Blame Not Your Country. It’s the Committees

I was chatting with a friend who was reprimanded for writing stuff on Twitter, which, according to a 'disciplinary committee', violated the civil service code of conduct. He said the committee has decided to withhold his promotion for a year as an administrative action. 

He said he didn't write anything so out of the ordinary to be punished. He said they scrolled up and down his Twitter feed to see if he had really written anything so wrong to violate the civil service code of conduct. 

I told him to appeal to the committee and ask them to prove their charges because the official letter states he can appeal within 10 working days.

"I don't think that will work. I might land up making it worse. I will rather resign and go to Australia." He said. 

"If that has pushed you to the brink of resignation, then what's the problem in appealing and facing the committee? What could possibly go wrong? Even if things don't work out, you could still resign." I said.

"Awooo, laakha du mena Bhutan na." He said, which shocked me. His statement paints a different picture of Bhutan. It sounds as if it's dangerous to speak up in Bhutan. 

So, I told him, "Man, don't bash your country for the action of the so called committee that is made up of a bunch of pleasers who think they are doing their job with utmost dedication. Your country didn't fail you; the committee failed you. You are not fighting against your country; you are fighting against the committee. Please know the difference and separate the two."

It was easy for me to say this, but for him, holding that letter in his hand, the fear was real. God knows what sort of big words and names they must have dropped when handing the letter to him. Here is my personal request to all those committees, please don't let ordinary citizens bash their country for your actions. You have to own it up. You can't use names and acts and clauses to threaten people and make them shit bricks. You are doing big disfavour to this country. These committees are whittling away at Bhutan's unique democratic culture that the successive kings have painstakingly built over the last decades. 

The best ways around to help civil servants avoid violating clause 3.3.16.2, Chapter 3 of BCSR 2018 are;

1. Conduct social media literacy to help them use the platforms productively. 
2. Create open internal platforms for dialogues with the assurance that they won't be reprimanded.

Otherwise, it will only breed hostile anonymous communities that will go beyond attacking policies into defaming individuals, family members and even their beloved country. That's worse than violating the civil service code of conduct.  

Revenge on an Anonymous Attacker on Facebook

“Tobgay, did you see what’s written about you on Bhutanese Forum?” Tobgay's phone kept ringing every now and then. He put it off. 

Khandruma, an anonymous Facebook account has posted seven paragraphs long fictitious story about Tobgay out of nowhere. He would have just laughed about it if it hadn't involved his wife and daughter.

 

Pic Source: Forbes

His sister had driven from Phuntsholing and brother from Paro. His mother-in-law had arrived quickly to check on her daughter who had been shattered. Close relatives were walking in one after another as if someone had died in the house. The energy in the room was intense, heavily loaded with rage. Everyone seemed to want to find out who Khandruma was. They were ready for blood.  

 

The vicious post that was shared in a group called Bhutanese Forum was being read by thousands and shared by a few hundreds of jobless people who had nothing to do with it. If it was an important message that required to be shared, people won’t be so keen. Did they know they were helping the attacker destroy the family?

 

Of course, in their minds, Tobgay deserved to be punished and by sharing the post and putting up nasty comments, they were only doing their moral duty of punishing the wrong. One article, not even written well, was enough to let people think ill of him and write awful comments against him and his family. Only a few people have expressed sympathy for him. There was hardly any friend who defended him. 

 

In the post, Tobgay was accused of misusing his duty car for his family. He was alleged of being promoted unfairly because he was related to the secretary. He was accused of sexually harassing three female colleagues. So far he took it with a smile, but what caused him to lose it all was the attack on his wife and daughter that followed. His wife was accused of sleeping around with her colleagues and ex-boyfriends. "May the little one not turn out to be like her mother." 

 

He wanted revenge. But whom to take the revenge on? The enemy had no identity, there was no way he could find who wrote it. He could not think of anyone who would do that to him. In fact, at the moment he was angry with everyone; his colleagues, his friends, and even the random people who liked the post or people who have shared it. Everyone seemed guilty in his eyes. His wife made a long list of people who had liked, commented or shared the post. She had made up her mind that should she ever meet them in person she was going to spite on their faces. 

