Bhutan: Echoes of Pain
Tek Nath Rijal
Bhutan’s criminal justice and prison system is cruel, barbaric, inhuman and primitive. The prisons were in bad condition. More than a formal prison, they were a brutal place for sentencing the opponents. The prolonged detention and brutal punishment that follows here through highly unconventional means is hardly known to the outside world. I still recall a barbaric act in which a political prisoner, Dasho D.B. Subedi, was stripped off his clothes and the police personnel tied rocks on his genital.
In another instance, an illiterate village woman prisoner was asked to undress and lie flat on the ground. After she undressed, security personnel inserted gun muzzle into her genital. Similarly, a prisoner named Tularam Rai was flogged repeatedly on his ankle until he fainted. Padam Lal Dhakal, Prem Bahadur Gurung, Kapil Mani Acharya, Narayan Acharva, Bishnulal Adhikary, Ram Bahadur Rai, Barmalal Adhikari, Tejman Chhetri, Loknath Dhakal, Mukti Paudel and Chakrapani Khatiwada recount stories of gruesome tortures in prisons. Such instances of brutality continued unabated. All that went inside the jails were seldom reported.
The RBG (Royal Bhutan Government) is given the overall charge of the prisons. The Royal Bhutan Army (RBA) and the Royal Bhutan Police (RBP) officials were placed under the control of the RBG. The political prisoners were mercilessly tortured with impunity by the command of the King. People’s right to freedom of expression had been severely suppressed. Dissidence and opposition to the government policies are considered anti-national activities. The law of Tsa-Wa-Sum (the three elements — king, country and government) bans criticism of these elements. This law declares any act of “making conversation and correspondence” criticizing the King and his government by the citizens as treasonable offence inviting life sentence or death. It may be mentioned that the draconian National Security Act (NSA) was enacted in 1992. It was given retrospective effect from November, 1989, the time when I was abducted from Nepal, to implicate me on false charges of treason.
Under the NSA, the government arrested about two thousand people who had participated in the peaceful demonstrations in 1990. As prisons had limited space in the district headquarters, hundreds of prisoners were detained in health and education centers as well as deserted houses of the royal family members. These institutes had been shut down which not only deprived thousands of students of education but also prevented the public from basic health care. According to Ram Bahadur Rai, a political prisoner who is still inside the jail, more than one thousand five hundred political prisoners were detained in the Dradulmakhang prison alone. Nine to ten prisoners were cramped into 9’ x 9’ cells.
The detainees did not receive adequate medical facilities. The doctors occasionally visited jails, but their rude attitude surpassed that of the police. If any prisoner had fever, the guards would take the patient to the river and throw him/her into the ice-cold water. In Cherugang jail, five prisoners had died due to such inhuman practice. Apart from it, the regime used mind-control devices--that made the prisoners unconscious--to extract confidential information. In such a state, the prisoners were taken to the court and made to confess and sign false statements. The victims, moreover, were kept in a state of fear so that they would not tell others about such a device being applied.
Once inside the prison, the prisoners were kept incommunicado for months. The relatives who came to visit the prisoners were harassed and humiliated. The hard-core criminals from the Ngalong community, serving life sentences, were used to torture the political prisoners.
The prisoners were forced to work at private saw mills and apple orchards of Namgval Wangchuck and Ugyen Dorji. They had to endure long hours of labor that stretched from 4 am to 9 pm while being shackled. They were neither given time to wash their body nor were they provided any tools for digging soil or stones. They were also forced to work in the construction of schools, hospitals and roads in and around Thimphu for which the regime received huge amounts of foreign aid. On the one hand, the private contractors used the prisoners as laborers while they were forced to work on the construction of the police officers private buildings, on the other. The detainees were not only forced to use their mouth to pick up anything that fell on the ground but were also forced to lick the paint droppings.
Beatings with canes, sticks, batons, chains, leather belts and rifle butts, on the back, head, arms and feet of detainees were routinely carried out. One night, Tshering Wangda stormed the jail and severely beat up the detainees. He did so to extract the statements of confession. They were kicked around like a football and were also forced to fight with one another. This had an ugly purpose: to entertain the RBG and the RBA officials. Such barbaric acts, while entertaining to the perpetrators, would often result in injuries to the prisoners. On several occasions, detainees were tied to a post outside the jail compound and left overnight in the freezing and biting cold.
As if the above mentioned methods of torture were not enough, the guards, in their whims, would order the prisoners to run. Then, they would whip their backs and butts. Those who fell while running were overrun by the prisoners following them injuring the fallen ones severely.
