Bhutanese Court reduces sentence for Woman tried for Treason

At the beginning of this year, I wrote a couple of posts regarding the trial of a Bhutanese woman who was arrested in 2009 and tried for Treason and then sentenced to 15 years in prison. As a follow up I would like to report that in October the Chukha District Court reduced that sentence from 15 years to 6 years.

Here is an article from Bhutan Today on that verdict. According to her relatives, Dechen Wangmo, who was once an active social worker in her hometown Phuentsholing and involved in an international Youth Organization is now very active in prison teaching the prisoners how to read and write.

The National Youth Policy

The National Youth Policy was launched December 7. The Bhutan Observer has an article on it.
Hopefully this will address some of the many pressing issues regarding the situation of young people in Bhutan today and improve the attitude and approach of authorities and elders towards them. 

Whither the Bhutanese Youth

"Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children." - Albert Camus 

The last month I was in Bhutan I was fortunate to be invited with members of other Civil Society Organizations to a Forum on Gross National Happiness organized by the Bhutan Center for Media and Democracy.

These were some of the things they wanted to discuss:

• What is true GNH?
• Are CSOs the flag bearers of GNH?
• What is the scope for partnership between CSOs and the vision outlined in our Constitution?
• Is promotion of GNH only government’s task?
• What can we learn from the latest studies on GNH and the government's policy screening tools?

While we may have been expected to arrive at some answers or solutions to these dilemmas or questions, I was left feeling that this, particularly the first question, was something too big for any of us including GNH officials themselves to figure. I can go on and on, but let me not get sidetracked by GNH for now. Right now I want to talk about our youth.

Just before going to Bhutan, I had written fervently about the beating of a teenage boy by a police officer and about the abuse of a police constable by the Police Chief himself. At the GNH forum I asked the big question that had been hanging over my head: How does the government reconcile the so called "carrot and stick" policy  (as if the Bhutanese people are mules) that a former police officer said the police supposedly followed with the values/principles of GNH?