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Dragon
Kingdom blames Bodos
for attacks on Bhutanese
The Bhutanese government blames the
Bodo Liberation Tigers, with whom the Indian
government is holding peace talks, responsible
for the unprecedented attacks on Bhutanese
citizens last week, reports Wasbir Hussain
Guwahati,
December 25
Commoners
in the Dragon Kingdom are "traumatised", the
royal government in Thimpu is "concerned", and
the state is in a state of "red alert",
following the unprecedented attacks on December 20 and
21 on Bhutanese citizens by armed rebels from Assam in
multiple raids that left 14 dead and more than a dozen
injured.
The Royal Advisory Council and the Bhutanese Cabinet
held an emergency meeting in Thimpu and decided to ban,
or at least restrict, the movements of vehicles through
Assamese-Indian territory. Bhutan has, however, played
the incidents down, describing them as "terrorist
attacks" that will not sour the age-old bilateral
ties between the two neighbours.
In a lengthy telephonic interview with tehelka.com on
Sunday, December 24, Bhutan's ambassador to
India, Dago Tshering, confirmed his government's
decision to ban or restrict Bhutanese vehicles plying
through Assam. The Cabinet meeting was presided over by
the chairperson, Yashi Jimba, who is Bhutan's finance
minister.
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The
Royal Advisory Council and the Bhutanese Cabinet
held an emergency meeting in Thimpu and decided to
ban, or at least restrict,
the movements of vehicles through Assamese-Indian
territory
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The
envoy said, "I have personally spoken to the
Indian home secretary, Kamal Pandey, and the acting
foreign secretary with the specific request that
security measures on the Indian side be tightened so
that innocent Bhutanese citizens travelling through
Assam are
not attacked by armed men."
He added, "The first thing we expect New Delhi
to do is to |
implement
these measures on the ground that
could improve the confidence of our people travelling
through Assam. We hope the Indian government would
do its best."
Bhutanese monarch Jigme Singye Wangchuk has not made any
comment yet on the incidents. However, the Bhutanese
government issued a formal press statement in New Delhi on
Saturday, December 23, saying that it had "definite
information and proof that all these attacks were carried
out by the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT)".
On December 20, Bhutan experienced the first-ever attack on
its citizens by Indian insurgents. That day,
five Bhutanese vehicles came under attack in western Assam's
Kokrajhar and Bongaigaon districts. Three vehicles were
variously hijacked and waylaid by armed men and set ablaze.
The attack on two Bhutanese passenger buses, coming from the
southern town of Samdrup Jongkhar to Phuentsholing (on the
border with the Indian township of Jaigaon, near Siliguri in
West Bengal) proved fatal. Three passengers were killed and
18 wounded in Kokrajhar when militants sprayed bullets into
the packed buses with AK-47 assault rifles.
Another truck was torched on December 21in Assam. On
December 22, the rebels struckagain. This time, 10 Bhutanese
nationals, three of them students, were shot dead near
Patacharkuchi in western Assam's Barpeta district.
The dispute over the identity of the killers has given a new
twist to the unprecedented attack on the Bhutanese. The
Assam government insists that it was the handiwork of the
banned National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), while
the Bhutanese government says that it was carried out by the
BLT. The NDFB is an outlawed outfit with several bases
inside Bhutan, a fact admitted by the royal government.
The BLT, which the Bhutanese government accuses of
involvement in the attacks, is an outfit that had entered
into a ceasefire agreement with the Indian government last
year, and is currently engaged in peace talks with New
Delhi. Thimpu's pointing the accusing finger at the BLT has,
therefore, come as an embarrassment to the Indian
authorities. The BLT, of course, has denied involvement in
the attacks.
Asked whether the recent attack on the Bhutanese and setting
up of well-entrenched bases by rebels from Assam inside the
Himalayan kingdom amounts to the spilling over of the
Northeast insurgency to Delhi's southeast Asian neighbours,
Dago Tshering said, "I would not like to call it a
spillover of insurgency from India to our country. We have
held some rounds of talks with the United Liberation Front
of Asom (ULFA) and the NBFB with the sole aim of persuading
them to leave our country in a peaceful manner." The
Bhutanese government has, of course, been saying that should
the rebels fail to leave the kingdom in a peaceful manner,
the government may be compelled to use military force.
Bhutan's former foreign minister, Dawa Tsering, currently
one of the country's top Track-2 diplomat, told tehelka.com
on Sunday that the unusual attack on Bhutanese citizens
has come as "a rude shock to
the people".
Speaking on telephone from Punakha (100-odd km east of
Thimpu), Tsering said, "The Bodo insurgents seem to
have started targeting innocent Bhutanese civilians. This, I
would say, is both unprecedented and unwarranted. I don't
know how this is going to further the cause of the
militants."
A member of the Eminent Persons' Group from the subcontinent
advising the Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB),
Tsering said, "These attacks have traumatised the
Bhutanese no doubt, but it has absolutely nothing to do with
bilateral relationship between India and Bhutan. This is a
classic case of terrorism and I hope, we shall have all the
support and sympathy of the government of India."
(The writer is Editor, The Northeast Daily, Guwahati)
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