 

For someone to call her a hoe and accused her of bearing a child from another man, she thought that someone must be the worst enemy anyone could have. She could hardly think of anyone, living or dead, who could hate her so much. With nowhere to outpour her rage, she locked herself in her bathroom and looked for any medication that could put her to sleep and help her forget everything.  

 

The Police registered the case but there was nothing much they could do. All they could legally do was to create a list of suspects and question them, but Tobgay didn't want to do that. He didn't want innocent people to be questioned by the police. It was frustrating that the police of a country did not have the power to ask Facebook to reveal an anonymous user or remove a post. The group admins were all anonymous people and police have no grip on them as well. Any hope of legal action, justice or revenge was dead when Tobgay realized that Police could only do so much unless he could name the suspect with substantive evidence. 

 

The officer in charge of the police said in confidence, "Tobgay, we don't have the technical knowhow to find out the suspect but there are companies overseas specialized in this field. I can share one address to help you. They are expensive but they deliver."

 

"I just want to find the damn person, for that, I will take a loan or leave my job and use up the provident fund and gratuity. I can only sleep peacefully after I hear that person justify his action."

 

"When you get the name, just call me. So sorry for now." Said the officer, handing him an email address.

______

 

In a few days, the company wrote back. They were definite about their ability to trace the person. They have asked for the profile link of the anonymous user and the hate post along with an advance payment to enable them to initiate the process. The agreement had to be signed wherein the client agree to non-disclosure of the company should the matter go to the court. The client had to make the full payment to receive the report within a week with significant evidence of who wrote the post. 

 

Tobgay didn't think twice before wiring $ 5000 advance payment and anxiously waited for the report. No one in the family objected to his decision. They agreed to chip in to help him pay the company. They wanted revenge as much. They wanted the person to pay for every ounce of pain the family suffered. They wanted the person to swallow every word. They wanted the person to be tied to a pole in public and confess. But why did the person want to harm Tobgay so much? Tobgay couldn't wait to discover the person. 

 

The couple hadn't gone to office since the day the post surfaced. They didn't want to face people. They could not trust anyone now. They have seen how people they knew were engaging with the post, sharing it as if to rub salt on their injuries. They somehow felt like everyone was gossiping about them. They logged out of their Facebook accounts to find a moment of peace. 

 

By the third day, the newer controversies had taken over Bhutanese social media scene, and the hate post against Tobgay and family has faded in the background. It was just within two days that the post accumulated over 2200 likes, 340 comments and 210 shares. His wife recorded every bit of these data manually into a notebook. Some of these people who had liked the post and wrote the comments might not have meant it seriously but on this side, the family had taken it badly. Every single thumbs up on the post felt like a jab. 

 

Tobgay received the much-awaited mail from the overseas company on the sixth day. He was shivering as he opened the mail, unable to control his excitement and rage. He had been waiting to outpour his anger on someone and the name of that someone was about to be revealed. As the mailed opened he saw a 20 MB PDF attachment file. The email read, “Thank you for entrusting us to help you. We are pleased to submit the full report containing 243 pages. Please download the file and keep it safe. This email will be self-destructed within 24 hours from the time you open it. All the best.”

 

Tobgay had only asked for the name of a person whose face he wanted to smash but he was presented with 243 pages. What could all these pages contain? He opened the attachment and saw that he was given the entire digital biography of the attacker. He sat on the dining table alone and started reading the thrilling report. 

The table of contents was enough to tell him how savage the report was in capturing the entire digital footprint of the attacker. Before he could establish the identity of the attacker who had been hiding behind a pseudonym, Khandruma, he was presented with all the other four fake accounts the attacker has created from his laptop. The dates, times, locations and names, everything was recorded precisely. 

 

It was a shock for him to discover that the sworn hater was the chief finance officer, Jamtsho, in his own office, with whom Tobgay has no problems at all, not even a little disliking. Could it be a mistake? It seemed unlikely until he saw the few deleted messages he had sent to his friends that established the intention. He had applied for the post of a director, where even Tobgay had applied. In those messages, he has bitterly expressed how Tobgay could easily land the job unless something unfortunate happened to him. 

 

Tobgay had no idea that his colleague who hardly spoke anything was a candidate for the same job he applied to, and he could hardly establish any reasonable connection between the job and the attack. It took him a while to understand that the intent was to reduce his chances in the interview by establishing him as a dishonest person. Tobgay could hardly imagine how a desperate person could plot to destroy a person's reputation and his family for the sake of a job interview. 

