Media under the Spell

The Thimpu Government shames every other South Asian government in its ability to charm and manipulate the media. With an expertly choreographed programme of depopulation in progress, the Government had to have ready answers to questions about refugees, so the public relations machinery of Foreign Minister Dawa Tshering ground into action. "Cultural inundation" and terrorism by "ngolops" became the trump cards.

Numerous print, radio, and television journalists have been speaking words scripted by Thimphu over the past two years. and the list stretches from writers for vernacular dailies of Siliguri, to high-flying correspondents of the Western news outlets.

While she has since provided some more-balanced coverage, Barbara Crossette of the New York Times once filed a report on the problems of southern Bhutan that quoted only Bhutanese officials and the King as sources. Writing from Thimphu, she reported of "a campaign of violence and terror by small bands of ethnic Nepalese guerrillas in southern Bhutan." The militants' claims were "couched in the language of democracy and minority rights, but the goal of the movement is free access to the underpopulated forests and valleys of Bhutan for those of Nepalese origin." Crossette quoted no 'militant', however.

James Clad of the The Far Eastern Economic Review, from a reading of a December 1990 cover story headlined "The Khukuri's Edge" as well as the Review's 1992 Yearbook, does not try much harder in trying to fathom Druk and South Asian politics. Among other things, Clad believes that "many militants are advocates of a 'Greater Nepal,' asserting the right of Nepalese to political sovereignty over neighbouring territories they live in."

Journalists who pass muster in Bhutan's New Delhi Embassy are given visas and provided jet passage to Paro airport, from where they are whisked up to Thimphu as royal guests and put up at the Druk Hotel or one of two government guest houses. A chauffeur-driven vehicle awaits to take the reporter around, but never to the south.

The red-carpet treatment can be overwhelming, as can the English-speaking sophistication of the senior officials and King Jigme, and the obvious importance with which they regard the journalist's mission. In interviews, the King is urbane and realistic, and goes as far as to make confessionals such as "I know that monarchy is an outdated system" and that "Democracy is the best…when the country is ready for it."

A Delhi-based Swiss reporter returned from Thimphu in April to boast that he had had a five-hour audience with King Jigme and two hours each with the Foreign Minister and Home Minister. D.P. Kumar of the Statesman was flattered by "the unassuming young monarch — he stood at the doorway of the Throne Room of Thimphu's spectacular Dzong, the Kingdom's temporal and spiritual headquarters, without even an usher, to receive me."

The southern problem is clearly not as worthy of coverage as Bhutan's merry other attractions. In October 1991, a BBC reporter made a programme on archery, Bhutan's national sport. Only on30 June 1992 does he acknowledge that "some" Lhotshampa refugees had left Bhutan. In March 1992, Heinz-Rudolf Othmerding of the German agency DPA chooses to do a write-up on Thimphu's quaint urbanisation.

The most recent journalist to be taken in by Thimphu was Tarun Basu of India Abroad, a New York-based weekly, who wrote on 26 June 1992 about Indo-Bhutanese ties ("Harmony between Contrasts"), the King ("Austere Ruler Who likes Work"), the "Wondrous Stamp Museum", and so on. The one paragraph on the Southern problem says: "Operating behind the facade of a pro-democracy movement, the dissenters…had the backing of Gurkha leaders of India and Nepal who nursed visions of a pan-Himalayan Nepali state."

Bruce W. Bunting wrote in the May 1991 National Geographic that migrants "are coming still, seeking jobs and fertile land. In recent years, thousands of Nepalese have resettled as illegal immigrants in southern Bhutan — one reason the royal government recently imposed restrictions on all residents." Bunting, who does not quote Lhotshampas, also writes that the King "worries that the nation's cultural traditions might someday be swamped by the Nepalese living in Nepal, who outnumber Bhutanese by 2.1 to 1."

Only journalists out to do some soft holiday reporting seem welcome. One New Delhi writer who recently applied to go was denied permission, but did receive two bottles of Scotch just to show there were no hard feelings.

While malleable national-level journalists of New Delhi and Calcutta are invited to Thimphu to be charmed out, Thimphu knows that only hard cash will do for the vernacular press of the Duars. Siliguri-based papers that were 'sympathetic' to the refugees in the autumn of 1990 had made a quick turnaround by January 1991. Today, they treat Thimphu with velvet gloves while lampooning the exile leadership.

Just as only a few can resist being carried away by the mediaeval pomp in Thimphu, still fewer will return the bottles of Scotch handed out in paper bags at the end of press conferences in New Delhi. Forty-four cases of Black and Red Label whisky were distributed after the 1988 press conference announcing the multiple marriages of King Jigme, recalls Narain Katel, then a diplomat in Delhi and now a refugee.

The Bhutanese proclivity for giving gifts is sometimes carried to extremes. Even the Foreign Minister might agree that it was carrying things too far when a Delhi-based diplomat turned up at the residence of Justice Krishna Iyer with jam, jelly, books, honey and liquor. Krishna Iyer had made a statement on human rights in Bhutan and was planning to leave for Thimphu as part of a South Asian fact-finding team. He is a former Chief Justice of India, and a teetotaller.

Nepali Overkill

One reason why the refugee exodus has not received the coverage it clearly deserves could be the Nepali media's obvious partisanship. In covering Bhutan, Kathmandu's vernacular press has relied almost exclusively on second-hand reports and heresay. Initially, press releases sent over by the Bhutan People's Party were printed word for word, which led to exaggerated `reportage' on alleged atrocities. Fresh out of Nepal's own fight for "human rights and democracy", the press took up the Bhutanese story with alacrity in 1990, but the coverage has trailed even as the suffering has increased.

Kathmandu, not New Delhi, is the proper place for Bhutan-watching, but editors of international news magazines and agencies tend not to trust their Kathmandu-based stringers on the subject. News filed by Delhi-based journalists, where the Bhutanese Embassy wields inordinate influence, is accorded more credibility. One particular instance of news overkill — in September 1992, when some Nepali stringers filed reports of a massacre of more than 300 Lhotshampas by the Bhutanese Army — is said to have played a role in turning the international editors off Kathmandu copy, The episode also provided Thimphu with the opportunity to play victim, and King Jigme told one reporter incredulously, "We don't even find people willing to kill dogs when rabies breaks out."