BLACKLISTED IN BHUTAN- Book Review

BLACKLISTED IN BHUTAN: Love Lost and Love Transformed in the Land of Gross National Happiness by Rieki Crins.

Rieki Crins reached Tsachaphu, then a rural village of hot spring in the Pochhu valley in Bhutan, for anthropology research for her Masters and later continued it for her Ph.D. She lands up in the village with a European mindset keeping and frequently comparing Bhutan to Medieval Europe. She has an abundant appreciation for the country and the villagers. Very soon her elite European mindset and behavior crush with the culture shock.

She reaches to a morning meal without washing her hands or face- the basic habit all Asian learn from the cradle.

She digs out the unique but prevalent features of rural health, hygiene, agriculture, culture, and hardship.

She has picked up the local language and excavated the culture to its depth and made the culture the subject of the book.

Throughout her writing, she appears an innocent and energetic researcher. Even after her Ph.D., she visits Bhutan twice a year as a tourist guide. She struggles to anchor in Bhutan with a hotel cum school. Her effort benefits many unemployed youths.

The twist comes when, without a yellow signal, her visa to Bhutan is denied without an explanation. Someone explained to her that the denial was because she was ‘Blacklisted.’ Thereafter, her writing flashback to the incidences of restriction and dictatorial rule in the silent country. She begins to see hypocrisy in the King's newfound ideology of Gross National Happiness.

She recalls some possible causes and speculates the reason to be one of her Facebook comments that possibly upset a member of the powerful royal family.

There is a big population, in and outside Bhutan, which is critical of the autocratic government. The title of the book ‘BLACKLISTED IN BHUTAN’ gets the early attention of such a group of people. 

She reached Bhutan in February 1990 when the government was iron-fisted handling a serious dissident movement. The book is free from the description of such political background.    

What she has explained but not concluded is her description of Wangmo’s and her partner- a Cello virtuoso- Maria’s anomalous behaviors in Bhutan. Her description matches TN Rizal’s description of Mind control in words and essence. Was she mind-controlled? Was her mind/intention read before taking an action on her? Reiki only can recall, re-evaluate and share it in detail in the future.   

She has also mentioned her engagement with Karen refugee/community in Burma and Thailand.

There are plenty of clues for the readers to speculate the reason for the denial of her visa to Bhutan.

On top of all the Book is a masterpiece on the culture of a Drukpa village. However, the bold title ‘BLACKLISTED’ shadows her content.

A one sitting book is full of carrying, entertaining and educating contents and is one of the must-read books for the students of culture and anthropology. 

Government reinstates Committee of Secretaries

Government reinstates Committee of Secretaries

December 8, 2018 News Leave a comment 2,919 Views

The government has reinstated the Committee of Secretaries (CoS) four years after the erstwhile committee was dissolved.

CoS comprises the cabinet secretary and the secretaries of 10 ministries and advises the Cabinet on the pros and cons of its decisions.

Speaking with the media yesterday, Prime Minister Dr Lotay Tshering said, “We have formally reinstated the Committee of Secretaries.” The decision, he said, was taken at a recent Cabinet meeting.

“The secretaries asked for terms of reference so that they would be comfortable to work. I told them no terms of reference was necessary at the secretary level,” he said.

The Prime Minister said that the CoS would work as an advisor to the Cabinet.

“They will not work as Opposition,” he said, adding that most of the members were senior civil servants whose experience and advice would be helpful to the government.

The Prime Minister said that the government was working hard and that it had lined up many programmes that would benefit the people. “I have met with sector heads, including all the secretaries except for two who were out of the country.”

The former government dissolved CoS after surrendering three secretaries, including the cabinet secretary in December 2014 to Royal Civil Service Commission.

Kuensel learnt that the interim government’s (IG) report, had recommended reinstating the CoS or empowering the GNH Commission with similar mandates like the CoS, as all secretaries are members of the GNH Commission.

According to the interim government’s recommendation, doing away of institutionalised decision-making forums within agencies such as GNH committees, sub-committees and rule making committees by the political leadership to pursue their political interests has seriously impeded co-ordination with ministers.

