Gay Bhutan News and Reports

GlobalGayz: Please give me an overview of the LGB ‘scene’ in Bhutan?

Chong: Yes I can give you all the details about homosexuality in this country, since the literacy rate is just 25% out of 600,000 population, many have never heard of gay sex and homosexuality at all.
As for gay tolerance, this is not known. Many don’t know anything. But men can hold hands, sleep in the bed with same sex even in presence of parents or relatives and friends yet many don’t know that gay sex exist at all. Married men can sleep together in same bed with other married or single men!

GlobalGayz: What would they say if they found out you are gay? Would they throw you out of the family?

Chong: If some modern and new generation people know that we are gay, then that is the worst part; we will be cast out from the society. My parents are farmers and never heard of homosexuality at all, at least its existence in the open society. I think here most of the gay men are married to cover it up. It is unfortunate but it is the only way to survive.
If you are caught as homosexual, perhaps the government will put you in jail for life and society will outcast you. But as I said, a man can hold man’s hand and a man can sleep with other man in the same bed but they don’t look for sex.

GlobalGayz: Is this ‘homophobia’ or something else? What is the reason for this? Religion? Legal laws? Social tradition?

Chong: It is not so actually ‘homophobia’ but mostly ignorance and not knowing what this strange sex is. In the small villages they don’t think about it and so do not know how to accept something so strange. But if they find it out they do not like it because it is not normal for them. In the bigger cities like the capitol more people know about gay sex but the government has said it is a crime. A person can go to the jail for a long time, maybe all of his life. So people are afraid of jail too.

GlobalGayz: Can you describe a situation that really happened when a homosexual was discovered?

Chong: Regarding the jailing of gays, I have heard in the past that one man was killed in jail while he was caught and he was married and had kids but divorced. We have no attorneys or lawyers in this country for any citizens. There are hundreds of freedom fighters in this country who are behind the bars for decades now and many of the them are killed and tortured, but no relative or Red Cross Society workers can access to the most secretive place in this world called Bhutan jail–even more than North Korea. The world does not know where is Bhutan so North Korea is on limelight.

GlobalGayz: Is there is an underground gay community who know each other?

Chong: No, there are no gay men who have sex in any underground; 98% of gay men are married. I am married too since over 30 years. If you are not married society will question you and ask you if you are abnormal man. Lots of pressure really, so all men marry and it’s mandatory due to social pressure.

GlobalGayz: Do you know other gays in Bhutan?

Chong: I don’t know any single gay man in Bhutan personally nor anyone do I dare to ask and get to know one for so many reasons like being caught or known or outcast from office work, family and society. I am sure there are gays. They are married and have kids. I guess they might be finding sex across in India which is on our immediate border.

About Bhutan, as I told, you, only the new generation who study outside Bhutan are exposed and have heard of homosexuality. So they are very few overall. You can see the gay Bhutan web site where there are not any gay men who have put ads, except me, since many even don’t know that gay sites exist. I am sure that there are few gay men who are influenced by western tourists and must have had sex but 90% of men are married due to social pressure.

GlobalGayz: Where did you go to college for your professional education as a pharmacist?

Chong: I did study in India for many years and India has many gay meeting places in all cities. I also learned that one has to be very careful to have sex in India in metro cities. At times gay men act as middle men with cops to make money; you see the danger and irony of Indian gays!! I have been to all cities in India though. The cops often raid the secluded run gay bars also.

GlobalGayz: Did you go to university in India? Were you nervous when you discovered you were gay? Can you say more about coming out to yourself and where you were and what your early experience was?

Chong: Yes I did study in India in mission school and degree in pharmacology in Bombay (Mumbai). The first gay experience was with a British guy who was my English teacher who was probably bisexual since he had his wife and kids. We met in Darjeeling St. Paul’s School, the best mission school in India, where I got converted into Christian. Please understand that converting to another religion is punishable by the law of the land in Bhutan!

