The Dragon's Voice

by Bunty Avieson

  Having thrown in a secure career in the civil service to pursue his real passion, journalism, he undertook a one-month course in India and then joined Bhutan Observer as deputy editor. When the editor-in-chief, who was known to like his whisky, didn’t appear for weeks, Needrup became acting editor-in-chief. It was a meteoric rise after just three months. The three section editors have more experience but lack the commitment, and none of them seem to resent him being catapulted over their heads. Ambition and competitiveness are not valued in this culture. In fact, such traits can be signs of being possessed by a scary spirit, the gson’dre. No-one wants that.

  Needrup shares the sensibilities of Phuntsho and Tenzin, and wants to produce a quality newspaper that is socially responsible. He is highly principled: I’ve watched him stand firm against important people who have found their way to his door, seeking favours or requesting that unflattering stories be pulled.

  One morning Needrup hears from his family in their village that there is an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease among farms in the east. Cows are dying, and their butter and milk, contaminated with the virus, cannot be sold. He assigns a reporter to investigate the story. A discussion ensues about different ways of dealing with foot-and-mouth, and Needrup recalls an outbreak from when he was a child.

  ‘We had 28 cows. My father killed two pigs, mixed the pork with maize flour and fed the whole pig carcass to the cows. They were cured. The trick is to give them the whole pig.’

  I’m reminded that the people in this room are just one step from the land. When they talk about home, they’re not referring to their Thimphu residences but the small remote villages where their parents and grandparents live. Here, they are in the bustling capital, part of this exciting, dynamic world of media, government and change. The difference between their lives and their parents’ in such a short time is startling.

  Needrup gives a lot of thought each week to his editorial column. It appears on page two, above the political cartoon. Both are fearless. I often don’t get the joke of the cartoon, but once it’s explained to me I’m always impressed. The cartoonist, Chimi Namgyal, is a mild-mannered, talented young man who skewers the government nearly every week.

  People in power take notice of page two. Ministers complain that Needrup, like the rest of the media, is always negative. Why do they have to focus on our shortcomings instead of our successes? they complain, echoing government ministers all over the world.

  One week, after another minister bars a reporter from a public meeting, Needrup locks himself in his office for a couple of hours to write his editorial. He goes in frowning but comes out smiling.

  The braying donkeys and barn managers

  This is the story of undernourished donkeys plodding under a heavy burden. They feed on a carefully rationed measly diet. The diet comes from a huge barn known among the donkey fraternity as barno because the donkeys are barred from or have no access to it. The system of managing the barno is known as barnocracy and the people who man the system are called barnocrats. The barno contains all kinds of grains. While some are to be consumed only by barnocrats, others are preserved indefinitely for future consumption. Other grains are considered too good to be donkey food. Yet, the donkeys plod on.

  The donkeys are responsible for sounding the alarm at any possible sign of mishap or danger in the barnocracy and beyond. So they instinctively bray. But the harsh braying displeases many. Horses want the donkeys to neigh in their cadence while birds want them to sing to their tune. Barnocrats want the donkeys to eulogise the rich façade and unknown content of the barno, not bray out the truth of its dark underbelly … Barnocrats must understand how the donkeys plod. They should realise that, if the donkeys bray, it is in their nature and duty to bray. The donkeys wish that the barnocracy would recognise some fundamental principles of democracy.

  The editorial is also posted on the Bhutan Observer website. A reader comments that it is marvellous and dubs Needrup the ‘George Orwell of Bhutan’.

  4

  Night-hunting

  The colour photograph on the Bhutan Times front page should be appealing. A tiny, perfectly formed baby is curled as if asleep, his little fingers just touching his mouth. He has big ears, a snub nose and patches of dark hair.

  But looking at the image is like being slapped in the face. It gives you a jarring shock. The baby is dead, a seven-month-old bloody foetus wrapped in a plastic bag and found in a ditch. The accompanying story tells of a 14-year-old Indian maid who hadn’t known she was pregnant and reacted to the birth with shock, throwing her baby from a third-storey window.

