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(New York) — A Bhutan A political prisoner in jail for distributing political pamphlets said that prisoners like him survive on meager food rations and use rice bags for clothing and bedding, Human Rights Watch said today. The Bhutanese government should immediately release its remaining politicalThey were detained in extremely harsh conditions, subjected to unfair trials and torture, and served long sentences.
Ram Bahadur Rai, 66, who was released on July 5, 2024, upon completion of his prison term and immediately deported, spoke in an interview with Human Rights Watch. At least 34 prisoners convicted of political crimes are believed to remain in Bhutanese prisons. The small Himalayan nation has been a multiparty democracy since 2008, but it continues to jail people who were earlier seen as opponents of the former dictatorship.
“The Bhutanese government has proposedGross National Happiness‘But the blatant abuse of these prisoners tells a different story,” Meenakshi GangulyDeputy Director of the Asia Division at Human Rights Watch. “As the Bhutanese government seeks to strengthen ties with international partners, foreign governments and multilateral organizations should push for the release of political prisoners.”
In 2023, Human Rights Watch Record 37 prisoners Bhutan Government Classification Known as “political prisoners”, these people were first detained between 1990 and 2008. release Three people completed their sentences last year, and at least 34 others are believed to be still serving sentences, many of them life sentences without the possibility of parole. Under Bhutanese law, only King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck can commute sentences.
Ram Bahadur Rai is one of about 90,000 Bhutanese who speak Nepali. Forced to flee the country Around 1990, due to violence and persecution by the government at the time.
After being released from prison, he told Human Rights Watch that he returned to Bhutan in 1994 and was arrested in the border town of Khelep while distributing leaflets for a banned group, the Bhutan People’s Party. He said he was subsequently charged with involvement in political violence in a “fabricated” case.
Rai said he was tortured so severely before and during his trial, without a defence lawyer, that he was hospitalised, only to be sent back to prison to continue being tortured. When he was convicted and sentenced to 31 years and 10 months in prison, he said the torture prevented him from writing his own appeal. His appeal was rejected, and he was warned that his sentence could be increased if he appealed again.
Rai said he has not had any contact with his family since 2012, when the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) stopped arranging family contacts for Bhutanese state security prisoners. After his release, he sent a photo to his four children “so they would know what their father looked like.”
Describing conditions in Chemgaon prison near the capital Thimphu, where he shares a cell with 24 other prisoners whom Bhutanese authorities label as “anti-national”, Rai said: “The situation there is very miserable. Since the Red Cross left (in 2012), prison facilities have been reduced by almost half.”
Prisoners must buy their own medicine when they are sick and can wait up to eight months to see a doctor, meaning they often go without treatment. Rai said the health of several prisoners was “very bad”.
He said that after the ICRC’s mission ended, prison guards taunted prisoners: “We are your parents now, we are everything to you.”
Food rations have been reduced to half of what they were before. Inmates are given a blanket every three years and a mattress every 18 months, but these blankets are of poor quality and “cannot be used after one or two months”. The clothes they are given are too small, Rai said. “We collect rice bags and use them to make clothes and bedding.”
Rai said the Bhutan Red Cross was supposed to have taken over the ICRC’s responsibilities for the prisoners’ welfare but had “done nothing” and the remaining prisoners asked him to call on the ICRC to resume its involvement.
Human Rights Watch said Bhutan’s treatment of the men, who were convicted after torture and unsafe trials, tarnished the government’s reputation.
Bhutan’s legal system is formally based on Buddhist traditions, such as compassion. The king is the head of state, and while most government functions are handled by an elected government, the king retains the power to grant “kidu” or relief, including commuting sentences.
“King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck only needs a decree to end the injustice suffered by these prisoners and their families because he and His father “This has been done before in other cases. Sixteen years after Bhutan’s transition to democracy, all remaining political prisoners should eventually be released,” Ganguly said.
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