Prior to the 1990 Democracy Movement, I was working as a field engineer in an irrigation project in Gelephu in southern Bhutan, under the Department of Irrigation and Flood Control, funded by the UN agencies. As a public servant under an absolute Monarchy, one was required to remain distant from and to abstain from politics. I was a person more inclined to my profession and little interested in politics. I had a small contended family with a farm, livestock, a concrete house and a cardamom plantation.

With the ban on Bhutanese Nepalese culture and the imposition of dress code and etiquettes of northern Bhutanese on the Lhotsampa [southern Bhutanese], everyone was affected. The imposed dress code was suitable for people in the north, living in colder regions. For people in the south living in a hot and humid climate and 99% of the population living as subsistence farmers, the dress code was a problem. We began to hear about Lhotsampas being mistreated, including the harassment of women by the Police. Their hair was forcefully cut short against their wishes and tradition. Books on the Nepali language being taught in schools were dumped and burnt publicly. All these events eventually led people to take to the streets – resulting in peaceful demonstrations.

In my entire life, I had never witnessed a protest program. On the day of protest in Gelephu, I was in my office chambers working with my colleagues in the Dzong – the district headquarters. The public servants were told that they should stand behind the Police and that the Police should stand behind the Army – if there was a need to clamp down on the protests. So we did not move from the office building. However, word came around that protesters would search and beat every individual who was supporting the new dress code by wearing the ethnic dress of the Drukpas. Initially, I hid myself in the office toilet. When the air was loud with slogans and the whole environment became overwhelming, I took off my Drukpa dress and borrowed trousers from a Bengali [Indian] colleague, leaving him in his shorts. Then clutching the Drukpa dress under my armpit, I walked out into the streets. I walked in the procession to avoid being targeted by the protestors. After a while, we reached a spot where protestors, as a mark of protest against the imposition of dress code, began to dump and burn the Drukpa dresses. I didn’t want to burn mine, as it was beautiful and expensive. I had only recently bought it with my monthly salary. As the protest program continued, I quietly walked away from the area and went home.

The government mobilised the army and began to crush the protest. Soon the project I was working on was closed. Other various projects in the district were closed too. Later, schools and hospitals were closed, converting them into torture-centres-cum-prison-cells. When the project was closed, I was transferred to Punakha in northern Bhutan. While in Punakha, I was unaware of the protests that were going on in Sarbhang, a town close to my home town Gelephu. When news did arrive from Sarbhang, I found out that many project officers (my colleagues) had been arrested. My family was beginning to worry about me. Beset by the developments, I grew anxious about the situation of my wife and daughters who were still living in Gelephu. So I decided to drive to Gelephu to see them.

On my way to Gelephu, I was arrested at Sarbhang at 9 pm on the 9th of December 1990 by Police Officer, Chandra Gurung. When I explained my family situation and asked for the reason of my arrest, the officer gave me no details. I was taken to the Sarbhang Police Station and confined to a room for two nights and a day – not allowing me to drink water for the whole period. They interrogated me but I had nothing to say. The officers suggested that I knew why I had ended up in detention and that I should confess why I wanted “democracy”. As ordered by Chandra Gurung, I gave him a written statement about myself. Two days later, I was transferred to Gelephu. During the transfer, my hands were taken to the front and handcuffed. While walking around, I was hand-cuffed behind.

When I reached Gelephu, I found the local hospital converted into a joint Police-Army barracks and prison cells. Almost all the project officers I knew were detained there, along with other public servants and some local government officials. I was not kept with them. Instead, I was taken to the house of the Deputy Superintendent of Police, which had been converted into cells for solitary confinement. It had five rooms. I was kept in one of them. There was no toilet. It was a dark cell with its windows painted black – barely allowing in any light during the day. The winter of December 1990 was very cold. My hands were tied behind at all times. The door of the cell was hardly ever opened. When it was, a plate of rotten rice and lentils with added water was pushed through. I was given a tiny plastic container to empty my bowels and to urinate. At night I was taken outside to wash the container and that was the only time I was allowed to drink water.

