Kathmandu: The Global Campaign for the Release of Political Prisoners in Bhutan (GCRPPB)—an exile-based Bhutanese civil society organization—has strongly raised the issues of Bhutanese political prisoners, Bhutanese refugee crisis and the need to grant the right to resettled former Bhutanese refugees with an overseas passport to visit Bhutan and the needs of an independent human rights body inside Bhutan to monitor the violations of human rights in the country.
Ram Karki, Founder and Global Coordinator of GCRPPB raised these concerns on Wednesday at the United Nations Headquarters in Geneva during Universal Periodic Review (UPR) pre-sessions on Bhutan in the presence of the Geneva-based Bhutanese Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Tenzin Rondel WANGCHUK and its permanent representative Dechen Om and the large numbers of members of permanent missions of several countries and the members of civil societies from 14 countries whose UPR session takes place this November.
Regarding Bhutanese political prisoners, Karki urged the government to grant amnesty to all its political prisoners immediately and unconditionally. He requested the member states to make the following recommendations in the forthcoming Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on Bhutan: Grant amnesty to all 34 political prisoners immediately and unconditionally, ensure that released political prisoners receive proper rehabilitation inside the country and are compensated adequately, and invite International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to monitor prison conditions and facilitate family visits.
Regarding Bhutanese refugees, and those resettled former Bhutanese with overseas passports willing to visit Bhutan, the international community was urged to make the following recommendations to Bhutan: 1. Immediately develop a process for repatriating all those Bhutanese refugees who wish to return with honour and dignity in a time-bound manner under the supervision of the UNHCR. 2. Guarantee the right of former Bhutanese citizens with overseas passports to obtain tourist visas to visit Bhutan to meet their near and dear ones.
Explaining the several incidents of human rights violations such as arbitrary detention, unfair trials,
unlawful state seizures of private land, lack of freedom of expression and speech and discrimination in the recognition of citizenship in Bhutan, the International Community was asked to make the following recommendations to Bhutan in the forthcoming UPR session on Bhutan: Take immediate measures to establish an Independent Human Rights Institution in Bhutan, per the Paris Principles, eliminate all obstacles curtailing the country’s freedom of press, speech, and expression and allow international human rights organizations to operate in the country.
Ram Karki also participated in the EU-Civil Society consultation at its Geneva based office on Wednesday where he urged EU countries to make strong recommendations to Bhutan in the forthcoming UPR session. European Union countries were also asked to urge the Bhutan government to stop dumping into India those political prisoners who were released after completing their prison terms immediately after being released and ask Bhutan to rehabilitate them inside the country with adequate compensation or arrange family reunion liaisoning with the countries where such prisoners’ families are resettled.
Karki, as a representative of a Bhutanese refugee organization, raised the issues at the UN while high-level Bhutanese government officials listened as audience, along with a large number of permanent representatives of the UN member countries.
Following the forceful expulsion of tens of thousands of Nepali-speaking Bhutanese in the 1990s, Bhutan imprisoned numerous human rights activists between the early 1990s and 2009 for their involvement in peaceful political activities, such as distributing political literature and organizing awareness meetings. Human Rights Watch, in its inaugural report published in March 2023,
documented 37 such individuals. Of these, three have been released upon completing their sentences, leaving 34 currently imprisoned, many serving life sentences.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention visited Bhutan from January 14 to 24, 2019, and found that many prisoners convicted of terrorism appeared unrelated to terrorism. The report also noted that defendants often lacked legal representation at critical stages of their proceedings. Additionally, detainees were frequently unaware of their right to legal counsel due to inadequate notification by the police. Various former political prisoners with whom GCRPPB has engaged attest to this maltreatment and report having had no access to legal resources.
According to a former political prisoner released in July, ‘life inside jail has become more difficult with no connection to family or relatives.’ Since the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) withdrew its Reconnecting Families program, political prisoners have been unable to see or hear from their loved ones for over a decade now. Also, the ICRC handed over its project to the Bhutan Red Cross Society, led by the Bhutanese Queen. This organization holds an unsupportive stance toward political prisoners, whom their narrative falsely labels as “anti-national” or “terrorist.” Meanwhile, conditions for prisoners have deteriorated, with worsening health, food, bedding, and other necessities, and doctor visits now facing delays of 6 to 8 months.
Comment