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Bhutan News Service

Bhutan News Service

Positive nod for B-Christians

Posted: 10 Nov 2010 01:57 AM PST

The Chhoedey Lhentshog, an authority that registers religious organizations in Bhutan and is limited to Buddhist and Hindu, might allow registration of Christian organizations after December, a well read Christian news portal reported Monday.

According to Compass Direct News (CDN), which is a news service dedicated to providing exclusive news, penetrating reports, moving interviews and insightful analyses of situations and events facing Christians persecuted for their faith, the government seems ready to grant much-awaited official recognition and accompanying rights to a miniscule Christian population that has remained largely underground.

The report said, the authority that regulates religious organizations will discuss in its next meeting – to be held by the end of December – how a Christian organization can be registered to represent its community, agency secretary Dorji Tshering told CDN by phone.

"The constitution of Bhutan says that Buddhism is the country's spiritual heritage, but it also says that the king is the protector of all religions," he added, explaining the basis on which the nascent democracy is willing to accept Christianity as one of the faiths of its citizens, reported CDN.

The CDN report also revealed an undisclosed source which claimed that the government is likely to register only one Christian organization and would expect it to represent all Christians in Bhutan – which would call for Christian unity in the country.

Tshering further told CDN that the planned discussion at the December meeting is meant to look at technicalities in the Religious Organizations Act of 2007, which provides for registration and regulation of religious groups with intent to protect and promote the country's spiritual heritage.

In the first week of October, a Christianity promoter, Prem Singh Gurung from Tarithang, was sentenced to three years' prison by Gelephug District court charging him for attempting to promote civil unrest.

Gurung was arrested on May 21 as he was found screening movies on Christianity in Simkharkha and Gonggaon, two remote villages in Bhutan.

The National Assembly had banned open practice of non-Buddhist and non-Hindu religions by passing resolutions in 1969 and in 1979.

Filming in Bhutan

Posted: 10 Nov 2010 12:58 AM PST

When I mention Bhutan it solicits one of two responses. There is the “Oh, wow!” and then there is the “Oh, where?” The mention of filming tigers, however, solicits a combination of the two – “Oh wow, where?” Searching for tigers in a remote Himalayan kingdom is as awesome as it sounds.

By trade I am a wildlife cameraman, and often, when I’m not behind the camera, I jig about and say stuff in front of it.

Presenter is an uncomfortable word for me to call myself, but I suppose that is what I have become. My role was simply to capture images of tigers by any means possible.

Bengal Tiger caught on camera trap/BBC

I love my job, and almost everything that comes with it, but the opportunity to visit a place that is on many people’s top 10 list, to look for arguably the world’s most charismatic animal has been a career highlight.

Back at the start of the noughties I was making Tigers Of The Emerald Forest, a film about an isolated tiger population of about 30 individuals (a healthy breeding population) living in a little known national park in north central India.

The film was about the success story of those tigers and how, despite the pressures they faced, they were doing really well.

Within two years of my departure, all of them, every last one had been wiped out by illegal poaching. The news of that tragedy threw into sharp focus the realisation that the very worst was true – that we faced a future where tigers could no longer survive in the wild.

I think that being involved in the Lost Land/Expedition series has helped me feel less guilty about my dream job. Each expedition has targeted vulnerable rainforest areas and raised awareness of the problems and hopefully gone some way to helping.

In Bhutan we decided to highlight a single species: the tiger. At the start I really was resigned to a future without tigers roaming free in the world. To be honest, half way through the expedition, I still thought the same.

I knew almost immediately that the only chance we had of filming tigers was with camera traps. Unmanned and strapped to a tree these clever little cameras click into action the moment anything passes in front.

They never get tired, they never get hungry and they don’t suffer from heat exhaustion, frost bite or flatulence. Effectively they put me out of a job.

We slept in tents in the tropical heat of the forest and the minus 15 freezing conditions in the mountains.

Food was basic, sleep was scarce and exhaustion of working in the danger zone at an altitude of 5,000 metres was one of the toughest things I have ever done. Blood, sweat and tears pretty much sums up much of the expedition. (Also read Egg on face for BBC over tigers in Bhutan – by the Hindustan Times on the BBC story)

The candle of the tiger flickers vulnerably at the end of a very long dark tunnel, but in Bhutan, in the foothills of the most impressive mountain range on earth, the tiger’s future burns most brightly. We found them.

When I saw the first images of the tigers on the camera traps from the mountains (a place and altitude where tigers aren’t suppose to live) I was completely overwhelmed. It was very emotional.

In an instant I realised that tigers had hope and that the entire teams efforts were being fully rewarded by this briefest glimpse of an animal that didn’t know that its kind has been wiped out elsewhere in the world.

So we found them. OK, not roaming through every mountain pass, or roaring from every patch of forest, but our findings show that there is still hope.

Even (as is quite likely) if every isolated population is wiped out, all is not lost. If we care enough and can create a corridor spanning the Himalayas from Nepal to Thailand, tigers still have a chance. That is what I tell my children.

(Gordon Buchanan is the cameraman and presenter on Lost Land Of The Tiger in the BBC One. The write-up is taken from the BBC’s website.)

Kuwait defeats Bhutan by 8 wkts in WCL

Posted: 10 Nov 2010 12:30 AM PST

Kuwait eased to their third resounding victory of the ICC World Cricket League Division 8  tournament, crushing Bhutan by eight wickets in a match that lasted all of 20.4 overs.

Kuwait’s opening bowlers, right-handed Saad Khalid and left-armer Mohammad Murad, combined to skittle Bhutan for just 31 as no batsman made it to double figures and extras, with 10, provided the bulk of the scoring, reported the cricinfo.com Wednesday.

Kuwait lost both openers in their chase, but the score had already reached 20 by the time they departed, and Abid Chaudry and Mohammad Akhudzada had little trouble knocking off the remaining runs in time for an early lunch.

The Bhutanese team/Picture: bhutancricket.org

Murad and Khalid had dished out the same treatment to Suriname in their opening match of the tournament, and are now sitting comfortably at the top of the wicket-takers’ tables with 22 victims between them.

Their pace proved simply too much for Bhutan’s inexperienced batsmen as eight dismissals were either bowled or lbw.

Bhutan gets no rank in HDI

Posted: 10 Nov 2010 12:05 AM PST

Citing lack of significant data and authenticity on some of the statistics submitted by the government, the United Nations Development Program excluded Bhutan from Human Development Index (HDI) ranking.

As per the UN's clarifications, several indicators including life expectancy at birth, expected years of schooling, mean years of schooling and gross national income per capita were found missing or unreliable for Bhutan to get a rank in the HDI report, released on November 7.

Along with Bhutan, Cuba, Iraq and 13 other countries were also excluded from the HDI report, since data was missing for one or more of the indicators.

Bhutan was ranked 132nd among 182 countries last year. It had ranked 133rd in 2006, 134th in 2005, and 136th in 2004.