My teacher was 50 years when I was a teen and in fact I never knew that I had this man-to-man instinct until this teacher allured me with his affection and private tuition class in his home when his wife was away to London. Once at night he asked me sleep in his bedroom when suddenly he undressed me and starting kissing and cuddling. I was shocked and reluctant in the beginning but after a while I got aroused. I was just 19 years and full of virility. Then he was oral with me and kissed me. Finally I also started kissing and cuddling him. We were lovers for 10 years during my stay in school and college until he went back to England in Birmingham. He died some years ago now.

GlobalGayz: Regarding private life in Bhutan, there is a difference between the ‘western’ image of Bhutan and the reality of life there. I went to this web site: http://www.bhutanadventure.com/aboutbhutan.htm It is a tourist site and it provides information about the history and culture of Bhutan. But the information there is very different from the information you give. The site tells about the ‘Gross National Happiness’ philosophy of the king and how all people share their work and effort together so everyone can be happy.

Chong: Let me tell you the difference between that site owned by our dictator regime. This country is ruled by an autocratic king who has 4 wives and 18 kids and most of the high posts are occupied by his sycophants and kith and kin. There is no freedom of expression, no newspaper except a government-controlled paper edited in King’s palace, once a week. No reporters and foreign journalists are given visas. Tourists are guided by government guides and kept in groups.

GlobalGayz: Do people live in fear or love for the king? What happens to someone who speaks about human rights and wants more freedom?

Chong: The web site you mention is managed by our government. It is better for you to see www.bhootan.org that is a human rights organization in London. No one can talk and argue about human rights in Bhutan; anyone going against the authority is killed and shot. No international body can visit Bhutan except a handful of people working here in UN organizations–their visas will never be extended more than a year or couple of years for reasons of fear of spying in this land, controlled by King. Please see the site also at http://bhutannewsonline.com/

Yes all the people live in fear and anyone talking against the king and the present ruling regime will be eradicated. You can imagine how many such people have been killed for the last 90 years of this dictator regime. There are no international human rights forum nor they are allowed to visit this country and no reporters and news papers are here except that ‘Kunesel’ paper that gets printed once a week and is censored in palace here

2
Homosexuality and Theravada Buddhism

by A. L. De Silva
Buddhism teaches to, and expects from, its followers a certain level of ethical behaviour. The minimum that is required of the lay Buddhist is embodied in what is called the Five Precepts (panca sila), the third of which relates to sexual behaviour. Whether or not homosexuality, sexual behaviour between people of the same sex, would be breaking the third Precept is what I would like to examine here.

Homosexuality was known in ancient India; it is explicitly mentioned in the Vinaya (monastic discipline) and prohibited. It is not singled out for special condemnation, but rather simply mentioned along with a wide range of other sexual behaviour as contravening the rule that requires monks and nuns to be celibate. Sexual behaviour, whether with a member of the same or the opposite sex, where the sexual organ enters any of the bodily orifices (vagina, mouth or anus), is punishable by expulsion from the monastic order. Other sexual behaviour like mutual masturbation or interfemural sex, while considered a serious offense, does not entail expulsion but must be confessed before the monastic community.

The lay Buddhist is not required to be celibate, but she or he is advised to avoid certain types of sexual behaviour. The third Precept actually says: ‘Kamesu micchacara veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami.’ The word kama refers to any form of sensual pleasure but with an emphasis on sexual pleasure and a literal translation of the precept would be "I take the rule of training (veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami) not to go the wrong way (micchacara) for sexual pleasure (kamesu)". What constitutes "wrong" will not be clear until we examine the criteria that Buddhism uses to make ethical judgments.

