[Buddha-l] Re:The Dalai Lama on Self-Loathing

[Alberto Todeschini]

Christopher Fynn wrote:

> An interesting comparison to Tibet is Bhutan - which if anything was probably 
> more backward & feudal than Tibet in 1950 -and has a very similar culture
> and so on - (though it of course it was never ruled by the Dalai Lamas).
> 
> Bhutan has had none of the supposed "benefits", "modernizations" & "social 
> reforms" with which China has supposedly blessed Tibet - yet I think you will 
> find that in most ways they have progressed much further, and certainly the 
> people are generally in a better and happier condition without any of this
> kind of help. Not to say that Bhutan is a perfect paradise or shangrila -

Well, I wonder what the tens of thousands of Bhutanese who are presently 
refugees in Nepal would say.

See this article by Human Rights Watch:

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2001/02/27/nepal253.htm

Excerpt:
"Nepal is the site of one of the world's most overlooked refugee 
dilemmas. Forced to flee Bhutan for Nepal and India in the early 90s, 
more than 90,000 people are now entering their tenth year of life in the 
refugee camps in Nepal. A whole generation of children has been born 
there. Many of the refugees, mostly ethnic Nepali Hindus who farmed the 
southern hills and plains of Bhutan, were arbitrarily stripped of their 
nationality prior to their expulsion from Bhutan in the early 1990s 
after changes to Bhutan's nationality laws that deliberately 
discriminated against the southern Bhutanese."

See also "UN demands Nepal refugees return"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6682639.stm

Alberto Todeschini