Various acts of sexual perversion were ordered by the guards. For instance, prisoners were ordered to perform anal sex between father and son, to masturbate in their presence, and so on. In Thimphu prison, both male and female prisoners were brought to a room in pair and ordered to perform various perverse sexual activities, either alone or as a couple. Guards often hit the sexual organs of the prisoners with their boots and laughed at the expression of pain. The female prisoners were sexually harassed and abused.
If a prisoner died and his relatives or son is also in the same prison the relative would be ordered to abuse the dead. One day, in Chemgang jail, a prisoner, who was unwell, asked his father for water. Overhearing their conversation, he ordered the father to urinate in his son’s mouth. The father was forced to do so. In the evening, the father who came back from the forced labor, found his son dead.
Two prisoners in Lodrai prison were killed and shown as having committed suicide. Both were found dead, hanging in the ceiling with their hands and legs tied. How can a person, whose hands are tied, commit suicide? Their unnatural death was put under the carpet. No one was there to enquire. Manoj Biswa, a Lhotsampa jailed in Samchi, was found dead and shown as having committed suicide, when in fact he was murdered. When he refused a guard’s order to drink water from a drum, the guard in a fit of anger, submerged his face in the water. He could not breathe. As a result, he died. Chakrapani Khatiwada, a priest from Lamidara temple, died in Thimphu prison due to excessive torture. Punya Prasad Dhakal, a student leader, was tortured to death in Chemgang jail.
Those arrested from the villages were never registered in the district police office, not even in the prison. The whereabouts of many ex-prisoners is not known. The officials claimed they were released. But, to this day, their whereabouts is unknown. The bodies of political prisoners killed by the police were never handed over to their family. The movable and immovable properties of the political prisoners were seized by the regime. It has not given so far a full account of the number of people arrested, detained, killed and released. It’s only after the lCRC started visiting the jails that the regime has been obliged to keep the records of its political prisoners.
Even the personal possessions were never returned to them after their release. Instead of handing over the court verdicts to the concerned detainees, the prison officials confiscated it. The regime feared that the detainees would present the documents as evidence to the human rights bodies after their release. Even the cards issued to prisoners by the ICRC were confiscated at the time of their release. Instead of re-habilitating them, the regime seized their documents and evicted them under duress. While in Nepal, they were denied registration and have been surviving at the mercy of their relatives and sympathizers.
Bhutanese in Indian Jails
The Indian authorities were well-aware of the Lhotsampas’ contributions to Bhutan’s socio-economic progress. On this backdrop, we had great expectations from India that it would help us in the hour of need. Sadly, however, our hopes were completely shattered. Adding salt to injury, law-enforcement agencies of the states bordering Bhutan arrested Bhutanese citizens fleeing their homeland. These hapless refugees were beaten, tortured and imprisoned in Siliguri, Jalpaiguri and Barhampur (Kolkata) jails. As recently as on May 27, 2008, one Bhutanese was killed in Indian firing and seven were injured, while they were proceeding to Bhutan. Some of those fleeing the country have been handed over to the Bhutanese security personnel. The stateless refugees are deeply anguished at this treatment meted out by India, a country that claims as a savior of democracy. It has further etched a permanent scar on their psyche.
Atrocities on Religious Grounds
There are many ethnic communities in Bhutan, like Brokpas, Doyas, Totas, Khengs, Mangdepas, Lepchas and others, besides the three main communities — Lhotsampas, Ngalongs, and Sharchokpas. The Sharchokpas are indigenous people of Bhutan, but they too are neglected, discriminated against and humiliated. Neither their good services to the nation are appreciated, nor do the ruling elites allow them to prosper.
Sharchokpas are predominantly Nvingmapa followers but they have no right to elect their own religious head. The King selects one Ngalong abbot and imposes it on the entire Sharchokpa community. Sharchokpa monk, objecting to, it or demanding to elect their own abbot, were either killed, tortured or incarcerated for long jail terms. Khenpo Thinley Ozer, one of the chief abbots of the Nyingmapa Mahavana Sect was imprisoned for eight years in solitary confinement. Another monk, Gomchen Karma, was murdered in day light by Lakpa Dorji, the Dzongdag of Mongar. Lakpa fired from a 9 mm pistol provided by the regime and remained unpunished.
