Ethnic Nepali convicts wait for justice

Dozens of political prisoners still in jail, according to rights organisations

When Bhutan started forcibly expelling its ethnic Nepali population over three decades ago, Dil Kumar Rai, along with thousands of others, fled to neighbouring Nepal. But a secretive return to meet his relatives still in the kingdom landed him in prison.

Rai spent 21 years in jail after being arrested and convicted for being an “extremist and antinational” who was involved in an anti-government revolution in 1996. By the time he was freed in 2017, his house in Sipsu Gola Bazaar, near the Indian border, had been demolished.

“I had no citizenship, money or a place to live,” Rai, now in his late 50s, told the Post. “I wanted to stay in Bhutan but there was nothing left for me there. So I came to Nepal, even if I would be a refugee.”

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 the Post spoke with.

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 for 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.

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 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 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,” Karki said.

In the 30 years since Bhutan’s ethnic cleansing of its Nepalspeaking 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 the Post 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,” Banki said. “But the issue of the release of political prisoners is straightforward because their release … would be a public relations win for the government.”

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 might 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.

Of the 37 whom Karki and Human Rights Watch had information on, two had been released since the HRW report was published. About 15 had been convicted in the 1990s for protesting against the Nepali community’s mistreatment, while others were either jailed while visiting family members they left behind or those helping the returnees.

Rai, who was jailed in Chemgang Central Prison 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. Rai said he was also tortured during custody, with police 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, something the king of Bhutan can grant.

“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 requests for comment.

At the refugee camp in Nepal, Rai said life for many of the remaining refugees remains in limbo.

I had no citizenship, money or a place to live. I wanted to stay in Bhutan but there was nothing left for me there DIL KUMAR RAI, FORMER PRISONER