 

He picked his phone and dialled Jamtsho's number. But he stopped right away. He was on the third page and there was so much to read before he could call. He checked on his wife, who went to bed after taking a highly sedative medication the doctor prescribed for her after she reported to have been sleepless for three-night straight. Now she was sleeping like a baby. Their daughter was fast asleep by her mother.

 

He spent the next three hours reading the report and making notes from it. By the end of his reading, Tobgay found the amount of stalking Jamtsho has done on him and his family creepy; the search history on Jamtsho's laptop and in his phone revealed a scary state of his mind. He was obsessed with the job. 

 

Flipping through his notes several times, Tobgay gave up on his idea to confront Jamtsho and do all those things that he and his family had wanted to do if they found the person. Tobgay carefully made a list of people and made a folder each in their names. In each folder, he put the screenshots of the messages and posts he took from the report. There was a total of 8 folders. 

The first one was named as Pelmo, Jamtsho's wife. The folder contains all the messages he had exchanged with at least five women. These private and intimate messages of his affairs were cleverly deleted on Facebook messenger but the report has captured it under the chapter "Important messages Recovered". Tobgay looked at the dozens of pages of really personal and secret stuff in surprise, knowing how they were once deleted. All these messages would be sent to his wife, Pelmo.

 

The next folder was named 'Secretary' in which screenshots of emails and messages he had exchanged with suppliers are put. The mails and messages gave chilling details of how he was indulged in favouring certain business and what he took from them. He didn't even spare the fuel pump managers with whom he made deals to steal from the fuel books. The folder explained how he had built a three-star hotel in his wife's name in Paro.

 

The rest of the folders were named after individual persons against whom he had written defaming posts on Facebook from several different accounts. There are many posts that were nasty but these six persons were respected people in the society and he had tried to defame them in the worst possible language using all sort of fake and vulgar details like he did with his wife and daughter. Some of the posts were made several years ago and perhaps the victims may have forgotten the pain, but some are as recent as few months old and Tobgay could imagine the pain inside of those persons and their family members. He was going to write to them anonymously and handover the folders to help them to have their revenge. After reading these posts, Tobgay was convinced that there was something wrong with Jamtsho to have done the same with so many people.

 

Tobgay is no more interested in confronting Jamtsho. He was going to watch the 8 folders do their job. And if at the end of it, if he still can't forgive enough then he will make the entire 243 pages of Jamtsho's digital biography public on the Bhutanese Forum, the same platform where he has caused pain to so many people. 

The report also contains details on the identity of the forum's admins and the nasty posts they have written. In fact, Tobgay knew that the day he made the report public, so many anonymous heroes on the Bhutanese forum, including some of the admins, would go into hiding.

-This short story is inspired by true events from different times and places. 

Bloggers Conference in Paro

The Second Bloggers Conference held in Paro College on 25^th October 2015 was a huge milestone for the Community of Bhutanese Bloggers. We were able to bring the event to a magnificent campus, get a notable sponsor and draw a decent crowd.

Venue: Paro College of Education

Sponsor: National Airlines Drukair

Supporters: iBest Institute and Bank of Bhutan

Speakers: Karma Choden, Dorji Wangchuk, Nima Dorji and me

Format: 15 minutes speech with presentation followed by 10 minutes Q&A for each speaker

 

Attendance 

The event took a special place in my heart because it happened in Paro, my home ground for the first time. Every other event, formal and casual, related to bloggers had happened away from me in the past and I had to travel the longest. This time everyone travelled except me. We had bloggers attending from Wangdue, Trongsa, Tsirang and of course mostly from Thimphu.

I was given to talk on Social Media. I got excited because it was something I use each day more than the restroom. It was my cup of tea but when I sat down to write my 15 minutes speech I realized my cup of tea had no bottom. It was like the black hole and still growing.  

Then I decided to confess my ignorance about the depth of the subject and talk about how an ordinary person could use it each day to enrich our lives and things around us.

But I didn’t surrender easily because even the unknown could be defined as unknown, so I gave a brief background on the ever growing power of social media.