Due to the suppression, members of Sharchokpa community were either forced to flee the country or stay back in a state of repression. Many of them are now living in the refugee camps. The relatives of refugee Sharchokpas continue to face barbaric treatment inside the country. Dasho Rongthong Kuenley Dorji, Dasho Thinley Penjore, Rinzin Dorji, Aum Deki Yangzom, Tenzing Zangpo, Gup Khilla and late Aappa Chheku are some of the distinguished Sharchokpas, who had escaped from their native land and have been working for establishing genuine democracy and human rights there. On April 6, 2009, Zangpo, a political leader, was arrested from Guwahati in India and deported to Bhutan. There are reports that he is in a prison inside Bhutan. But his whereabouts are still unknown.
Bhutanese people had great expectations of securing protection, justice and support for the ongoing democratic struggle from the so-called world’s largest democracy. But instead, it brazenly violated the international laws by deporting a refugee leader like a criminal.
About the Author:
The author was born on March 27 1947 in Lamidara in south Bhutan, as the youngest son of Dina Nath Rizal and Bishnu Maya Rizal, Tek Nath Rizal joined the country's Department of Survey at age 16. In 1964, he joined Bhutan Engineering Service. From 1974 to 1984, he served as a National Assembly member from Lamidara constituency of Chirang district. During this period, he was also a National Labor Recruiting Officer.
The most important designation he held was Royal Advisory Councilor (1984-88). In that capacity, he was member of both the council of ministries and royal Civil Service Commission. He was also a coordinator of national-wide investigation bureau which investigated the corruption rampant in the country. But he was unceremoniously dismissed from the post and was forced to leave the country. In November 1989, he was arrested from his shelter in southeastern Nepal and deported to Bhutan. He underwent a horrendous torture for a decade inside Bhutan's prison and was released on December 17, 1999. Currently based in Kathmandu, Nepal, Rizal, a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, is Chairman of Bhutanese Movement Steering Committee.
Excerpts from the Book by the author entitled 'Torture: Killing Me Softly-Bhutan, through the eyes of Mind Control Victim"
Printed at: Jagadamba Press, Hattiban, Lalitpur
Publisher: Friends of Bhutan
Edition: 2nd 2010 (Shortly to be Published)
Price: NU 300, IRS. 300, Nrs. 450, US$ 30
Edited by Deepak Adhikari
Copyright © Tek Nath Rizal
Bhutan’s criminal justice and prison system is cruel, barbaric, inhuman and primitive. The prisons were in bad condition. More than a formal prison, they were a brutal place for sentencing the opponents. The prolonged detention and brutal punishment that follows here through highly unconventional means is hardly known to the outside world. I still recall a barbaric act in which a political prisoner, Dasho D.B. Subedi, was stripped off his clothes and the police personnel tied rocks on his genital.
In another instance, an illiterate village woman prisoner was asked to undress and lie flat on the ground. After she undressed, security personnel inserted gun muzzle into her genital. Similarly, a prisoner named Tularam Rai was flogged repeatedly on his ankle until he fainted. Padam Lal Dhakal, Prem Bahadur Gurung, Kapil Mani Acharya, Narayan Acharva, Bishnulal Adhikary, Ram Bahadur Rai, Barmalal Adhikari, Tejman Chhetri, Loknath Dhakal, Mukti Paudel and Chakrapani Khatiwada recount stories of gruesome tortures in prisons. Such instances of brutality continued unabated. All that went inside the jails were seldom reported.
The RBG (Royal Bhutan Government) is given the overall charge of the prisons. The Royal Bhutan Army (RBA) and the Royal Bhutan Police (RBP) officials were placed under the control of the RBG. The political prisoners were mercilessly tortured with impunity by the command of the King. People’s right to freedom of expression had been severely suppressed. Dissidence and opposition to the government policies are considered anti-national activities. The law of Tsa-Wa-Sum (the three elements — king, country and government) bans criticism of these elements. This law declares any act of “making conversation and correspondence” criticizing the King and his government by the citizens as treasonable offence inviting life sentence or death. It may be mentioned that the draconian National Security Act (NSA) was enacted in 1992. It was given retrospective effect from November, 1989, the time when I was abducted from Nepal, to implicate me on false charges of treason.
Under the NSA, the government arrested about two thousand people who had participated in the peaceful demonstrations in 1990. As prisons had limited space in the district headquarters, hundreds of prisoners were detained in health and education centers as well as deserted houses of the royal family members. These institutes had been shut down which not only deprived thousands of students of education but also prevented the public from basic health care. According to Ram Bahadur Rai, a political prisoner who is still inside the jail, more than one thousand five hundred political prisoners were detained in the Dradulmakhang prison alone. Nine to ten prisoners were cramped into 9’ x 9’ cells.