  I know attitudes to death differ in the East and the West. Buddhist practitioners can spend many healthy years preparing for the moment of their death. Funeral ceremonies go on for 49 days. And in a developing country, death happens earlier and often with little privacy or dignity. Back home we are more circumspect, even squeamish, about death; we rarely publish photographs of dead bodies, much less bloody babies.

  I feel nauseated and dispirited as I join that day’s morning news conference, and I’m not alone. The editors and reporters of Bhutan Observer are outraged by the Bhutan Times front page. It is sensationalist, says one. Typical of that newspaper, adds another. People don’t want to see that, says Needrup.

  The revulsion of the staff is echoed throughout the week in offices, shops and private homes. It becomes the talk of Thimphu. I see a prominent businessman turn the newspaper over in disgust. Another tells me he hid the newspaper from his wife at breakfast, not wanting to upset her.

  The youth and inexperience of the editors at Bhutan Times is painfully public. They thought the graphic photo would reinforce to readers the tragedy of the baby’s death. They had good intentions, but they misjudged public sensitivities.

  And they are made to pay for it.

  Bhutan InfoComm and Media Authority (BICMA), which regulates the media, notes the groundswell of outrage. It fines Bhutan Times Nu.18,000 (about A$495) and sends a tough letter demanding editorial justification for publishing the picture, warning that repeated offences could lead to the cancellation of their newspaper licence. Eleven days after the photo appears, in an act of public contrition, Bhutan Times publishes a mea culpa, as well as a letter from one of its readers that seems to reflect the mood of Thimphu.

  Sir,

  The picture of the poor unfortunate baby your paper printed sent a chill through my system and left an indelible image of horror not just in my heart but also in my seven-year-old daughter’s. It was an extremely crass and insensitive action that disrespected the baby and mother. What purpose did it serve? Such actions might be common elsewhere but not in Bhutan, where we pride ourselves on being a compassionate people of a Buddhist country.

  Is it just a matter of time before we have photographers greedily taking pictures of corpses just in case it might come in handy for the related article? Are we to expect more such grotesque graphic portrayals as an expression of journalistic freedom? I urge you to practise journalism along the path guided by a moral compass and ethics. Journalism with a heart, please!

  Sonam Choden, Motithang

  I mention the photo to Kay Kirby Dorji, one of a handful of foreign women who married Bhutanese men and have brought up families in Thimphu. She was a journalist for 25 years on the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and Seattle Times, and first came to Bhutan on a trek in 1986. She ended up marrying the trek leader and is now a full-time resident. Kay is excited about the nascent newspaper industry, though it often makes her shake her head in dismay.

  ‘I would say that Bhutan Times, while I love that they try to shake things up, usually they make my blood pressure rise … [by doing] so many things that I would consider to be issues of journalistic ethics, inappropriate or sloppy reporting,’ she says.

  ‘First of all, we do have a dearth of journalists and the ones we do have tend to be men. It is a very testosterone-driven ne
ws coverage and they are young men, not men who are necessarily mature yet.’ She adds, ‘I realise they are learning, but at the same time, just being an adult human being, much less a journalist, you should know better.’

  Bhutan Times stirs things up again a few weeks later with a front page calling for the Bhutanese tradition of ‘night-hunting’ to be included in the Rape Act of 1996. Under the heading ‘Watch out night-hunters’ it writes: ‘Night-hunting, the practice of men secretly visiting houses of women at night for sex, may become a legal offence, if a recommendation by the National Commission of Women and Children becomes law.’

  I read the story over breakfast. It’s not the first time I’ve heard of night-hunting, but it is the first time I’ve seen it linked to rape. By the time our news conference comes around at 11 am, all the reporters and editors have read the story, and they are not happy.

  ‘Typical of city people to misunderstand this innocent rural pastime,’ declares Needrup.