“A few years ago, only privileged individuals on TV and Radio could talk to thousands of people at a time, and people who wrote in newspapers were read by thousands, as a teacher I had the privilege of speaking to an assembly of over 700 students once every two month when I was the teacher on duty (TOD) but other than that our usual conversations were between two persons or a small group.
 Today, in the age of Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and of course blogging each one of us is as privileged as a newspaper journalist or a TV anchor. Any minute we can take out our phone and write something that will be read anywhere in the world by the time we get out of this hall.
 There is a new dimension to social media that wasn’t there in mainstream media, which is the ability for your audience to respond to you and share your content among their friends. This new dimension works like nuclear power, thus making it the most powerful form of media.
 Social Media gives ordinary persons like you and me the means to influence the world from our toilet seat using a mobile device that can be held in one hand and operated with a thumb. Social Media has given each one of us the power that we don’t fully understand yet. This world will be a great place if this power was given selectively to all the good people but the bad news is it is given to everybody. “

I categorized people on earth into four groups, because as is on social media we are no more divided by geographical boundaries:

1. The Users, people who use social media as tools to do good
2. The Abusers, people who abuse social media as weapons to cause harm
3. The Clueless, People who don’t know what they are doing on social media and therefore become the victim.
4. The offliners, People who are not on social media.

I then described myself as a user who has thus far made the best out of social media. I told stories of my blog, my Groups and Pages on Facebook that are geared toward enriching our social lives and spreading positive energy and I fondly talked about Bhutan Toilet Organization that began on Facebook.

The speaker before me, Ms. Karma Choden spoke about Leadership of Self, the foundation of which was the words of his majesty the king;

“What we need is not a Leader to lead the Masses – we need Leadership of the Self.”

“How does Leadership of the Self – being better human beings – translate to a better world? “

“No one should be left behind. This we must achieve without waiting for some great leader or genius who may or may not ever emerge – we should instead seek to do so, each of us, on our own.”

And when I spoke of social media as power in our hands I could easily relate the leadership of self as the guiding principle each time we deicide to hit the post button.

The third speaker Mr. Nima Dorji, a lawyer and blogger, spoke on the thin line that exist between the Right to Reputation and Right to Freedom of Speech -that is the law on defamation. This topic was something everyone on social media must know at this time and age, because we really must know how far to push our freedom of speech into other’s right to reputation.

The final presenter Mr. Dorji Wangchuk, a senior journalist, blogger, professor and activist, talked about his model of journalism—The Middle Path Journalism. He boldly declared that our media is directionless at the moment. The journalist trained in different parts of the world imported the models and therefore even in one media house we could see various forms of voices. He took us down the historical journey of development of media in different parts of the world including Bhutan and shared with us how media in each region were shaped by history; by colonialism, civil war, the world wars, the cold war, the industrial revolution, etc. He then asked which country’s model would work for Bhutan, the country with entirely different history and values. Following is what he shared about varying values and I think this is a food for thought for the media fraternity, and for the blogger community.

Ê Western Values = rights, justice, equality, liberty, freedom

Ê Western Civilization = Individual

Ê Eastern Civilization = collective

Ê Bhutanese Values = tha damtsi (Commitments), tsam tsay (Contentment), maang and Za Saang (Community/Family), Nyinzhay (Compassion/Empathy), Lay Jumdray (Cause/Effect)   

Hon’ble Sangay Khandu, MP in National Council from Gasa moderated the conference and he was someone who could add value to every talk. More than anything I hold the highest regard for the man for being there in every little event, no matter how far, and spent his valuable time with us, and at times even paying for our lunch (lol).

At Drugyel Dzong!

To make the event even more memorable we headed to Drukgyel Dzong in the afternoon and spend quality time talking about life and history, until it became so cold and dark. Except for a few Paro College students and me the rest of them had to travel back to Thimphu and as we parted we decided that between this and the next conference in 2016 we should have an Annual Dinner in Thimphu. All the members of CBB are invited. It shall be after December 17.

At Drugyel Dzong, with our invention- The lamp!

Sanja Dema's Husband

The context of this post is the communal joke that was widely circulated on the badly abused social media platform WeChat. Yes WeChat has been already used as the Launchpad for three worst things to happen in Bhutanese social media; leaking private movie clips, spreading hoax, and sharing communal joke. All resulted in social disharmony that is very new to Bhutan.