The detainees did not receive adequate medical facilities. The doctors occasionally visited jails, but their rude attitude surpassed that of the police. If any prisoner had fever, the guards would take the patient to the river and throw him/her into the ice-cold water. In Cherugang jail, five prisoners had died due to such inhuman practice. Apart from it, the regime used mind-control devices--that made the prisoners unconscious--to extract confidential information. In such a state, the prisoners were taken to the court and made to confess and sign false statements. The victims, moreover, were kept in a state of fear so that they would not tell others about such a device being applied.
Once inside the prison, the prisoners were kept incommunicado for months. The relatives who came to visit the prisoners were harassed and humiliated. The hard-core criminals from the Ngalong community, serving life sentences, were used to torture the political prisoners.
The prisoners were forced to work at private saw mills and apple orchards of Namgval Wangchuck and Ugyen Dorji. They had to endure long hours of labor that stretched from 4 am to 9 pm while being shackled. They were neither given time to wash their body nor were they provided any tools for digging soil or stones. They were also forced to work in the construction of schools, hospitals and roads in and around Thimphu for which the regime received huge amounts of foreign aid. On the one hand, the private contractors used the prisoners as laborers while they were forced to work on the construction of the police officers private buildings, on the other. The detainees were not only forced to use their mouth to pick up anything that fell on the ground but were also forced to lick the paint droppings.
Beatings with canes, sticks, batons, chains, leather belts and rifle butts, on the back, head, arms and feet of detainees were routinely carried out. One night, Tshering Wangda stormed the jail and severely beat up the detainees. He did so to extract the statements of confession. They were kicked around like a football and were also forced to fight with one another. This had an ugly purpose: to entertain the RBG and the RBA officials. Such barbaric acts, while entertaining to the perpetrators, would often result in injuries to the prisoners. On several occasions, detainees were tied to a post outside the jail compound and left overnight in the freezing and biting cold.
As if the above mentioned methods of torture were not enough, the guards, in their whims, would order the prisoners to run. Then, they would whip their backs and butts. Those who fell while running were overrun by the prisoners following them injuring the fallen ones severely.
Various acts of sexual perversion were ordered by the guards. For instance, prisoners were ordered to perform anal sex between father and son, to masturbate in their presence, and so on. In Thimphu prison, both male and female prisoners were brought to a room in pair and ordered to perform various perverse sexual activities, either alone or as a couple. Guards often hit the sexual organs of the prisoners with their boots and laughed at the expression of pain. The female prisoners were sexually harassed and abused.
If a prisoner died and his relatives or son is also in the same prison the relative would be ordered to abuse the dead. One day, in Chemgang jail, a prisoner, who was unwell, asked his father for water. Overhearing their conversation, he ordered the father to urinate in his son’s mouth. The father was forced to do so. In the evening, the father who came back from the forced labor, found his son dead.
Two prisoners in Lodrai prison were killed and shown as having committed suicide. Both were found dead, hanging in the ceiling with their hands and legs tied. How can a person, whose hands are tied, commit suicide? Their unnatural death was put under the carpet. No one was there to enquire. Manoj Biswa, a Lhotsampa jailed in Samchi, was found dead and shown as having committed suicide, when in fact he was murdered. When he refused a guard’s order to drink water from a drum, the guard in a fit of anger, submerged his face in the water. He could not breathe. As a result, he died. Chakrapani Khatiwada, a priest from Lamidara temple, died in Thimphu prison due to excessive torture. Punya Prasad Dhakal, a student leader, was tortured to death in Chemgang jail.
Those arrested from the villages were never registered in the district police office, not even in the prison. The whereabouts of many ex-prisoners is not known. The officials claimed they were released. But, to this day, their whereabouts is unknown. The bodies of political prisoners killed by the police were never handed over to their family. The movable and immovable properties of the political prisoners were seized by the regime. It has not given so far a full account of the number of people arrested, detained, killed and released. It’s only after the lCRC started visiting the jails that the regime has been obliged to keep the records of its political prisoners.
Even the personal possessions were never returned to them after their release. Instead of handing over the court verdicts to the concerned detainees, the prison officials confiscated it. The regime feared that the detainees would present the documents as evidence to the human rights bodies after their release. Even the cards issued to prisoners by the ICRC were confiscated at the time of their release. Instead of re-habilitating them, the regime seized their documents and evicted them under duress. While in Nepal, they were denied registration and have been surviving at the mercy of their relatives and sympathizers.