No one of the Buddha’s discourses is devoted to systematic philosophical inquiry into ethics such as one finds in the works of the Greek philosophers. But it is possible to construct a criterion of right and wrong out of material scattered in different places throughout the Pali Tipitaka, the scriptural basis of Theravada Buddhism. The Buddha questioned many of the assumptions existing in his society, including moral ones, and tried to develop an ethics based upon reason and compassion rather than tradition, superstitions and taboo. Indeed, in the famous Kalama Sutta he says that revelation (anussana), tradition (parampara), the authority of the scriptures (pitakasampada) and one’s own point of view (ditthinijjhanakkhanti) are inadequate means of determining right and wrong.

Having questioned the conventional basis of morality, the Buddha suggests three criteria for making moral judgments. The first is what might be called the universalisability principle – to act towards others the way we would like them to act towards us. In the Samyutta Nikaya he uses this principle to advise against adultery. He says: "What sort of Dhamma practice leads to great good for oneself?… A noble disciple should reflect like this: ‘If someone were to have sexual intercourse with my spouse I would not like it. Likewise, if I were to have sexual intercourse with another’s spouse they would not like that. For what is unpleasant to me must be unpleasant to another, and how could I burden someone with that?’ As a result of such reflection one abstains from wrong sexual desire, encourages others to abstain from it, and speaks in praise of such abstinence."

In the Bahitika Sutta, Ananda is asked how to distinguish between praiseworthy and blameworthy behaviour. He answers that any behaviour which causes harm to oneself and others could be called blameworthy while any behaviour that causes no harm (and presumably which helps) oneself and others could be called praiseworthy. The suggestion is, therefore, that in determining right and wrong one has to look into the actual and possible consequences of the action in relation to the agent and those affected by the action. The Buddha makes this same point in the Dhammapada: "The deed which causes remorse afterwards and results in weeping and tears is ill-done. The deed which causes no remorse afterwards and results in joy and happiness is well-done." This is what might be called the consequential principle, that behaviour can be considered good or bad according to the consequences or effects it has.

The third way of determining right and wrong is what might be called the instrumental principle, that is, that behaviour can be considered right or wrong according to whether or not it helps us to attain our goal. The ultimate goal of Buddhism is Nirvana, a state of mental peace and purity and anything that leads one in that direction is good. Someone once asked the Buddha how after his death it would be possible to know what was and was not his authentic teaching and he replied: "The doctrines of which you can say: ‘These doctrines lead to letting go, giving up, stilling, calming, higher knowledge, awakening and to Nirvana’ – you can be certain that they are Dhamma, they are discipline, they are the words of the Teacher."

This utilitarian attitude to ethics is highlighted by the fact that the Buddha uses the term kusala to mean ‘skillful’ or ‘appropriate’ or its opposite, akusala, when evaluating behaviour far more frequently than he uses the terms punna, ‘good’, or papa, ‘bad’. The other thing that is important in evaluating behaviour is intention (cetacean). If a deed is motivated by good (based upon generosity, love and understanding) intentions it can be considered skillful. Evaluating ethical behaviour in Buddhism requires more than obediently following commandments, it requires that we develop a sympathy with others, that we be aware of our thoughts, speech and actions, and that we be clear about our goals and aspirations.

Having briefly examined the rational foundations of Buddhist ethics we are now in a better position to understand what sort of sexual behaviour Buddhism would consider to be wrong or unskillful and why. The Buddha specifically mentions several types of unskillful sexual behaviour, the most common of which is adultery. This is unskillful because it requires subterfuge and deceit, it means that solemn promises made at the time of marriage are broken, and it amounts to a betrayal of trust. In another passage, the Buddha says that someone practicing the third Precept "avoids intercourse with girls still under the ward of their parents, brothers, sisters or relatives, with married women, with female prisoners or with those already engaged to another." Girls still under the protection of others are presumably too young to make a responsible decision about sex, prisoners are not in a position to make a free choice, while an engaged woman has already made a commitment to another. Although only females are mentioned here no doubt the same would apply to males in the same position.