Several times, police officers would take me into the bathroom outside my cell and make me stand there. They would leave the water tap open to make water drip continuously, filling the bathroom floor. I wasn’t supposed to close the tap and regularly got wet and soaked during the cold winter days. Tired of standing, I would take off my shoes and sit on them. There were other officers who felt that such punishments were inhumane and they would bring me back into the cell. Sometimes at night, I heard wails and cries from people adjacent to my cell when they were beaten and tortured.

Soon they began to interrogate me at night while I was still in solitary confinement. They would mercilessly beat me for hours, asking me, “Why are you in the prison?” When I could not give a reason, I was beaten until I said, “I know the reason.” They would say, “You should confess what you wanted from the protest program.” If I didn’t respond, they would beat me until I did so. To avoid further beatings, I had to make up my own story the way they wanted me to, saying that I knew the leaders and that I was vigorously involved in the protests.

Sometimes at night, an officer would enter my cell. Sitting beside me he would say, “Have you heard that the wives of several project officers have been raped?” Another officer would say, “There is a Dasho (high officer) coming from Thimphu, who beats people ruthlessly to death – have you met him?” In this manner, I was mentally tortured regularly.

After 28 days of physical and mental torture, I was transferred to a hospital complex that had been converted into Army barracks. While being transferred to this army barracks, I was handcuffed and accompanied by two policemen through the streets. I was not allowed to speak to any bystanders whom I knew. One Police officer would say, “Have you heard, a person working in your department was killed here?”

In the Army barracks I was taken to a small room. There was blood on the floor and blood spots on the wall. They looked fresh. It was a cell with different torture instruments, such as ropes and bamboo sticks of different sizes. The cell was divided by a small curtain. On one side of the curtain the prisoner was held and tortured. On the other side, roasted meat and alcohol were kept on a table. After every torture session, the officer moved to the other side to devour the roasted meat and alcohol, then come back and torture again. On most occasions, it was army Lieutenant Rinzin Dorji who interrogated and tortured me. The other high official that tortured me was Colonel Rinchhen, whose nickname was “Tiger”.

As I was sitting in the cell, officer Rinzin opened the curtain and came in. He began by asking, “Why are you here in the cell?” When my answer was not what he wanted to hear, he punched me and banged my head on the wall. After a while he stopped hitting me and asked me to write the confession. I wrote confession after confession, but he did not always accept them and demanded that I write them again. He started to torture me by clamping my calves. Later, he hung me from the hook in the ceiling. Next the officer began to drive in pins beneath my fingernails. While the blood flowed, he sat there holding my hand and striking it with a duster, driving the pin in. He would demand, “Confess!” but reeling under pain, I could only cry.

In that state of agony, I wrote 11 pages of ‘confession’. A little later, they brought the typed and tampered-with version of my statement and read it out in front of my colleagues, in the presence of Dr. Kinzang Dorji, the Zonal Officer. To protect his in-law, Som Bahadur Tamang, Dr. Kinzang said that I was responsible for influencing co-officers, to involve them in politics and that I should be further interrogated. On special instructions from Dr. Kinzang, Colonel Rinchhen started to torture me. My hands were kept horizontal and a long wooden beam was tied to them. I was then ordered to rotate, holding the beam. Next, they wanted to hang me from the ceiling, with my hands still tied to the beam. As the officer was about to tie my leg to hang me down, he was needed for another task, so he left – giving me a little relief. On that occasion I was tortured for over 13 hours, from early in the day into the night. After that I was taken back to solitary confinement and it took me three days to become fully conscious.

I was transferred to a common cell with around 60 prison inmates. The room was crowded and conditions were very unhygienic. We could hardly get enough space to sleep. Later we were transferred to a semi-underground prison with around 100 inmates. It was a huge garage converted into a prison by digging its floor 4 feet deep. A mud stair-case led into the prison. Only when receiving food could we see light. At other times it was pitch dark.

