April 16, 2009: Human rights leader Tek Nath Rizal has appealed the SAARC member countries to take up the issue of exiled Bhutanese during the upcoming SAARC summit in Thimphu.

Bhutan will host the 16th summit in Thimphu on April 28-29 for the first time since the inception of this regional organization some two and half decades ago.

Rizal, in his letter has brief the heads of state or governments attending the summit of the issues of unresolved human rights violation and eviction of over one-fifth of national population since 1990.

He further said, “Much to our chagrin, big powers, without looking at the ground reality, have indorsed this election. Keeping one third of the country’s population out and in exile, with a further eighty thousand people in side the country barred from implementing their basic voting rights, the apparatchiks of Druk regime branding the said election a democratic one is nothing but a bunkum and political flippancy.”

The letter has also been sent to observers of the summit — People’s Republic of China, Japan, Korea, United States of America, Islamic Republic of Iran, Mauritius, Australia, Myanmar and the European Union.

Read his complete letter here