Well, the joke was a voice recording of two men allegedly from Haa talking about a woman named Sanja Dem who married a guy from eastern Bhutan. Their conversation roughly translates to,

“Sanja Dem is married!”

“Really, who is the man?”

“He is a Sharchop.”

“O’ then he will steal nyah.”

I am from Haa and I know the men whose voice were recorded weren’t from Haa, as is evident from the fake accent they used. They were making fun of our language. Worse still, they impersonated us to insult Sharchops by calling them thieves. With all my sense of humor I am trying to laugh at the joke but somehow the intention in this joke seems seriously wrong.

I heard the joke before and back then Sanja Dem’s husband wasn’t a sharchop, he was a gatey (ex-monk) but the character in the joke was suddenly changed to a shashop to supposedly do maximum damage. This seemingly dry joke could lead to social disharmony and therefore such communal jokes of disastrous potential should be stopped right away.

We must appreciate our unity as harmonious little society. Many countries suffered because of communal division leading to mistrust among people, igniting riots and starting civil wars. We need not learn the lesson in a hard way; history is a good teacher. We should not take our harmony for granted just because we didn't earn it ourselves. It's the greatest gift of the Wangchuck dynasty that we must honour.

“Such clips are communal in nature and much more severe than the circulation of pornographic materials, We can book them under the National Security Act as its highly objectionable.” - Police Chief, Brigadier Kipchu Namgyal, in Kuensel 

Earthquake Hoax

མིང་ངན་གྱིས་ཡུལ་དཀྲོགས།། བྱ་ངན་གྱིས་གདངས་དཀྲོགས།།

My mother and I were in constant conversation over the phone debating on the hoaxed earthquake. She heard that it was going to be bigger than the Nepal earthquake and since our house was in bad shape from the last earthquake she has decided to abandon it and sleep in the kitchen garden instead. She saw the people in neighbouring villages pitching tents in their fields. The hoax has created such mass panic in rural areas. 

I told my mother that if His Holiness the Je Khenpo really had a vision of such a natural calamity befalling his people, more than anybody, his compassionate self would inform the nation and not some fool on WeChat.
I asked her, "Would the government leave us in the dark instead of evacuating us to safety?"
"Would I let you stay in that unsafe house all by yourself?" 
"How could you believe some random people and not me?" 
It was hard but I could convince her like I have done several times in the past. This wasn't the first wave of fear that swept across my village

The magnitude of fear and panic the hoax has created among our rural population is beyond forgivable limit. It has gone deep into the simple lives of people and disturb their peace. What do people get from doing this? Who are they? It cannot be one person but a chain of ignorant people who believed in it themselves and then shared their fear. It is a very serious offence and I hope theses people will be traced and punished. 

And more than anything we need to find a permanent solution to this repetitive problem of mass panic created by hoax, because if a salt shortage hoax could cause market to inflate salt price and people to hoard salt then anything is possible. 

The mobile app WeChat, which took internet access to rural population has now become a platform for newer evils, from sharing porn to racial jokes to hoax. With its ease of use and reach new hoaxes can do massive damage. What will be the next bad thing people will do on this platform? 

Being Responsible and Smart on Social Media

This is the transcript of the talk I gave to students in Yoezerling Higher Secondary School, Paro on May 30, 2015. The content of the speech is partially edited to suit the general readers on my blog but may still be relevant to just Bhutanese audience.

Good Morning. Respected Principal, teachers and dear students, thank you very much for being here this morning to listen to us. I would like to thank Media Club coordinator Madam Gyem Om for inviting us and considering us worth listening to.

My Name is Passang Tshering. I am a teacher at the Royal Academy.

I would like to take this opportunity to talk to this young group of people about something that’s handed to your generation as the greatest opportunity-The Social Media. But it’s opportunity only as long as you can handle it wisely.

Let me first define Social Media for you. There can be many difficult definitions but if I may put it in the simplest form. What’s media or Medium? It’s the means of mass communication. Think of TV, Radio and Newspaper. These are Medium of reaching out to mass. They are formal institutions run by trained people and governed by rules and regulations.