  In his family village near Mongar, four days’ travel to the east, night-hunting is the way young people choose a romantic partner. It’s tradition, he says. It has been done that way for centuries. In Needrup’s view, village girl meets village boy, perhaps during the celebrations of a tshechu or while helping to harvest neighbours’ crops. They like each other and arrange a midnight visit. Needrup recalls walking for two hours on one occasion to call on a girl, only to find his best friend’s shoes outside her window. On another occasion he found a friend stuck halfway up a wall.

  For Bhutan Times to criticise this rural tradition and portray it as rape is, in his mind, unconscionable.

  The reporters on Bhutan Observer agree with him, vehemently. Again, one of them says it’s typical of Bhutan Times to be sensationalist. Another tells me that if it wasn’t for night-hunting, she and her brothers wouldn’t be here – it is how her parents met after noticing each other across the fields while they worked. There was no opportunity for ‘dating’, so the young man asked if he could visit, the young woman agreed, and that was how they conducted their courtship.

  A third reporter explains to me that growing up in a rural area affords little opportunity for privacy. There’s no local bar or cinema to visit. Often it is bitterly cold, so even a stroll by the river is out. Chores mean no time off during the day, and without electricity everyone retires together early, ready for another hard day in the fields.

  On top of that many poor rural families share one-room huts, sleeping side by side across the floor, perhaps with the parents in one corner behind a curtain. For a young woman to allow a male caller to visit at night would mean the parents would have to know and approve, even while pretending not to know.

  I imagine what this must be like in practice. It seems awfully public, your whole family supposedly sleeping nearby. I try not to look shocked but clearly I don’t succeed: the reporter laughs at the expression on my face. It’s how they do it in remote villages, she says.

  On the other hand, a male reporter tells of being chased by a father across the wheat fields when he was discovered climbing in a window. Clearly that father wasn’t turning a blind eye to anything.

  Later I ask Phuntsho what she thinks of night-hunting. She says that’s how her parents started their life together and they went on to have nine children. They are still very happy.

  Needrup believes Bhutan Times has done rural people a disservice and it is up to Bhutan Observer to bring some balance to the discussion. His next editorial, two days later, is a fiery response:

  Things need to be put in perspective once again. We have people, who have little or no rural perspective and experience, indiscriminately painting night-hunting in a negative light. Night-hunting is an integral part of Bhutanese culture in some parts of the country. For generations of young Bhutanese in the eastern villages, it has been their primary means of courtship … it is the rural equivalent of urban dates, discotheques and parties.

  The issue of night-hunting touches a chord. Five days later Kuensel joins the debate with a dramatic story and picture splashed across their front page under the headline: ‘The dark side of night hunting’. Their in-house artist has drawn a man climbing a ladder, his grey gho hitched to reveal lurid orange undershorts.

  Kuensel’s version of night-hunting is terrifying. It recounts the story of a 27-year-old schoolteacher posted to a remote school who was being terrorised by local men at night rattling her front door and trying to climb in her window. The article tells of other young women being accosted by strangers while they slept. ‘Girls sound asleep after a day’s farm labour had hardly any time to protest before it was too late. The stranger would have crept through the open attic or forced open the poorly shut door or window with a knife to squirm in. The entire business was forced entry they said. Some became pregnant as a result.’

  The Kuensel story adds fuel to the debate and becomes the talk of the next news conference. Needrup and the reporters are annoyed. Night-hunting is entirely different from Kuensel’s depiction. It is consensual. They say Kinley Dorji, the editor-in-chief of Kuensel and Bhutan’s most celebrated journalist, should know better. From the level of heated discussion, it is obvious that they feel protective of this rural tradition. I start to feel conflicted. Is Kuensel’s story accurate and are the Bhutan Observer staff in denial? Are rural women being harassed, attacked and demeaned?