Such forums were recommended to be permanent features so that agencies can follow due process and due diligence when it comes to matters of policies and regulations. These forums are aimed at preventing political leaders from bypassing the head of the agency and departments and will ensure that systems and policies are not undermined.

Such committees are expected to impose checks and balances in the system.

MB Subba

http://www.kuenselonline.com/government-reinstates-committee-of-secretaries/

Blowback from India’s strategic blunder in Bhutan?

By BHIM BHURTEL NOVEMBER 18, 2018 4:51 AM (UTC+8)

• 724
• 11

New Delhi was rattled by Bhutan’s October 18 general election, the outcome of which may soon accelerate the decline of India’s influence over the Himalayan kingdom.

The center-left Druk Nyamrup Tshogpa (DNT, Bhutan United Party) won 30 seats out of 47 in the National Assembly, Bhutan’s lower house of parliament, in the second round of the election. Focusing on Bhutan’s ties with domineering India was not permitted during the election campaign – violators faced fines and reprimands. However, the so-called pro-Indian ex-prime minister Tshering Tobgay’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) lost in the first round on September 15.

Consequently, Indian strategic analysts worried that New Delhi’s influence over the northern frontier nation would be further diminished over the next five years as a result of India’s friend Tobgay being ousted. The Bhutanese people endorsed the DNT’s election manifesto and newly elected Prime Minister Tshering Loaty said he was firmly committed to honoring his party’s election promises.

This recent development in Bhutanese politics matters for India. The DNT’s election manifesto outlines three fundamental policies. First, it aims to diversify Bhutan’s economy to reduce the Indian monopsony of its hydroelectricity.

Second, the DNT emphasizes the reduction of Bhutan’s external debt of US$2.5 billion. The DNT surmises that unless Bhutan reduces its foreign debt vouched by India, it will remain subject to overbearing New Delhi’s influence in the future.

Third, the DNT’s manifesto also underscores private-sector investment for sustainable economic growth and Lotay’s economic policy goal is to attract foreign investment from sources other than India. If the Bhutanese economy starts to diversify, India cannot offset China’s foreign direct investment in Bhutan.

These three critical economic policies aim to free Bhutan from India’s domination. Therefore, Bhutan’s new government will continue its efforts to achieve the status of an independent country in the days to come, and India’s influence will decline further.

Many analysts believe India’s influence in Bhutan began to wane after the Doklam standoff in the summer of 2017. However, the tipping point for diminishing Indian hegemony in Bhutan goes back to 1990 when India used scaremongering tactics to get the government to exile more than 110,000 Nepali-speaking-Hindu Bhutanese (one-fifth of Bhutan’s total population at that time) called Lhotshapasas from Bhutan.

India’s strategists and intelligence officials feared that the popular uprising that overthrew the Nepalese king’s despotic regime in early 1990 could happen elsewhere. They miscalculated the likelihood of a collective demand for a separate independent nation by the Nepalese-speaking people of Sikkim, Darjeeling, Kalingpong, Duars, and southern Bhutan because the Lhotshapas were already demanding respect for human rights and democracy in late 1989.

Bhutan’s new government will continue its efforts to achieve the status of an independent country in the days to come, and India’s influence will decline further

Driven by paranoia, India used scare tactics to persuade Bhutan to drive out the Lhotshampas. Hari Sharma, an aide to then-prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala (1992-95) and  then-president Ram Baran Yadav (2008-15), quoted Bhutan’s former King Jigme Singye Wangchuck in the Nepalese daily Naya Patrika on October 27: “Lhotshampas were exiled due to Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi’s pressure, and Indian intelligence also paid for ULFA (United Liberation Front for Assam) to exile them from Bhutan.”

Similarly, Balaram Paudel, the Bhutanese People’s Party’s exiled leader, wrote in Kantipur, a leading Nepalese daily, on July 22: “The Bhutanese king suppressed the Lhotshampas with the slogan of ‘one nation, one nationality’ and India indisputably backed up the King of Bhutan.”