In this semi-underground prison I fell sick. I suspected malaria. I became unconscious and was taken to hospital. I was diagnosed with both malaria and tuberculosis. I lay unconscious most of the time. My hand and legs were still tied to the hospital bed with handcuffs. As my condition deteriorated, the doctor advised referral to Thimphu hospital. My wife was called to inform her about my transfer to Thimphu hospital and asked to get me some warm clothes and a quilt. However, consolidating deep fear in our minds, the officer in-charge told my wife not to expect her husband to return home, as none of the prisoners during Yanki’s time ever returned.

While in Thimphu hospital, I was kept in their TB Ward, which had become a prisoners’ ward, with many prisoners ending up there with tuberculosis. During the 20th month of my imprisonment, my wife happened to meet one of the former prisoners from Chemgang, who told my wife that my name was in the list of prisoners to be released in the same batch that he was released. On hearing this news, my wife immediately travelled to Thimphu and went to Dadimakha Police Headquarters to seek clarification on the matter. The police ignored her request and declined to clarify, and I continued to lie unconscious in the TB ward in Thimphu General Hospital. After her repeated visits and requests, the police finally checked the record and found that I was actually in the list of prisoners who were already released from Chemgang prison. Despite this clarification, I continued to be detained in the hospital and was finally released on 28 March 1993 after 28 months of incarceration.

I came back to my home village, still sick. The school was closed and my children were idle and staying home. There was no scope for employment. All businesses were closed. Even if there were employment prospects, I wouldn’t be given a ‘No Objection Certificate’ (NOC) pre-required for any job entry. I couldn’t travel beyond Gelephu, because my citizenship card had been seized. Later, I went to the Police camp to get my belongings. Luckily, I retrieved my citizenship card. The police constable who had taken my fine watch was still wearing it on his wrist but said, “It is lost”. I avoided arguing with him.

The village around me had shrunken and many families began living closer together for mutual protection. I could sometimes observe the village headman escorting Drukpas from the north, showing them the lands belonging to evicted southern Bhutanese. We suspected that the headman was accumulating commissions, by helping to parcel off lands once-belonging to the evictees.

One day, though very feeble, I was walking from my village towards Gelephu town to get some medicine. On the way, my neighbour’s wife called me and said in tears that her husband (Sherub Wangchuck) had fled to a refugee camp in Nepal for fear of being re-arrested. After buying medicine, I went to the village headman’s house. He told me that an officer from Thimphu was coming to check on people who had been released from prison, to find out if they had left the country. If they hadn’t, they would be re-arrested. I was overwhelmed by the fear of re-arrest.

On 10 November 1993, I fled Bhutan and journeyed to a refugee camp in Nepal, where Bhutanese were housed and looked after by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Within a few weeks, my wife and children followed me and we were reunited. In my camp, I continued to suffer from the impact of torture inflicted while I was in the prison.

On 13 May 2007, I finally reached Adelaide in South Australia under the UNHCR Third Country Resettlement Program. Presently, I am diagnosed by medical specialists to be suffering from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). I am daily living a most horrendous life, filled with immense agonies. I also feel sad when I think of my fellow Bhutanese living in Bhutan, as they are still not safe and free even after the dawn of democracy. I hope with time democracy in Bhutan will get its true meaning and that the Bhutanese people will be able to enjoy genuine freedom and rights and live as bona fide citizens.

Bhanu Adhikari 
Age: 67 yrs Old
Residence in Bhutan: Burichhu, Puntenchhu, Chirang, Thram No. 462
Exlie: Hut No. 103, Sector A1, Beldangi II Ext, Jhapa
Permanent Residence: Adelaide, South Australia
Story Compiled by: Jogen Gazmere
Photo Courtesy: Chak Man Bista
Publication Date: 3 June 2017