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
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.”
Human Rights Watch said in a 2023 report that it had collected information on 37 political prisoners in Bhutan detained between 1990 and 2010 – the number could be much higher. Of those, 24 were serving life sentences while others were jailed between 15 and 43 years.