Now imagine each one of us having a newspaper of our own to write about everything we do, everything thing we like, and about people love. Imagine your own TV Channel to broadcast your family shows and your own music videos or a radio station on which you are the RJ… such mediums are called Social Media.

Facebook is your personal newspaper, your personal TV Channel, your personal Magazine. Likewise Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, WeChat, Sound Cloud, Google+ and thousand others.

Kuensel may be selling about 5000 copies if it gets lucky, BBS has the highest potential of 700,000 viewers, and all other Mass mediums in Bhutan have few thousand audiences. Now compare that to Facebook that has 1.44 billion active users. It’s over 2000 times bigger than Bhutan, with no borders and almost no rules. It’s your own world, it will grow everyday, and you can do whatever you wish. But remember 1.44 billion people out there can also do what ever they like.

There are some general terms of use beyond that the freedom is unlimited. The two big questions are how to use that freedom well and how to keep yourselves safe in the world that’s free.

Let me tell you my story, On Facebook I have reached my 5000 friends limit, therefore now I have started a Page. I have begun a virtual company called Bhutan Toilet Organization on Facebook. It’s doing very well and soon I can bring it out as a real organization. I have started a Business group on Facebook some years ago called bBay. It’s has 44,000 members now. From Tashigang to Samtse, Austerlia to Bangkok, bBay has made buying and selling very easy. Then I got an idea to let people advertise in my group and from there I earn 10,000 to 20,000 per month. Besides the money I earned I have earned name. Wherever I go there is at least one person in a group who would say, “You are PaSsu of bBay. Thank you man, your bBay has help me sell my car, you bBay has helped me find a land. Etc.”

I have also co-founded a group called Writers Association of Bhutan, in which we motivate young writers. Many of our members have published their own books. We plan to help writers write and get them connected to publishers. We have nearly 20,000 members.

I am also on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, WeChat, and my personal favorite is my blog. I have a personal blog called PaSsu Diary. It’s a website in which I write stories related to family, school, society and sometime politics. People from different walks of life read my articles and among them I have found many friends. Newspapers take stories from my blog and print in their papers.

I was honest and sincere in my writings but at the same time I have been polite, respectful and talked about issues more than people. I justify my allegations and sometimes when I was wrong I apologized. I didn’t attack any individual personally; I didn’t insult or humiliate individuals. Sometimes when I had to write about certain individual I didn’t write their names.

But many people think being honest, sincere, critical and straightforward is same as being aggressive, arrogant, disrespectful and nasty. Actually it’s the opposite.

Because of my good behaviors on all the social media platforms I have been appointed as the first Social Media Monitor during the last election. The Chief Election Commissioner personally called me to be the Social Media Monitor. For six months I had two jobs.

I have been invited to many workshops to be speakers, such as SAARC Literature Fest, Mountain Echoes, Media Nomad etc. including this platform today. I have also received offers from big Hotels to be their guest and just say ‘I am here at hotel so and so’. One NGO called me to their office and gave me an iPad, Hard Drive, WiFi Station and many other devices and asked me to try them out. It’s actually a gift.

I have had the honour of visiting the office of the Prime Minister, and beyond all the honour of visiting Lingkana Palace.

I think I have done enough of Donkey praise but I hope you understood what I am trying to say. Social Media is a world of its own, and just like this practical world good behaviors is expected and rewarded. 

Now let me present to you the ugly side of Social Media. Like I told you millions of people are there in that free world. Just like in the real world there are good people and bad people; don’t worry about the good people. What type of Bad people would we find on social media- thieves, frauds, criminals, liars, bullies, rapists, murderers, and the list goes on. The biggest danger is their access to millions of innocent people right there on their screen. You can be their victim.

How do your protect yourselves? First, beware of strangers. Don’t just make friends with everybody. If you don’t know the person, and has no reason why he should be your friend just don’t accept requests.

If there are some nasty people who bother you all the time, remove them from your list of friends. Life is too short to waste with people who make you unhappy. Also avoid those people who are always negative, these people could influence you over time.

If someone tells you that he is going to send you parcel or money, just know that he is a fraud. Many Bhutanese fell victims to this sort of international scams. They will say that they have sent you iPhone, iPad etc. and also show you receipts. But soon they will say the parcel is struck somewhere in Bangkok or Calcutta. Then you will be made to send $500 -$1000. Some people I heard have sent over Nu.2 million believing in people who promised to build hotel in our country.

