Bhutan cracks down on rebels ahead of first poll

By Biswajyoti Das

GUWAHATI, India (Reuters) - Bhutanese soldiers and police have launched a crackdown against ethnic Nepali rebels ahead of the tiny, isolated Himalayan nation's first parliamentary elections this month, officials said on Wednesday.

The Indian army has also put its forces on "maximum alert" along the 400-km border with Bhutan to prevent insurgents sneaking in to disrupt the polls, an army officer said, and both sides are coordinating intensified border patrols.

A senior Bhutanese police office said they had raided two small Maoist camps in the jungles in the south of the country and captured at least eight rebels with weapons.

But dissident groups complained of a climate of fear being generated among the ethnic Nepali minority in southern Bhutan. They said more than a dozen people had been arrested, and that five suspected Maoists were believed to have been killed.

"Security is very tight and people are not allowed to move and talk freely inside Bhutan," said S. B. Subba, head of the Human Rights Organisation of Bhutan (HUROB), a group believed to be sympathetic to the dissidents.

Tens of thousands of mainly Hindu ethnic Nepalis were expelled or fled mainly Buddhist Bhutan in the early 1990s after protesting for democracy and human rights and against discrimination.

More than 100,000 live in refugee camps in Nepal, from where three small rebel groups have emerged, the Bhutan Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist), the Bhutan Tiger Force and the United Revolutionary Front of Bhutan.

At least five bombs have been detonated inside Bhutan this year, including one in the capital Thimpu, but there have been few injuries and no deaths.