The Hindus believe in the notion of moksha, emancipation from the cog of life and rebirth; all their karmas (actions) and the dharmas (rectitude) aim to secure moksha or rebirth in heaven. One of the key karmas and dharmas of Hindu is to go on a pilgrimage to Char-Dhams (Four Abodes), which are situated in India. For Hindus, India is crucial for not only this life but also for life after death.

Thus, if the Lhotshapas had not been driven out of Bhutan, they would have been represented in the political life of Bhutan, and they would, because of their Hindu beliefs, been more inclined toward India than the Drukpa people. However, the Indian foreign-policy mandarins ignored this Hindu factor and persuaded the Bhutanese king to exile the Lhotshapas to prevent a separatist movement they feared would emerge in the Indian Chicken’s Neck in 1990.

Bhutan is an India-locked country, and the nearest Nepal-India border is about 350 kilometers by road from the Bhutan-India boundary. The Indian Border Security Force (BSF) and the West Bengal Police kept trucks at the Bhutan-India border to take Bhutanese refugees forcibly into Nepal. Moreover, the BSF did not permit Bhutanese refugees to re-enter India when they tried to return to Bhutan several times using the same route, repeatedly expelling them to Nepal. If India had not initiated the expulsion of the Lhotshapas, Bhutan never would have considered such a move.

India’s strategy of fomenting racial friction in Bhutan later turned counterproductive. The Bhutanese king has started to foster diplomatic relations with many countries. When India realized that Bhutanese King Jigme Singye Wangchuck was playing a game to overcome Indian dominance, it forced him to relinquish the throne to his son in 2006.

India also pressured Bhutan to initiate democratic reforms. However, India’s move became counterproductive because, during the tenure of Bhutan’s first democratically elected prime minister, Jigme Y Thinley (2008-2013), the kingdom forged diplomatic ties with 32 additional countries.

Thinley wanted to develop diplomatic ties with China, its northern neighbor and one of the veto countries of UN Security Council, and he met with his counterpart, Premier Wen Jiabao, on June 21, 2012, in Rio de Janeiro without consulting India in advance. India’s angrily reacted with an “LPG subsidy cut” between the first and second round of the election in 2013. As the result, Thinley lost the election in the second round.

However, it was too late because Bhutan already had the centrifugal force needed to offset the centripetal force of India’s influence. Lotay’s victory in the 2018 general election indicates that Bhutan is an increasingly independent nation.

No one sees any point in Bhutan looking toward India once its economy diversifies, which was stressed in the DNT’s election manifesto, and Bhutan develops its ties with China, leading to Bhutan securing maritime access through Chinese routes in the future. The culture, language and religion of the Drukpa are distinct from those of India, as their forefathers were migrants from Tibet in the 9th century.

Indian foreign-policy makers think they are meticulously calculating in the case of Bhutan, but they actually seem quite obtuse. India’s foreign-policy makers felt they had secured their country’s strategic interests with their political maneuvering in Sikkim, Darjeeling, Kalingpong, Duars, and Bhutan by exiling Lhotshapas; however, their idiocy boomeranged 28 years later because Bhutan will not need India in the future.

I still remember when I met in person then-prime minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai (1990-91) in 2008, as he decried Indian foreign policy: “They [Indians] don’t know in New Delhi what this [Indian role in exiling Lhotshapa from Bhutan in 1990] can lead to in the future.” Bhattarai was right to be skeptical regarding India’s strategy in Bhutan.

Bhutan will continue its efforts to free itself of Indian domination by diversifying its economy, reducing external debt and private-sector development by attracting foreign direct investment from China in the next five years. Perhaps now India is realizing that it made strategic miscalculations in Bhutan.

I am wondering what kind of cartoon Puthukky Nair Kutty would draw to depict India’s geopolitical locus in Bhutan right now. If Kutty were still alive, I surmise, he would draw an Indian man wearing an Indian flag-coloured outfit with his knees offering a receptacle (on which the official documents that hand over the power to manage the security and foreign affairs of Bhutan is placed) to a Chinese man wearing a Chinese flag-colored outfit and says, “Mr China, could you please accept my offer to you?”

