They raised one son, a crown prince, who is now about 19 years old. Bhutan is also occasionally in the news due to protests and scattered rebel attacks by mostly minority ethnic Nepalis who were forced out of the country by the majority ethnic Bhutia. The government claims the Nepalis are illegal immigrants, while the minority group insists it has lived in Bhutan for generations. Worried about Bhutan's stability, the monarch had enforced the ban on TV, to maintain a vanishing status quo. Surrounded by a dominating India and a troubled Tibet, the land-locked kingdom controls a relatively passive society.
TV threatens to change all that, in the eyes of some Bhutanese.
But the monarch is now willing to take that risk. Displaying a new boldness, Bhutan entered both the TV age and the world of cyberspace all on the same occasion. In Thimpu, the capital, the eldest sister of the king's four wives, Queen Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuk, also clicked a mouse to open Bhutan's first Internet link, after a gorgeous Buddhist ceremony during the monarch's silver jubilee. Foreign TV broadcasters, manufacturers, programmers, engineers and commercial television businesses will find Bhutan's needs are extremely modest. But the Internet link will mean that some Bhutanese TV officials, or foreign experts advising them, may be surfing websites for TV businesses which have established a home page or advertising on-line.