Bhutan dismisses report of Chinese village inside its territory near Doklam
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Thimphu, November 20: After Chinese journalists claimed with pictures that China has established a village 2 km within Bhutan's territory very close to Doklam, Bhutan’s Ambassador to India on Friday denied the presence of any Chinese village inside Bhutan.
Refusing the reports Bhutan's envoy to India, Maj Gen Vetsop Namgyel said, "There is no Chinese village inside Bhutan."
A Chinese journalist from state-affiliated media, Shen Shiwi, posted pictures of a village with satellite imagery, claiming that it was near Doklam. Som said that “We have permanent residents living in the newly established Pangda village. It is along the valley where 35 km south to Yadong county."
After which Nathan Ruser, a researcher who works with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's (ASPI)International Cyber Policy Centre, said that this Pangda village has been constructed 2.5 km beyond Bhutan's international border.
If you look at the map Shen shares, he cheekily crops so that it doesn't show the settlement he's talking about is across the Bhutanese border. Second picture shows the border. pic.twitter.com/uRdp4QaIad
— Nathan Ruser (@Nrg8000) November 19, 2020
When the controversy escalated, Shen deleted the photos, but by then the screenshots of his tweet had gone viral.
Notably, this place is just 9 kilometers from the place in Doklam on which India and China had a dispute in the year 2017. Doklam, a Bhutanese territory is at the trijunction of India, Bhutan, and China. Chinese forces were trying to construct a road in that region sparking a 2-month long stand-off that year. The standoff between the militaries of the two countries continued for over 70 days, escalating tensions in the region.