Dealing With The Dragon Hari Prasad Adhikari

Today King Jigme Singye Wangchuk and his son’s government are busy concealing the despotic regime under the veil of professed democracy in Bhutan. King Jigme and his son’s government have triumphed in the first step by constituting a so-called democratic government of Bhutan with a 95% majority, backed fully by the Chief Election Commissioner Kunzang Wangdi. Along with this, it has constituted a National Council (upper house) and National Assembly (lower house). Surprisingly, Sangye Nidup’s political party, the People’s Democratic Party of Bhutan (PDP), has been made a scapegoat in this election drama.

Ethnic cleansing

In the upper house, King Jigme and his son’s government appointed so-called neutral persons for contesting the election individually from the respective districts, although it is clear that there received abundant blessing from the government to become winners in the Parliament by an absolute majority. All were erstwhile portfolio holders who were also instrumental in implementing the "Drukpa" (sub sect of the Kayukpa, a branch of Mahayana Buddhism) nationalism from 1985-2008, paving the way for ethnic cleansing in Bhutan.

The king and the government are tirelessly working to mask the ethnic cleansing in Bhutan. And in this endeavour, Home Minister and Prime Minister Jigme Y. Thinley has been elected for a second term to lead the newly elected government. Thinley has a history of serving the king’s government as zonal administrator of eastern Bhutan in 1990, Home Secretary, Foreign Minister and Ambassador to the UN. Other ministers in his team all were then ministers and bureaucrats who implemented the official ethnic cleansing policy. Among them, one was responsible for masterminding the kidnap of Tek Nath Rizal from his residence in exile at Birtamode, Nepal.

According to the present work division, Thinley’s team succeeded in getting the king’s written constitution approved and eye washed the people of Bhutan and the international community. This way, the king’s right has been restored all in all in the constitution as the three main elements of the kingdom, i.e., King, Constitution and Parliament (KCP). Interestingly, the life of this document and its legislative body is extremely vulnerable since the king can make it null and void by a simple letter. Therefore, the king and his coterie of relatives can easily obstruct issues of national interest whenever they feel like it.

Thinley’s team has accomplished the first phase of introducing veiled democracy and is now carrying out the second phase by campaigning it as a unique and the purest form of democracy. Thinley chose the Colombo SAARC summit as the first platform to disseminate this propaganda. Thereafter, he attended the 63rd session of the United Nations General Assembly to misguide the world. In the general assembly, he shamelessly said, "There was no voice for democracy from the public side in Bhutan, rather the king himself voluntarily surrendered his power in favour of his subjects." As if the UN is unaware of the Bhutanese’s refugee crisis!

Also, he contradicted the reports of the sub office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, the International Red Cross Society (ICRC), Amnesty International, State Department of the United States of America and many other human rights groups that have a record of the violation of democratic rights, citizen rights, ethnic rights and religious right.

Thinley is having a hard time proving his claim though, as recommendation of third country settlement of Bhutanese refugees is a strong evidence. Another one is the restriction of the UNHCR to enter Bhutan for monitoring the settlement programme (in case of repatriation after joint verification by a team of Bhutan and Nepal).

Thanks to the UN and American laws, both were unable to punish Thinley at the forum of this apex world assembly. Actually, Thinley was representing the government of Bhutan that evicted 100,000 people who are now compelled to relocate to places in the USA, Europe, Canada and Australia under the arrangement of the UNHCR. The recorded speech given by Thinley as head of the government of Bhutan to the 63rd general assembly of the UN is available. This evidence must be made the basis for enquiry of real democracy in Bhutan and for verification of the looted properties of its own citizens and the existence of racial discriminatory laws in the country. An enquiry must be made into the claim of the so-called democracy of Bhutan, and the king and his government must be held accountable if there have been violation of human and other rights in Bhutan.

Restrictions

It is now particularly easy for the governments of the United States, Australia and Canada to collect proof of the crimes committed by the government of Bhutan from the more than 4,000 victims who have already been relocated in these countries from the Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal. Officials of the Bhutanese government must, therefore, be restricted from visiting the United States and other Western nations for private and official purposes.

(The author is a former National Assembly member of Bhutan)