One sometimes hears people say: "If homosexuality were not illegal, many people, including the young, will become gay." ‘This type of statement reflects either a serious misunderstanding about the nature of homosexuality or perhaps a latent homosexuality in the person who would make such a statement. It is as silly as saying that if attempted suicide is not a criminal offense then everyone will go out and commit suicide. Whatever the cause of homosexuality (and there is great debate on the subject), one certainly does not ‘choose’ to have homoerotic feelings in the same way one would, for example, choose to have tea instead of coffee. It is either inborn or develops in early childhood. And it is the same with heterosexuality. Changing laws does not change people’s sexual inclinations.

Some have argued that there must be something wrong with homosexuality because so many homosexuals are emotionally disturbed. At first there seems to be some truth in this. In the West, at least, many homosexuals suffer from psychological problems, abuse alcohol, and indulge in obsessive sexual behaviour. As a group, homosexuals have a high rate of suicide. But observers have pointed out that such problems seem to be no more pronounced amongst African and Asian homosexuals than they are in the societies in which they live. It is very likely that homosexuals in the West are wounded more by society’s attitude to them than by their sexual proclivity, and, if they are treated the same as everybody else, they will be the same as everybody else. Indeed, this is the strongest argument for acceptance and understanding towards homosexuals.

Since 1990 some 110,000 southern Bhutanese have been forced to abandon their homes and flee to India and Nepal. The roots of the political crisis in southern Bhutan obviously lie in the leadership’s concern over the growing southern Bhutanese population, both as a percentage and in terms of real numbers. The perceived threat of being swamped by ethnic Nepalese was heightened during the 1980s by the wave of democratic movements across the globe and nearer home in Nepal and the Nepali-led Gorkhaland movement for a separate state in India. Recognising this threat, a policy with an eventual goal of balancing the demographic pattern was initiated in the mid-1980s; the idea was to set right a historical error of judgment – the grant of nationality in 1958 to ethnic Nepalese settled in the south. One might sympathise with the Bhutanese, but the methods employed were foul and in total disregard of international nationality laws.

The grant of citizenship in 1958 was by royal decree. The new citizens were not granted papers nor was there any major changes in the lives of the people then. Bhutan was still a medieval kingdom in 1958 – there were no motorable roads, no electricity, no hospitals or other government public facilities. There were just 5 primary schools in the entire kingdom. There was no individual certification of grant of nationality because neither the government nor people considered it necessary at the time.

In 1985, the government enacted a new Citizenship Act. In 1988 the government began taking a census in southern Bhutan based on the 1985 Act. The census was one of inclusion and not exclusion – each person was expected to prove he/she was domiciled in Bhutan in 1958 to qualify as a Bhutanese by registration according to the 1985 Citizenship Act. The government started with a fresh slate; the onus was on the individual to prove his or her credentials. It was not made easy by officials who demanded tax receipts for exactly the year 1958, not even ones issued earlier would do ostensibly because that might imply the person may have left the country before 1958 and returned only after the cut-off year.

The ridiculously stringent conditions above were to impact on the legal status of many more people because of two amendments to nationality laws. The Marriage Act of 1977 had prescribed that only children born of Bhutanese fathers, not either spouse as before, would be considered Bhutanese citizens. The 1985 Citizenship Act tightened this requirement further and required both parents to be Bhutanese for citizenship by birth. Applied retrospectively and in tandem with the 1958 tax receipt stipulation, the government could declare tens of thousands of legal southern Bhutanese as non-nationals. A person born in Bhutan in 1959 suddenly became an illegal resident during the 1988 census when either parent could not prove his/her presence in the country in 1958, the cut-off year. Thus began the woes of southern Bhutanese.

