas, who previously made up about one-sixth of the country’s population, started in 1989 and early 1990s after the country introduced a “one nation, one people” policy. The campaign led to a “mass denationalisation of many Lhotshampas”, forcing more than 100,000 of them to Nepal.
By 1992, thousands of Bhutanese refugees had settled in camps in eastern Nepal until 113,500 of them were resettled in third countries between 2007 and 2016, according to the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR. There are now just over 6,000 Bhutanese refugees remaining in Nepal.
Ram Karki holds a petition urging Bhutan’s king to free political prisoners. Photo: Ram Karki

Ram Karki was part of a primary teacher training programme in Bhutan in 1990 during the initial human rights demonstrations by thousands of ethnic Nepalis in southern Bhutan, where most of the Lhotshampas lived.

“Those who were in the streets were identified and given 24 hours to leave the country,” said Karki.

In the 30 years since Bhutan’s ethnic cleansing of its Nepal-speaking population, the country had introduced political reforms including its transformation into a constitutional monarchy and holding its first National Assembly elections in 2008. With a liberal leadership heading a new government in January, activists and families of political prisoners hope it would initiate steps to free the inmates.

Susan Banki, an associate professor at the University of Sydney, told This Week in Asia that Bhutan still portrays its political prisoners as criminals and the government’s refusal to release them shows it is unwilling to drop that narrative.

“This is not a great look for democracy because it suggests that people should continue to fear expressing themselves,” said Banki. “But the issue of the release of political prisoners is straightforward because their release … would be a public relations ‘win’ for the government.”

Is India’s billion-dollar aid to Bhutan aimed at curbing China’s influence?

Campaigning for release

In July 2019, Karki said he received a handwritten letter from a political prisoner in Bhutan through a third person via Facebook. It said those who have resettled in other countries may have “forgotten our plight” and asked Karki to take up the issue.

Karki, who has been living in the Netherlands since receiving political asylum in 2003, started documenting details of political prisoners still jailed in Bhutan, with help from Human Rights Watch. He also campaigned to draw international support for his cause.

Karki and Human Rights Watch were able to find details of 37 of them, two of whom have been released since the HRW report was published. About 15 of the 37 were convicted in the 1990s for protesting against the Nepali community’s mistreatment, while others were either jailed while revisiting family members they left behind or those helping the returnees.

Many of them are said to be in Chemgang Central Prison, near the capital Thimphu, while others are in Rabuna and Paro prisons.

Rai, who was jailed in Chemgang and freed in 2017, said conditions in the prison were poor – inmates were not given proper food or medical care and had to use buckets to relieve themselves.

People line up to vote at a polling station in Thimpu, Bhutan, on October 18, 2018. Photo: AFP

Rai said he was also tortured during custody, with police officers stamping on his chest and hands, as well as depriving him of sleep.

“I was in jail when democracy came to Bhutan but it didn’t make any difference to the political prisoners,” he said.

After visiting Bhutan in 2019, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention noted that several prisoners had been imprisoned under national security legislation, with a number of them serving life terms. The report said the working group was “informed of a number of due process violations” and those serving life sentences had no prospects of release except for amnesty.

In Bhutan, the king has the power to grant amnesty. The current king, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuk, pardoned a political prisoner serving a life sentence in 2022. His father Jigme Singye Wangchuck freed 40 of them in 1999.

“Bhutan government doesn’t have to fear us,” Karki said. “The political prisoners aren’t harmful. The government should release them on humanitarian grounds.”

Bhutan’s Ministry of Home Affairs did not respond to emails seeking comments from This Week in Asia.

Bhutan’s King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck gestures during his visit at the Kamakhya temple in Guwahati, India, on November 3, 2023. Photo: AFP

In limbo

Shantiram Acharya was released from Bhutan’s prison in 2014 on humanitarian grounds, some seven years after he was arrested while attempting to visit his homeland. He said the torture he endured while incarcerated had left him paralysed below his waist.

When Acharya returned to Nepal, most of his family members had been resettled in the United States. He now lives with his wife at one of the two remaining Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal. He said he cannot support himself and has medical bills to pay after a coronary artery bypass surgery last year.

“I was all alone when I came to Nepal from jail, and I was sick” he told This Week in Asia, adding he hopes to once again meet his almost 80-year-old mother.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) started arranging family visits after receiving the greenlight from the Bhutanese authorities in 2004, said Sandesh Shrestha, the organisation’s head of mission in Nepal. During those visits, it also assessed the conditions of the jails. The visits were stopped in 2012, with Bhutan saying it had taken measures to improve prison conditions as per ICRC recommendations and standards.

Shantiram Acharya was jailed for seven years in Bhutan and released in 2017. He says the torture in detention has left him paralysed below his waist. Photo: Shantiram Acharya
Shrestha told This Week in Asia that prison visits resumed after Covid-19 but said that it has not been possible for families to visit “due to other circumstances” without elaborating.

Dhan Bahadur Basnet said his brother, Nanda Lal Basnet, had gone to Bhutan to find their missing sibling Kul Bahadur Basnet in 2008. Nanda Lal was arrested and is now serving a life sentence in Chemgang for “treason”.

“We haven’t been able to contact him or call him since 2014,” Dhan Bahadur, who now lives in the US along with his family, told This Week in Asia. “If we can’t even make a phone call, it’s hard to hope for his release.”

Rights activists have repeatedly urged the Bhutanese government to make such arrangements.

YouTube series aims to change face of Nepali journalism through human stories

“There hasn’t been much progress on the release of the political prisoners since 2023,” Deekshya Illangasinghe, executive director of South Asians for Human Rights, told This Week in Asia, referring to the Human Rights Watch report.

“The government of Bhutan has not had a public position on this issue or acknowledged its political prisoners,” Illangasinghe said.

At the refugee camp in Nepal, Rai said life for many of the remaining refugees remains in limbo. He said freedom from prison was like “starting life again” but his daily routine since has become stagnant, with little hope of a better future.

“We don’t want to be lifelong refugees,” he said. “I was in my 20s when I left Bhutan, so I have vivid memories of my country. If the government decides to take us back, I will return immediately.”

FOLLOW US ON GOOGLE NEWS

Read original article here

Denial of responsibility! Web Times is an automatic aggregator of the all world’s media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials, please contact us by email – webtimes.uk. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.

Leave a Comment