Detainees in dire straits in Bhutan’s prisons

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in a report published this month has found the Bhutanese government to have detained its citizens without parole for expressing their political opinions, in direct contrast to its multiparty democratic system and its claim of being an enlightened land that promotes “gross national happiness”. 

Human Rights Watch and the Global Campaign for the Release of Political Prisoners in Bhutan (GCRPPB) identified at least 37 political prisoners in the country in 2023. The vast majority of this group – 32 prisoners – belong to Bhutan’s Nepali-speaking Lhotshampa community, which has faced decades of discrimination and abuse from the Bhutanese government. Most of them were convicted because of prohibited political activity between 1990 and 2008.

Five of the 37 prisoners were released upon completion of lengthy sentences, but were found to have imprisoned in dire conditions, facing long-term physical and psychosocial wounds. 

A report by the UN Working Group highlighted a catalogue of violations of fundamental rights upon examination of the cases of three out of the 32 remaining political prisoners. 

Birkha Bahadur Chhetri, Kumar Gautam, and Sunman Gurung  became refugees at a young age after the government expelled 90,000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese in 1990. When the three men returned to Bhutan in 2008, they were arrested for distributing political pamphlets and sentenced to life without parole under Bhutan’s 1992 National Security Act.

Read also: Prisoners of conscience languish in Bhutan jails

The Act deems anyone who conspires, solicits, or commits offenses against Tsa-Wa-Sum—which refers to the King, the people, or the country— a political prisoner.

The UN Working Group found the three men’s detention to be arbitrary in four different ways, all of which make their imprisonment illegal under international human rights law. The circumstances of their arrest and incommunicado detention were found to be outside the protection of the law and in two cases amounted to enforced disappearance. 

As it relates to the distribution of phamplets, the three individuals were simply exercising their rights to freedom of thought and opinion under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Working group stated.

Breaches of the prisoners’ right to a fair trial were also traced by the group, which found that the prisoners were “deprived of their liberty on discriminatory grounds, because of their political opinion and status as members of a linguistic minority.” The body also expressed grave concern at the prisoners being denied visitors. 

The cases of Chhetri, Gautam, and Gurung echo other cases of unjust imprisonment which Human Rights Watch and GCRPPB have been documenting consistently. As it stands, the remaining detainees live under brutal conditions, wherein they do not have access to adequate food, clothing, or medical assistance.

The government of Bhutan did not respond to the UN Working Group’s communications. 

A former inmate, Ram Bahadur Rai, had previously spoken to the Human Rights Watch explaining conditions of reduced food rations, poor quality of clothing, minimum medical assistance and lack of welfare checks. Rai said that sometimes the clothing they were provided would be so small that the prisoners had to make do with rice sacks, not just for clothing but also bedding.

While many of these prisoners continue to serve life sentences without parole in dire conditions, Bhutanese authorities completely deny their existence. Rai further added that many of them are in very poor health as they are obligated to seek medication on their own and sometimes need to wait for months just to see a doctor.

Meenakshi Ganguly, Deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, has urged Bhutan’s international partners to call on the Bhutanese government to release all remaining political prisoners immediately.

Read also: No country for dissent