Attempts by southern Bhutanese to persuade the government to review the census implementation exercise were unsuccessful. The government deemed one such attempt, the submission of a petition by Royal Advisor Councillors Tek Nath Rizal and B.P.Bhandari in April 1988, an act of sedition. Youth in schools, colleges and villages became agitated and began to express dissent. This gave the government an excuse to become more aggressive and overtly discriminatory. The ‘One Nation, One People’ policy was adopted stringently with a uniform compulsory dress code and dropping of the Nepali language from the school curriculum. A green-belt plan was unveiled that threatened to make a third of all southern Bhutanese homeless. When the people reacted by rising up in mass protests all over southern Bhutan, the government began a massive crackdown. Thousands were arrested and among them hundreds detained for years without trial.

The U.N. refugee agency, with the help of NGOs, has been providing assistance to the refugees since 1992. But UNHCR has been systematically excluded from efforts by Bhutan and Nepal to bilaterally resolve the refugee crisis over the past ten years, and the government of Bhutan has flatly denied UNHCR access to the country, which is normally granted in most refugee situations.

In June 2003, the governments of Bhutan and Nepal announced the results of a joint screening process to identify the status of the refugees in one of the camps and determine who could return to Bhutan. According to the screening, less than three percent of the refugees would be able to return to Bhutan with full citizenship rights and tens of thousands could be rendered stateless. NGOs rejected the process as flawed and the results invalid. It has also been called into question by UNHCR and other governments.

“ Many fertile land owned farmers of Nepali origin in southern Bhutan were rice paddy fields, orange trees, cardamom and other fertile land where Nepalis have cultivated for ages. It was thick forest during British rule in India, history tells us. Now the lands are given to people of northern Bhutan as settlers and all these thousands of southern refugees are without land and property if they try go back!

“ The simple reason why they don’t want these people go back is the government fears that these group of people will ask for schools and rights to education, right to get back properties looted by army and settlers of northern origin and most importantly, the autocracy/repressive regime is threatened. These people are fighting for human rights, freedom of expression, freedom of press, right to citizenship for all Bhutanese. The ruling people now, the king and his kin, were from Tibet origin driven by China during Chinese invasion. They were also refugees once then.

Dear GlobalGayz
i am from Bhutan and i came across an interview done sometime in 2004 on your site with a guy name chong-though his name changed. i am a guy of 24 yo and currently working for NGO based in USA. i am a gay for last 13 years yet it has been very difficult to talk about my sexuality with my friends; forget ’bout family. though i am not married and i don’t want to but i don’t know how the society would look at it. and now i am planning to get out of my country but do not know how. i am willing to share my story provided if you could promise to keep it very confidential. do not hesitate to write me. Regards, Dori

GlobalGayz
Please feel free to tell your story any way you want. Tell me what you have been wanting to share for a long time.
I will happily read your words and help you make a good story.

Dori
Well i don’t know where to begin. I must say the whole story dates back when i was in my 1st grade. a guy who was our neighbor living next door lured me to bed and the thing got started. i was then ignorant and with the time i developed liking men more than women. so when i went for my boarding school i had couple of relations with the senior guys and it began more like a passion. in 2 years i had 10 relations and there were times some of them whom i had the relations told the others that i was gay, but i ignored. maybe some of them must have wanted to tell me but no one did ask me if that was true and i didn’t bother to tell them because in bhutan this thing is uncommon. maybe they brushed up.

When i was in college i had few relations because then i was aware the social stigma that would loom around. I still have the liking for men but i can’t tell to anyone. i don’t know how my parents would react. though marriage is open we can take time and parents do not push you into it but for how long? so i bet i should live with this dark secret all my life

I have no idea how many Bhutanese men are gay but yeah there is no such thing as underground life like in west. even if we had such thing i don’t think any bhutanese men would come openly because we live in small community that you can easily tell who the person is. so you see things can’t be done openly.

I bet there must be quite a number here but just because he is not married does not tell us the person is gay. i wish we had more liberal ideas in coming out as the person we are. i wanted to be accepted as who i am not for what my sexuality is and i am ok with this dark secret of my life. it couldn’t get better i think so.haaaa.any ways i will keep in touch with you and will keep on writing

Well ’bout how i felt on discovering i was gay. the feeling was normal as i said it is uncommon here no one would question you ’bout your sexuality and no one did. it was ok. but now i don’t feel i had done any wrong by keeping this secret. you see most of the bhutanese live outside the urban centres and this would sound weird to most of them but i know they will know it is wrong if they discover the person is gay. i can’t really tell how they would react.

