The death penalty in Bhutan was abolished on March 20, 2004 and prohibited by the 2008 Constitution. [1] The prohibition of the death penalty is one of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitution, and applies to all people in the kingdom.
History
After the reforms, the first king of Bhutan Ugyen Wangchuk at the beginning of the 20th century, the death penalty was applied only to murderers hiding from the scene, and to people who forged government documents [2] . In 1992, the National Security Law was passed, according to which the death penalty was applied to persons guilty of treason or clearly “assisting and supporting the enemies” of the kingdom’s government [3] .
On April 5, 1964, Prime Minister Jigme Palden Dorji was assassinated in a dispute between rival political factions. The uncle of the king and the commander in chief of the Royal Bhutanese army Namgyal Bahadur was executed for taking part in an attempted coup d'état [4] [5] .
Notes
- ↑ Constitution of Bhutan. Chapter 7, § 18 (rus.)
- ↑ John Claude White. Sikhim & Bhutan: Twenty-one Years on the North-east Frontier, 1887-1908 . - New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909. - P. 301–310. - 331 p.
- ↑ National Security Act of Bhutan 1992 (English) (inaccessible link) . Government of Bhutan (2 November 1992). The appeal date is April 22, 2014. Archived on May 12, 2014.
- ↑ Bhutan profile (English) . BBC News online (5 May 2010). The appeal date is April 22, 2014.
- ↑ Robert L. Worden; Andrea Matles Savada. Modernization under Jigme Dorji, 1952-72 (English) . Federal Research Division, United States Library of Congress (1991). The appeal date is April 22, 2014.