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Ethnic Nepali political prisoners in Bhutan await justice after decades behind bars
- At least dozens of political prisoners are still being held in Bhutan’s jails, according to human rights organisations
- Bhutan began evicting its ethnic Nepalis after it introduced a ‘one nation, one people’ policy in 1989, with many fleeing to Nepal
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When Bhutan started forcibly expelling its ethnic Nepali population over three decades ago, Dil Kumar Rai, along with thousands of others, fled to neighbouring Nepal. But a secretive return to meet his relatives still in the kingdom landed him in prison.
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Rai spent 21 years in jail after being arrested and convicted for being an “extremist and antinational” who was involved in an anti-government revolution in 1996. By the time he was freed in 2017, his house in Sipsu Gola Bazaar, near the Indian border, had been demolished.
“I had no citizenship, money or a place to live,” Rai, now in his late 50s, told This Week in Asia. “I wanted to stay in Bhutan but there was nothing left for me there. So I came to Nepal, even if I would be a refugee.”
Rai is one of many Bhutanese who came to Nepal after completing their prison terms and are among a few thousand refugees still there.
But dozens of other men like Rai – who are considered political prisoners after being handed lengthy jail terms – are still being held in Bhutan’s jails, according to rights organisations and former political prisoners that This Week in Asia spoke with.
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