  Needrup locks himself in his office for a few hours and writes another impassioned defence:

  Defining night-hunting

  Night-hunting is not related to rape or teenage pregnancy or fatherless children or divorce or drug abuse in any way whatsoever! If a man went to a woman in the night and sexually assaulted her, it is not night-hunting. It is rape. If a gang of men tried to break a window or door of a house in the night, it is not night-hunting. It is vandalism or break-in. If a bunch of men milled about somebody’s house in the night shouting, it is not night-hunting. It is hooliganism. If a group of men lingered around a woman’s house calling her name in the night, it is not night-hunting. It is verbal harassment. If a man touched or pulled or shoved a woman in a sexually threatening way in the night, it is not night-hunting. It is sexual molestation. If a man slept with a minor in the night, it is not night-hunting. It is child rape. If there are fatherless children or husbandless women, it is not night-hunting. It is split-up or divorce. But, if a man visits a woman in the night without committing any of the above crimes, it is none of the above crimes. It is night-hunting, the culture. Period. In the practice of night-hunting, if a man impregnates a woman or a woman conceives, it is not a crime. It is biology.

  The discussion continues in the letters pages of all the newspapers. I don’t know what the Fourth King’s attitude is to night-hunting, but I imagine that, like the rest of Thimphu, he is following the public discussion. The evolving newspaper industry is doing what he intended – presenting a variety of perspectives about a Bhutanese issue, which people are talking about in homes and offices and market stalls across Thimphu.

  We are invited to dinner with a Bhutanese couple whom Mal has known for years, and one of the other guests is Kunzang Choden, a feisty woman in her fifties. She was born in Bhutan, educated at a university in India and married a Swiss husband. She is Bhutan’s first international novelist and part of Bhutan Observer’s advisory board, helping them stay on the ethical straight and narrow.

  She brings a different perspective, blaming the divisive debate on the term ‘night-hunting’. She says it is not a Bhutanese term translated into English but an English term coined by a Japanese man. It carries connotations that the traditional courtship ritual does not, and she says she cringes every time she hears a Bhutanese person use the term.

  ‘That’s not what we called it. It’s more like roaming or visiting. It is not top down. We would never have stood for that,’ she says emphatically. ‘A better translation would be “night-visiting”. The tradition was that the boy knocked. The
girl could open the door and let him in, or open the door and throw hot ash over him. It was always her choice.’

  Kunzang is an opinionated and dynamic woman, and has appeared at writers’ festivals all over the world to talk about her novel The Circle of Karma, which deals with the restrictive role of her gender. Kunzang is a feminist at heart and in practice. If she sees night-hunting, or night-visiting, as perfectly acceptable then I’m inclined to see it her way.

  The debate about night-hunting reveals a fault line within the community and across the different newsrooms. Bhutan Observer’s attitude is that Bhutan Times and Kuensel represent the sophisticated city slickers of Thimphu. They have lost touch with the villages, where the real Bhutanese live, and are ignoring the traditional values of the farmer. In the Bhutanese context, to claim you better understand the rural character is to take the moral high ground. The more Bhutanese something is, the better. The less Bhutanese, the more likely it is to be morally suspect.

  In this country there are few discernible political shades of left or right, conservative or progressive, or religious differences. No culture wars or history wars. Economic decisions on infrastructure and creating new institutions, such as a High Court, are set out in a series of five-year plans written in consultation with India, which funds the projects.

  One place where the newspapers do have a clear ideological difference is in their attitudes to modernisation and rural life. It is why Bhutan Times runs a couple of international stories taken from the internet but Bhutan Observer does not.

  Bhutan Observer is the best newspaper for rural features and daily life in more remote communities. This is both its strength and its weakness. Bhutan Observer is seen to be ‘more Bhutanese’ and therefore more credible, with a moral core. But Bhutan Times breaks more stories, which attracts people’s attention, and also appeals to younger readers with its stories reprinted from the internet. Phuntsho believes the media has an important role in preserving Bhutanese traditions. This extends to farmers and villages, which she sees as the backbone of Bhutanese cultural life. She does not want democracy and an independent media to diminish their status.