HUROB against witch-hunting (Human Rights)
Damak, May 12: The Human Rights Organization of Bhutan (HUROB) has called for urgent action to save the exiled Bhutanese from victimization and torture of police in the West Bengal state of India.
The rights organization, which has been speaking up against discrimination suffered by Nepali speaking Bhutanese under the Druk regime in Bhutan and the problems of the country's citizens who have been exiled in Nepal and India, said that a "witch hunting" of exiled Bhutanese has begun in the state especially in North Bengal and Darjeeling Hill Council.
The "witch-hunting" started after the incidence of bomb explosion on April 3 in Siliguri, a town in West Bengal state, in which three exiled Bhutanese had died. The West Bengal police later arrested five exiled Bhutanese including two girls in Siliguri in connection with the incident.
"Innocent Bhutanese are being harassed and students studying in the schools and colleges are doubted and even arrested," said HUROB in a statement.
Bhutanese students Ashok Gurung and Kamal Subba studying in standard 12 in Kamal Jyoti School and Som Nath Rai, a BA final year student in Kalimpong College in Kalimpong, Darjeeling Hill Council were arrested without any warrant by the West Bengal police on Sunday. Their whereabouts are not known and as well as the reason of arrest.
"The spat of unwarranted action of the police of West Bengal is creating fear and trepidation in the mind of the exiled Bhutanese students in the state of West Bengal and depriving them from pursuing education smoothly," HUROB chairman S. B. Subba said, demanding immediate release of the students and other prisoners and an end to harassment of innocent exiled Bhutanese.
The statement added that there are also rumors that the West Bengal government is in the spree of sweeping the exiled Bhutanese from the state and the Hill council.
Stating that "an incident and action of few" should not be use as a premise to victimize the innocent people and that any action should be based on facts, HUROB accused the Indian government of being apathetic to the cause of exiled Bhutanese especially the Nepali speaking Bhutanese, adding that the recent action "has become one of the more reasons to believe in it." Bhutan News Service