The Bhutanese refugees arrived in Burlington this morning at 8:20 a.m. after driving all night — 22 hours straight — from Atlanta, Ga., just to stand silently in the rain in order to make their outrage felt. Their handmade protest signs of brown cardboard boxes quickly wilted in the downpour, as the ink ran on their white, hand-lettered T-shirts scrawled with political slogans. For these twentysomething men, many of them current college students or recent grads, there wasn’t even time this morning to stop for breakfast. “This is our first priority,” they told me.
The source of their passion and anger: the three-day “Gross National Happiness Project” conference at Champlain College, which opened this morning with a keynote address by Karma Tshiteem, secretary of Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Commission. But the men who stood outside on the sidewalk, all Nepali-speaking Bhutanese whose families were forced into exile due to ethnic and political persecution, are outraged that Vermont would welcome an official representative of the regime that drove them from their native land.
Among the protesters was Gopal Subedi, 24, who grew up in a refugee camp in Nepal. It was one of seven operated by the United Nations for the tens of thousands of Bhutanese — one-sixth of the nation’s population — who currently live in exile. Like all his fellow Bhutanese who made the overnight drive to Burlington, Subedi supports the concept of Gross National Happiness — in theory.
However, he also wants the Vermont conference attendees to know that Bhutan’s notion of Gross National Happiness was a myth perpetrated by the government as a way of concealing years of human rights abuses. As one of his fellow protesters put it, “In Bhutan, it’s Gross National Sadness, not happiness.”
Wearing shirts that read, “GNH with National Reconciliation,” the men are calling on the Bhutanese government to immediately institute democratic reforms, end the repression of its Nepali-speaking citizenry, free political prisoners, and allow exiles such as themselves to return to their home nation without fear of reprisal or punishment. And, they’re asking Vermonters to stand by them in putting pressure on the government of Bhutan, which is still one of the world’s most closed and repressive countries.
For his part, Subedi, who came to the United States in 2006 and just graduated from Colby College in Maine, said he plans to ask the event organizers for permission to address conference-goers later today and explain Bhutan’s current political situation. As another protester remarked, when several attendees walked by their silent vigil on their way into Champlain College’s Hauke Family Campus Center, “They seemed very uninformed about the [Bhutanese] people in exile.”
Such ignorance is shocking, considering that the event’s local sponsors include the Vermont Peace Academy, the Peace and Justice Center and the University of Vermont’s Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, which are all organizations dedicated to raising social awareness about the global implications of our actions. This is doubly true considering that Burlington is home to 500 such Bhutanese refugees. Wonder how much they researched the current political climate in that country and its record on human rights before inviting the speaker?
The men who made the 950-mile trek to Vermont would be happy share their perspective with a wider audience before departing the Green Mountain State on Wednesday.
This article appears in Jun 2-8, 2010.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
True! The Royal government of Bhutan has evicted 20% of its total population into Exile. The so called cabinet ministers are handpicked who only act at the behest of the king. The sponsors, organizer n scholars must do research on the other side of gross national happiness- agenda to mislead international community.
NGH heheheh! In Bhutan ?
The words GNS is for few families ( kings and few ministers). The world need to see still people in refugee camp in Nepal who dearly wants to go back to Bhutan are still crying.
The campaign of GNS is fake.
The people of Southern and Eastern Bhutan are not aware of all this issue they don’t know what is GNH. They are looking good job and citizenship and their lands the government forcefully planted trees so called green belt .
The political presinor are suffering there is still no international supervision in the Jail in Bhutan.
So, sponsor organization need to be clear and find the true side visit refugee camp in Nepal . The core countries that resettled the Bhutanese people in different countries. Visit YouTube or google and type Just Bhutanese …… You will find many activities of resettled Bhutanese.
Good luck team for doing this activities and the news agency who carried this news.
“No Way To Praise Bhutan”
Gross National Happiness (GNH) is a big Bhutanese Joke!
Bhutan has to pay back US $1.5 million to my father, had International Court of Justice (ICJ) been instituted to prosecute a country by an individual. My father had four cardamom farms in Bhutan that produce 8.8 tons of cardamom annually. We were F1 citizens (Genuine Bhutanese) and had two two-storied houses, 10.9 acres of productive land and 17 plus cattle.
In 1980s, the forth King Jigme Singay Wangchuk regarded a growing ethnic Nepali population as a demographic and cultural threat. He then enacted discriminatory citizenship laws directed against ethnic Nepali population. He did adopt a policy, “One nation one people” which means one religion, one language, one dress, and one culture in the country of multi-ethnic communities.
Nepali language classes were banned in the schools and books were burnt. Fines were imposed for wearing Nepali costumes & speaking Nepali language. Torture and rape episodes rose up. Nepali pupils did not get enrollment in the schools. Repeatedly the government officials, police and armed forces raped Nepali-speaking girls. My cousin was hung up; uncle was thrown to the river while going to appeal the government for the establishment of fundamental human rights in the country. My father had a narrow escape and older brother was imprisoned for 18 months for giving company to the peaceful move in 1990. Because of torture, he was mentally disordered but now he is recovered. Hundreds of innocent people were killed, many were injured and about 150,000 are exiled. Isn’t Gross National Happiness a big Bhutanese joke?
Bhutan in Real Sense
By Bhakta Ghimire, USA
In December 2006, in the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, the then ruling King, 51 years old Jigme Singye Wangchuk announced that he would abdicate his throne, setting the country to a path toward parliamentary democracy. Earlier in 1991 too, he had made similar type of announcement stating, “If the problem in south is not solved positively, I will abdicate my throne.” It was with the students of Sherubtse college, then only one in the country. He took the time frame of three years to do the job. But surprisingly in 2006, without hinting a bit of solution to the problem; without mending the fences for democratic setup of government, he just passed over his absolute, autocratic post to his son in the name of ‘abdication.’ He actually gave way to so-called parliamentary, by-party system of ‘democracy graced by an almighty king’. He and the palace have been just irrigating their vested inner desires through the channel of this fake parliamentary system called ‘Democracy’. The rigid royal followers are just utilizing the newfound democracy as a weapon to embark on others instead of making it rooted in the hands of Bhutanese people in real sense.(Click below link to read all)
http://www.bhutannewsservice.com/column-opinion/opinion/bhutan-in-real-sense