The Kingdom of Bhutan is a tiny landlocked country in the Himalayas of less than 800,000 people that is bordered by India and China.
The Kingdom wants to preserve its identity by promoting its vision of anti-consumerist happiness to the world - and as a member of the United Nations Security Council.
This is Bhutan's Prime Minister Jigme Thinley addressing the United Nations on September 23, 2011.
Bhutan is the only country to measure "Gross National Happiness" or GNH.
GNH is the expression of a system of values that the Kingdom says it has defined over centuries.
The four pillars of GNH are the promotion of sustainable development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment and establishment of good governance.
For all of this happy-talk, it appears that Bhutan's National Happiness has been tinged by Grossness...
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Human Rights Watch
"Bhutan's Ethnic Cleansing"
Bill Frelick
February 1, 2008
Bhutan's image as an otherworldly and harmonious kingdom was rocked on 20 January by coordinated bomb blasts in the capital, Thimpu, and three other locations. The bombs caused minimal damage but generated political shockwaves at a time when the Himalayan state is struggling to transform itself from an autocratic monarchy into a democracy. The second-round of Bhutan's first-ever elections, scheduled for 24 March, will test whether its embrace of democracy will include its entire people. The answer may determine whether change ultimately will be ushered into Bhutan by the ballot or the bomb.
Although Bhutanese police initially listed Nepal-based exile groups as their top bombing suspects, their suspicions were based more on their knowledge of historical grievances than forensic evidence. A hitherto unknown group, the United Revolutionary Front of Bhutan, claimed responsibility, saying that Thimpu's changes were cosmetic and would not benefit all Bhutanese. Though such bombings are never justified, the alarms they sound should not be ignored. This salvo should warn the government to be inclusive in its experiment with democratization. To start, it needs to address a blot on Bhutanese history that remains unresolved.
In the late 1980s Bhutanese elites regarded a growing ethnic Nepali population as a demographic and cultural threat. The government enacted discriminatory citizenship laws directed against ethnic Nepalis, that stripped about one-sixth of the population of their citizenship and paved the way for their expulsion.
After a campaign of harassment that escalated in the early 1990s, Bhutanese security forces began expelling people, first making them sign forms renouncing claims to their homes and homeland. "The army took all the people from their houses," a young refugee told me. "As we left Bhutan, we were forced to sign the document. They snapped our photos. The man told me to smile, to show my teeth. He wanted to show that I was leaving my country willingly, happily, that I was not forced to leave."
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101 East - Bhutan's prime ministerby AlJazeeraEnglish13,486 views
Maintaining peace and security is to make 1/6 th of the population of our country refugee ?
Gross National Happiness = more than one hundred thousand of our fellow Bhutanese refugee.
TheSangay28 1 month ago
Cool
msoulier 4 months ago
There is still hope out there.
JetSpeed3r 4 months ago