Asia Times is not responsible for the opinions, facts or any media content presented by contributors. In case of abuse, click here to report.

SOURCE

Huddled masses yearning to rejoin families

After being separated from their homeland 20 years ago, many Bhutanese refugees resettled in the West are now separated from their families

GOPAL GARTAULA in JHAPA

FROM ISSUE #623 (21 SEPT 2012 - 27 SEPT 2012) | TABLE OF CONTENTS

---

PICS: GOPAL GARTAULA THE LONG WAIT: Ranmaya Chamling and her husband.

Even in the refugee camps for people from Bhutan here in eastern Nepal,this week's Tij festival was a time of singing, dancing, feasting, and fasting. But 52-year-old Ranmaya Chamling has never felt as lonely as she did during this year's festival.

She and her husband Tek Bahadur are the only ones from their 20-member family still remaining in the Sanischare Camp in Jhapa. The others left for Toronto earlier this year under an international program to resettle refugees in the United States, Canada, UK, Norway, Netherlands, New Zealand, Denmark, and Australia.

However, Canada and the UK recently announced they would not be taking any more refugees, and this has worried families like the Chamlings who fear they will be resettled elsewhere and be separated from their children.

"This Tij was unbearable", Ranamaya said, "first of all because the family is now far away, and also because we are afraid we may not be able to live close to them when we are resettled".

SOURCE: UNHCR MOVING PEOPLE AROUND When Bhutan evicted 100,000 of its Lhotsampa population in the early 1990s, the refugees were settled in camps in eastern Nepal. After deadlocked negotiations on repatriation, eight countries agreed in 2008 to take in the Bhutan citizens. So far, more than 71,000 refugees have been resettled, and there are another 35,000 to go.

Ranmaya and Tek have filled out forms for resettlement in Canada, but the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Migration Organisation (IMO) that are administering the resettlement say, there is no guarantee that the families will be together. Teams from Canada and the UK are visiting the camps next month to assess the remaining applicants, but UNHCR says it can't be sure whether the humanitarian need to keep families united will be heeded.

Tek Bahadur, fear they will not be resettled close to their children in Canada, as do Phulmaya Magar, her husband Lal Bahadur, and sons Buddha and Subhas .

For Ranmaya this uncertainty is agonising. She says: "It is even worse than when we risked our lives to flee from Bhutan 20 years ago". Bhutan evicted 100,000 of its people, one-sixth of its total population, in 1990-92 as part of a ethno-centric campaign against its Nepali-speaking citizens. That population has now grown to 120,000 with a whole new generation of refugee children born in the camps in Jhapa and Morang.

After years of fruitless talks between Nepal and Bhutan about repatriating the refugees, in 2008 the international community decided to start third-country resettlement. So far, 71,000 refugees have left, nearly 90 per cent of them for the United States. Of the 35,000 who are still waiting for resettlement, some may not be sent to the same country their families have gone to. As the refugee numbers shrink, the seven camps have been collapsed into four.

The Chamlings and Magars have lived along this lane in the Sanischare Refugee Camp in Jhapa ever since they were evicted from Bhutan 20 years ago.

Phulmaya and Lal Bahadur Magar are also alone in their bamboo hut, after two of their sons and grandchildren left for Quebec last year. Two more sons of the couple are still left in Jhapa, but now don't know whether they can also go to Canada or not. Says Phulmaya: "We can't wait for the whole family to be reunited again, but I wonder if UNHCR will understand our plight".

The resettlement process is long and bureaucratic, and starts with the families first filling forms. Then the host country looks at the applicants and decides whether or not to take them, after which there are health checkups and orientation classes about the countries the refugees are being sent to. They are then taken in buses to Bhadrapur airport to fly to Kathmandu for their onward journeys.

Many of the refugees have for the first time in their lives found the dignity of citizenship after first being thrown out of their homeland and living in stateless limbo in refugee camps for two decades. The younger children are doing well in their new host countries, but there are reports that elderly refugees are having a difficult time adjusting. Older refugees generally tend to do better if they are close to their children and grandchildren.