Bhutanese in Indian Jails
The Indian authorities were well-aware of the Lhotsampas’ contributions to Bhutan’s socio-economic progress. On this backdrop, we had great expectations from India that it would help us in the hour of need. Sadly, however, our hopes were completely shattered. Adding salt to injury, law-enforcement agencies of the states bordering Bhutan arrested Bhutanese citizens fleeing their homeland. These hapless refugees were beaten, tortured and imprisoned in Siliguri, Jalpaiguri and Barhampur (Kolkata) jails. As recently as on May 27, 2008, one Bhutanese was killed in Indian firing and seven were injured, while they were proceeding to Bhutan. Some of those fleeing the country have been handed over to the Bhutanese security personnel. The stateless refugees are deeply anguished at this treatment meted out by India, a country that claims as a savior of democracy. It has further etched a permanent scar on their psyche.
Atrocities on Religious Grounds
There are many ethnic communities in Bhutan, like Brokpas, Doyas, Totas, Khengs, Mangdepas, Lepchas and others, besides the three main communities — Lhotsampas, Ngalongs, and Sharchokpas. The Sharchokpas are indigenous people of Bhutan, but they too are neglected, discriminated against and humiliated. Neither their good services to the nation are appreciated, nor do the ruling elites allow them to prosper.
Sharchokpas are predominantly Nvingmapa followers but they have no right to elect their own religious head. The King selects one Ngalong abbot and imposes it on the entire Sharchokpa community. Sharchokpa monk, objecting to, it or demanding to elect their own abbot, were either killed, tortured or incarcerated for long jail terms. Khenpo Thinley Ozer, one of the chief abbots of the Nyingmapa Mahavana Sect was imprisoned for eight years in solitary confinement. Another monk, Gomchen Karma, was murdered in day light by Lakpa Dorji, the Dzongdag of Mongar. Lakpa fired from a 9 mm pistol provided by the regime and remained unpunished.
Due to the suppression, members of Sharchokpa community were either forced to flee the country or stay back in a state of repression. Many of them are now living in the refugee camps. The relatives of refugee Sharchokpas continue to face barbaric treatment inside the country. Dasho Rongthong Kuenley Dorji, Dasho Thinley Penjore, Rinzin Dorji, Aum Deki Yangzom, Tenzing Zangpo, Gup Khilla and late Aappa Chheku are some of the distinguished Sharchokpas, who had escaped from their native land and have been working for establishing genuine democracy and human rights there. On April 6, 2009, Zangpo, a political leader, was arrested from Guwahati in India and deported to Bhutan. There are reports that he is in a prison inside Bhutan. But his whereabouts are still unknown.
Bhutanese people had great expectations of securing protection, justice and support for the ongoing democratic struggle from the so-called world’s largest democracy. But instead, it brazenly violated the international laws by deporting a refugee leader like a criminal.
About the Author:
The author was born on March 27 1947 in Lamidara in south Bhutan, as the youngest son of Dina Nath Rizal and Bishnu Maya Rizal, Tek Nath Rizal joined the country's Department of Survey at age 16. In 1964, he joined Bhutan Engineering Service. From 1974 to 1984, he served as a National Assembly member from Lamidara constituency of Chirang district. During this period, he was also a National Labor Recruiting Officer.
The most important designation he held was Royal Advisory Councilor (1984-88). In that capacity, he was member of both the council of ministries and royal Civil Service Commission. He was also a coordinator of national-wide investigation bureau which investigated the corruption rampant in the country. But he was unceremoniously dismissed from the post and was forced to leave the country. In November 1989, he was arrested from his shelter in southeastern Nepal and deported to Bhutan. He underwent a horrendous torture for a decade inside Bhutan's prison and was released on December 17, 1999. Currently based in Kathmandu, Nepal, Rizal, a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, is Chairman of Bhutanese Movement Steering Committee.
Excerpts from the Book by the author entitled 'Torture: Killing Me Softly-Bhutan, through the eyes of Mind Control Victim"
Printed at: Jagadamba Press, Hattiban, Lalitpur
Publisher: Friends of Bhutan
Edition: 2nd 2010 (Shortly to be Published)
Price: NU 300, IRS. 300, Nrs. 450, US$ 30
Edited by Deepak Adhikari
Copyright © Tek Nath Rizal
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