Hongtsho: In a remote corner of the Himalayas, a small Tibetan refugee community felt helpless as it watched protests erupt all over the world against Chinese rule in their homeland.
For in the tiny Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, ethnically, culturally and linguistically close to its giant northern neighbour Tibet, demonstrations are not allowed. Young Tibetans were even reluctant to give their names for fear of trouble.
"e want to demonstrate but we don't have the right to, and that is very bad for us," said a 24-year-old who gave her name as Tenzing. If we could, people would know that Tibet belongs to Tibetans.
Sixty years ago, Tibet and Bhutan were both reclusive feudal societies virtually shut to the outside world, under absolute rulers viewed as close to Buddha in most people's eyes.
But after Tibet was swallowed up by China, Bhutan befriended India and embarked on a gradual path of modernisation and opening up that culminated in last week's parliamentary elections, ending a century of royal rule and ushering in democracy.
Despite the advances, Bhutan remains a tightly controlled society where criticism of the elite, let alone protests, is almost unheard of.
Tibetan refugees were welcomed into Bhutan in the 1950s and given land by the king. In the small village of Hongtsho in central Bhutan, Tibetan families grow potatoes and have planted apple orchards, selling their produce by the roadside.
Tshering Jamtsho was just two years old when his parents carried him on their backs in a long and dangerous trek from Tibet to Bhutan in 1959,the same year Tibet s spiritual leader the Dalai Lama fled to India after a failed uprising.
Jamtsho said he will always be grateful for the safe haven he found here. "I was born in Tibet and brought up in Bhutan, he said in the shrine room of his house, butter lamps burning near photographs of the Dalai Lama and the kings of Bhutan. The countries are like my father and my mother."