Ranmaya was 32 when she and her husband were driven out of Bhutan with their small children. They still hope they will one day see their motherland, but for the time being all they want is to be reunited with their children in Canada.
Ranmaya and Tek Bahadur sit inside their low-ceilinged bamboo hut gazing silently at the monsoon raindrops falling on puddles outside. Says Tek Bahadur: "We were first torn away from our homeland, and now our families are torn apart".

See also:No refuge when refugees leave, MARCUS BENIGNO in JHAPA
As camps for Bhutan refugees close, locals lose business

Those who want to stay, GOPAL GARTAULA in JHAPA
Bhampa Rai was a royal physician before being driven out of Bhutan. Unlike most refugees, he doesn't want to be resettled in America or Europe.

Gross National Shame, ANURAG ACHARYA

विश्व शरणर्थी दिवसमा डौड प्रतियोथिता

https://lojima.wordpress.com/2009/06/08/विश्व-शरणर्थी-दिवसमा-डौड/

June 8, 2009 at 9:36 am

विश्व शरणार्थी दिवस २००९को अवसरमा झापाको दमकमा खास मानिस खास आवश्यकताहरु भन्ने मूल नाराका साथ आगामि असार ६ गते दौड प्रतियोगिता हुने भएको छ । संयुत्त राष्ट्रसंघीय मिसन नियोग यूएनएचसीआर र कारितास नेपालको लगायत झापाका २ दर्जन भन्दा बढी स्थानिय तथा गैह्र सरकारी संसथाहरुको आयोजनामा सम्पन्न हुन लागेको उत्त दौड प्रतियोगिताको उदेश्य बिगत १६ वर्ष अता नेपालमा बसोबास गर्दे भूटानी शरणार्थी र स्थानियहरु बिचको संबन्धलाई प्रगाड बनाउने रहेको आयोजकले जनाएको छ । उत्त प्रतियोगितामा १८ वर्ष उमेर पुगेका जो सुकैले पनि भाग लिन पाउने बताइएको छ । प्रतियोगि पुरुषहरुले तोपगाछी स्थित केर्ख बजार र महिलाहरुले लखनपुर स्थित नमुना चोकबाट डौड सुरु गर्ने पर्ने र दमक स्ििथत इटाभट्टमा रहेको अटोप्लाजामा अन्त्य हुने बताइएको छ । उत्त दुरी पुरुषको लागी ७ किलोमिटर र महिलाको लागी ५ किलोमिटर रहेको छ । प्रतियोगिताका सहभागीहरुमा आइपर्ने कुनै पनि प्रकारका शारिरिक समस्याहरुलाई तत्कालै उपचार गराउनेका लागी आवश्यक एम्बुलेन्स डौडका रुटहरुमा आधारभूल औषधी मोबाइलबसहरुको प्रवन्ध गरिराईने जनाइएको छ । प्रतियोगिहरुको मूल्याङ्कनको जिल्ला खेखकुद परिषदबाट १० प्रतिनिधि समेत ल्याउने तयारी गरिएको छ । दौडमा सहभागी मध्ये उत्कृष्ट १० महिलार १० पुरुषलाई सोही दिन गरिने प्रतियोगिताको समापन कार्यक्रममा पुरस्कृत गरिने छ । प्रतियोगी मध्ये पहिलो दोस्रो र तेस्रो महिला तथा पुरुषलाई नगद रु क्रमश १० ८ र ६ हजार रुपैया सहित प्रमाण-पत्र प्रदान गरिने छ । त्यसै गरि चौथौ र पाचौ प्रतियोगि महिला र पुरुसलाई ४ हजार र ३ हजार नगद सहति प्रमाण-पत्र प्रदान गरिने छ भने छैटौ देखि दशौ सम्मका महिला तथा पुरुष दुबै प्रतियोगिलाई प्रमाण-पत्र सहित १ हजार रुपैया नगद प्रदान गरिनेजनाइएको छ ।