In coming to accepting homosexuality, i think we are not that open with our sexuality like that of west so it might take some time to accept these thing. but i am not saying we totally would agree with it either. i don’t know if it has to do with religion. i don’t think so because there is nothing against homosexuality in our religion.

Dori
iIcan’t say if they were on hitting me for sex(i mean the girls).may be there could be some other reasons.god i wish i could read people’s mind but yeah getting into relation would in some way certainly mean having a sex. what do you think?. but i said i was never interested in girls .. i never got involved in relations so u can say i probably didn’t have sex with women.

Yes, the girl and boy thing are common in bhutan. you can expect the teenage pregnancy in the high school. the high school i went had lots of these things going on. so you can say it was casual except you get terminated from the school. though you can’t expect the society accepting two high school kids getting kinky. but yeah everybody falls in love and there is no stopping it. so it is common.

I think casual sex is very common here. no one complains provided they don’t find you doing in public places. but yeah i think the first thing that comes to bhutanese mind could be the sex. no wonder you will see large number of families under one roof and yeah the sex isn’t much big issue here. though we do not talk freely ’bout sex with families but when you are out with friends you can go on talking ’bout it.

For me i am comfortable talking about sexes with my male as well as female friends. when you walk in the town just make a point to listen what the people say. you will find men talking ’bout sex. u will find women gossipin’ ’bout sex. kids using slangs. so yeah bhutanese in general are so much into sex. i hope that didn’t make bhutan look so ugly.

Yeah there is no barrier in falling in love with anyone. there are bhutanese married to people from different culture, background, race, color, etc. I didn’t get what u mean by saying "what ’bout Nepalese-Bhutan People". do you mean to say the relation that these two country share or politically?

I have no idea how the things are shaping but i think people in general have no grudge to one another. I don’t know if i should say they are discriminated. if u want my unbiased answer i am ok with them but yeah they being put in back to nepal was long time story. god knows what must be the reason behind it.

Yeah we have bhutanese guy married to nepalese girl or vice-versa. there is no problem unless the nepali u are married to does belong to a family who were sent back to nepal. u will then have to reconsider your citizenship. then ultimately the child is affected. his future is not secure. I mean in terms when he gets into job market. he/she has to look for other option. they do not get to work as civil servants.

I do not have boyfriend because it is not common here.

I do not go out often. I am always at my home either reading or most of the time watching movies in weekends. so yeah i am not top or bottom this question popped instantly to my head.

You know yesterday i was chatting with this French guy online. I asked him what do top and bottom refer to. mostly i like to get submissive u can say bottom. but yeah i wont mind being top or fucking . i can’t say if the people with whom i had sex earlier are still gay or they are bisexual now. but right now i didn’t meet any friend who told me that he is a gay. may be they are keeping their mouth shut like me.

finding of sex? well i had sex mostly during my time in college or high school. as of now i am working. I haven’t have sex for 2 years though i want it desparetly but i do not know where and how to find sex.

I would rather have steady sex with people from other country then the bhutanese counterparts. bhutanese men are really bad in bed -haaaaa. if you are gay and you are in bhutan i think that is quite hard. unless u are in france, US, Australia and other countries where gay is legally accepted.

life as gay in bhutan is so hard. I wanted to get out from here. maybe in future i will get settled in Australia. I have always wanted to go there.

The AIDS thing in bhutan? officially it has been confirmed that over 100 are living with AIDS here though some maybe died. but i think it can be more which are not officially recorded because now u can see many bhutanese travelling abroad. so yeah AIDS has come to bhutan. I think we should be careful ’bout it.