There are many other ways of people can cheat you, but you have to know just one important rule: if someone talks about money then that’s the clue, because no stranger will randomly send you money or diamond ring.

Anonymity is another issue on Internet. Most wrong doers on social media are anonymous. They hide their real identity, use fake names and pictures to do all the wrong things. They know we can never find them. Therefore, you have to be smart enough to know that some people you are dealing with on social media, whom you don’t know personally, are fake people.

The next important thing to remember is being mindful of what you post online and whom you share with. Good things are hard to notice, but bad things spread like wild fire, so be very careful about what you are putting online. Ask yourself, ‘Will I not regret after putting this up?’

Be mindful about doing anything with electronic devices in the first place. You mobile phone and laptops have many secret things you don’t know. You think you have deleted something but people can use simple software and retrieve it. And nowadays, these smart phones are connected to Cloud servers; every picture you take on your mobile automatically gets backed up on the cloud. The Cloud can be hacked or if you are not careful with your password people could sneak into all your files and pictures.

These days, if you are on Facebook, you will see many of your friends posting dirty pictures. The truth is they aren't doing it. In fact they themselves don’t see the pictures. It’s some sort of infected link that hacks into your account and misuses it. Therefore, you must be suspicious about unknown links anywhere on Internet. Clicking on such links is like giving them the key to your account.

Social Media is growing each day; opportunities are growing and danger is growing too. If there are things you are unsure about don’t take chances, just ask someone in school or at home. Never do something you are unsure of and never hesitate to seek help.

I would like to end here. If there are some areas left out we will cover during the question answer session. Thank you.

"Robbing the Country Blind"- Beyond English Lesson

"Robbing the country blind" was a figure of speech that Druk Phunsum Tshogpa took literally. Over the past months many people including Dasho Benji himself gave the party several English lessons. This case became so popular that the whole nation would by now know the meaning of the figure of speech, but as a matter of fact, no one will ever use it, especially on Facebook.

Opposition Leader with Dasho Benji- Photo Courtesy: RSPN Website

Beyond the English what lessons did we learn?

Individually, we must be warned that we can't just say anything against anybody if we can't substantiate. You should be more careful if you are a prominent figure in the society. Your words can be interpreted in many ways. And most importantly we should know freedom of speech has limits, which is not defined.

On the contrary, what Dasho Benji did was a very democratic example to the so many young followers he has on social media. He is illustrating how to speak up without shying, and most importantly he was showing us that we need not be anonymous to speak up boldly. But what DPT did to Dasho will have very deep impact on the emerging culture of social dialogue. People will never take chances and we may always resort to speaking anonymously.

Druk Phunsum Tshogpa, as a party should have never bothered about such petty comments because this is politics. They should focus on bigger goals of nurturing democracy in the country rather than giving suicidal threats from time to time. Their very nature of going off-focus lost them 2013 election, where instead of talk about what they will do they spent the whole campaign period talking and laughing about what the other party was going to do.

While it's easy to file a defamation case, just as freedom of speech has no well defined boundary, defamation doesn't have shape too. Freedom of speech doesn't necessarily end where defamation begins. The thin line between the two is very flexible. Therefore, now Dasho Benji's lawyer is charging DTP for "infringe upon the fundamental rights of an individual, which is guaranteed by Constitution.” He goes on for 13 pages where international examples of how political parties can't sue individual were cited. In a surprising backfire, after failing to convince the party that 'robbing the country blind' was a figure of speech, Dasho Benji is now substantiating his Facebook comments by digging out the ugly past, which could cost the party Nu.75 million. Party shouldn't have cornered the cat.

6 December, DTP will present their argument and the case will go on for sometime. Opposition will lose so much in this case- from time, attention to their real job, public support and perhaps Nu.75 million. 

Who Should Win?

If DTP wins, freedom of speech will be under question. There will be lesser people daring to say anything openly. There will be lots of anonymous users on social media. The very foundation of democratic dialogue will be dead.

If Dasho Benji wins, then it will lead to more social dialogues, not personal attacks. People who are hiding behind the mask will slowly come out in the open without fear. DPT will need a loan of Nu.75 million to drink their own ara.