The Growth Of Repression
In 1989, concerns about the census were brought to the attention of the two Royal Advisory Councillors elected to
represent the south and the Councillors conveyed them to the king in a lengthy appeal that requested that the 'cut-off
date' for citizenship be altered from 1958 to 1985, the year the new Citizenship Act came into force. The government's
response was to imprison one of the Councillors, Tek Nath Rizal, for three days on a charge of sedition. Rizal
subsequently fled to Nepal where he joined six other dissidents who had established the 'People's Forum for Human
Rights' and printed a pamphlet entitled "Bhutan: We Want Justice". This 5,000-word document played a crucial role in
influencing the manner in which the Bhutanese  government responded to dissent in the years that followed. Some of the
document's wilder passages have been quoted by those who wish to argue that the aim of Rizal and his colleagues was to
overthrow the legitimate government of Bhutan for instance.
The hour has struck for the historic conflict. We the Bhutanese Nepalese have a culture we cherish, a language we speak,
a dress we wear, a religion we follow. They are all ours. They are part of our identity. We shall not allow any power to
take them away from us. We shall resist, we shall fight to the last man of our race all repressive laws intended to wipe
out our racial identity. THIS DOCUMENT IS A PROTEST AND A PROPHECY. A protest to the powers that intend to put shackles
on us. A prophecy that a whirlwind of rebellion will shake the hills of Thimphu and bring down the rising towers of
terrorist power. A second, more temperate passage was quoted by Amnesty International in a 1994 appeal for the release
of Tek Nath Rizal.
The great crime of the government at the moment is that it does not respect individual identity. A government is for the
people. It is bound to respect individuals. The dress, the language, the religion are the part of every man's identity.
Bakhu [gho/kira] does not make a Bhutanese. The cowl does not make the monk. A Bhutanese does not become a lesser
Bhutanese when he/she does not wear them ... Identity is primarily the core, the soul of a person or nation.
It is sheer ignorance to identify it with dress or language. Is it too difficult to understand that a Nepalese will
not lose or gain his Bhutanese identity by wearing or not wearing Bakhu. Identity is something deeper than a piece of
cloth you put on.
In November 1989, five months before the collapse of Nepal's discredited Panchayat administration, Rizal was arrested
by Nepalese police, handed over to the Bhutanese authorities, and taken back to jail in Bhutan. He has remained there
ever since, and was sentenced to life imprisonment in November 1993 by Bhutan's High Court, under a National Security
Act enacted in 1992. The king granted him a pardon three days later in which his release was made conditional upon the
governments of Bhutan and Nepal finding a solution to "the problem of the people in the refugee camps."
Serious unrest began to spread across southern Bhutan from early 1990 onward, and during the early stages persons
unknown, who were possibly allied to the Bhutan People's Party (BPP) formed in June 1990, seemed to have adopted the
violent tactics espoused by an extremist element of the Gorkhaland National Liberation Front. On 2 June 1990 the
severed heads of two government officials were found at a border check post in Samchi district: a year later the Royal
Government began to publish photographs of dead and maimed southern Bhutanese who, it claimed, had become the victims
of a concerted movement launched by 'anti-national terrorists' (RGB 1991). The government accused terrorists of
destroying schools, health facilities, bridges, police posts, electricity pylons etc.
The People's Forum for Human Rights, the Bhutan People's Party and the Students' Union of Bhutan organized mass public
demonstrations in southern Bhutan in September and October 1990 that were unprecedented in the kingdom's history.
The demonstrators submitted a list of demands that was clearly influenced by the wave of democracy movements and human
rights activism that had swept across eastern Europe, and had very recently reinstated a multi-party democracy in Nepal.
There are allegations of outside involvement and that both demonstrators and security forces committed acts of violence
(Muni 1991). After the demonstrations, the Bhutanese army and police began the task of identifying participants and
supporters. These were arrested and questioned, and often beaten, tortured and held for months without trial. Batches
of such prisoners were released in amnesties announced by the king: several hundred in September 1990, 727 in August
1991, 74 in October 1991, and so on. Almost without exception, those released left Bhutan and joined relatives in the
refugee camps in Nepal. As the annual censuses progressed, people who had been classified as full citizens in an earlier
census began to find themselves being evicted from Bhutan because they had a relative in jail or in the refugee camps.
According to the Citizenship Act of 1985:
1. Any person who has acquired citizenship by naturalization may be deprived of citizenship at any time if that person
has shown by act or speech to be disloyal in any manner whatsoever to the King, Country and People of Bhutan .
2. This provision seems in practice to have been extended to all those who opposed, or were related to others who
opposed, the government's new policies: Thronson quotes from a government circular issued by the Bhutanese Home
Minister on 17 August 1990:
3. Any Bhutanese citizen leaving the country to assist and help the anti-nationals shall no longer be considered a
Bhutanese citizen. It must also be made very clear that such people's family members living under the same household
will also be held fully responsible and forfeit their citizenship.
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