Role of the Royal Bhutan Army in the Forced Evictions

The Royal Bhutan Army (RBA) played a central and direct role in the forced expulsion of the Lhotshampa population from southern Bhutan between 1990 and 1993. Far from a passive bystander or a force responding to a security emergency, the RBA was the principal instrument through which the Royal Government of Bhutan carried out what human rights organizations have characterized as ethnic cleansing. Army personnel, operating alongside the Royal Bhutan Police (RBP), conducted systematic village-by-village operations across the southern districts, forcing residents to surrender their citizenship documents, sign departure forms under duress, and leave the country with whatever they could carry.

Background and Deployment

The RBA had historically been a small force focused on internal security and border patrol, with a total strength estimated at 6,000–8,000 personnel in the early 1990s. India had trained and equipped the RBA under the terms of the 1949 Indo-Bhutanese Treaty of Friendship. Prior to 1990, the army had no significant history of operations against Bhutan's own civilian population.

Following the mass protests of September–October 1990, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck authorized the full deployment of the RBA to the southern districts. The stated purpose was to restore order and combat "anti-national" elements. In practice, the deployment marked the beginning of a military campaign against the Lhotshampa civilian population. Army units were stationed in every major town and village across the districts of Chirang (Tsirang), Samtse, Sarbhang (Sarpang), Dagana, Samdrup Jongkhar, and parts of Pemagatshel.¹

Operations: House-to-House Evictions

The core method of the eviction campaign was the house-to-house operation. Army and police units would arrive in a village, typically without advance warning, and order all Lhotshampa residents to assemble. Officers would read out names from census lists — the same lists generated by the 1988 census — and demand that those classified as F2 through F7 (non-citizens) leave the country immediately. Even those classified as F1 (genuine Bhutanese) were not safe; many were reclassified on the spot or told that their classification had been changed.

Residents were presented with pre-printed "voluntary migration forms" (VMFs) and ordered to sign them. The VMFs stated that the signatory was leaving Bhutan voluntarily and relinquishing all claims to property, land, and citizenship. Those who refused to sign were beaten, detained, or threatened with worse. Multiple eyewitness accounts, collected by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, describe soldiers holding rifles to the heads of household members, including elderly persons and children, to compel signatures. The forms were written in Dzongkha, a language many Lhotshampa could not read.²

Once forms were signed, families were given between 24 hours and one week to vacate their homes. They were permitted to take personal belongings but nothing of significant value. Livestock, stored grain, and agricultural equipment were confiscated. Land titles and citizenship documents were seized and destroyed. In many documented cases, soldiers returned after families had departed and demolished the houses, uprooted crops, and burned what remained to ensure that return was physically impossible.¹

Systematic Violence Against Civilians

The eviction operations were accompanied by widespread and systematic violence against the Lhotshampa civilian population. Documented abuses committed by RBA and RBP personnel include:

Torture in detention: Lhotshampa men arrested during and after the 1990 protests were subjected to severe beatings, electric shocks, suspension from ceilings by bound wrists, submersion in water, and deprivation of food and sleep. Amnesty International documented cases of detainees held for months without charge in military installations and police stations across the south.
Rape and sexual violence: RBA soldiers and police officers committed rape against Lhotshampa women and girls during eviction operations and in detention. Human Rights Watch's 2003 report documented multiple cases of gang rape by soldiers, as well as sexual assault used as a tool of intimidation to compel families to leave. Survivors reported that complaints to officers were ignored or met with further threats.
Extrajudicial killings: Several Lhotshampa men were killed during eviction operations or died in detention from injuries sustained during torture. The Bhutanese government has never acknowledged these deaths or conducted any investigation.
Destruction of property: Beyond the demolition of homes, army units destroyed Hindu temples, community buildings, and schools in southern Bhutan. The destruction of religious sites was particularly significant, as it signaled that the Lhotshampa's cultural and religious presence in the south was to be erased entirely.

Command Structure and Accountability

The eviction campaign was not the work of rogue units or individual soldiers acting without orders. It was a coordinated, centrally directed operation authorized at the highest levels of the Bhutanese state. The King served as supreme commander of the RBA. The Home Ministry, under the direction of the Royal Government, issued the administrative orders for the census reclassifications and the subsequent evictions. District administrators (dzongdags) worked in coordination with military commanders to identify and process Lhotshampa families for expulsion.³

No member of the Royal Bhutan Army or the Royal Bhutan Police has ever been investigated, charged, or held accountable for any of the abuses committed during the eviction campaign. Bhutan has no independent judiciary capable of holding the military to account, and the government has consistently denied that any abuses occurred, maintaining that all departures were voluntary.

Military Occupation of Southern Bhutan

After the bulk of the evictions were completed by 1993, the RBA maintained a permanent military presence in the southern districts. This occupation served multiple purposes: deterring any attempt by refugees to return, monitoring the remaining Lhotshampa population, and facilitating the redistribution of confiscated Lhotshampa land to settlers from northern Bhutan. Army camps were established on former Lhotshampa farmland. The military presence in the south continued for years after the evictions ended, effectively converting the southern districts into a security zone.⁴

International Response

Despite extensive documentation of the RBA's role in the evictions by international human rights organizations, no government or international body imposed sanctions, diplomatic consequences, or other penalties on Bhutan for the actions of its military. India, which had trained and equipped the RBA and through whose territory all refugees transited, maintained its policy of non-interference in Bhutan's internal affairs. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights passed resolutions expressing concern but took no enforcement action. Bhutan's image as a peaceful Buddhist kingdom pursuing "Gross National Happiness" largely insulated it from the kind of international pressure that might have been applied to a less strategically insignificant state.

Legacy

The role of the Royal Bhutan Army in the forced expulsion of the Lhotshampa remains one of the most significant and least acknowledged episodes of military-directed ethnic cleansing in South Asian history. The absence of any accountability mechanism — no truth commission, no tribunal, no reparations process — means that the crimes committed by the RBA between 1990 and 1993 remain entirely unaddressed. For the more than 100,000 Lhotshampa expelled from Bhutan, the army that was supposed to protect all Bhutanese citizens was instead the force that destroyed their lives.

References

Amnesty International. "Bhutan: Forcible Exile." ASA 14/04/94, August 1994. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa14/004/1994/en/
Human Rights Watch. "Trapped by Inequality: Bhutanese Refugee Women in Nepal." 2003. https://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/nepal0903/
WRITENET / Refworld. "The Exodus of Ethnic Nepalis from Southern Bhutan." 1995. https://www.refworld.org/reference/countryrep/writenet/1995/en/33123
Human Rights Watch. "Last Hope: The Need for Durable Solutions for Bhutanese Refugees in Nepal and India." 2007. https://www.hrw.org/report/2007/05/16/last-hope/need-durable-solutions-bhutanese-refugees-nepal-and-india