{"id":2560,"date":"2011-03-05T10:15:30","date_gmt":"2011-03-05T10:15:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2011\/03\/bhutanese-protest-tobacco-char.php"},"modified":"2011-03-05T10:15:30","modified_gmt":"2011-03-05T10:15:30","slug":"bhutanese-protest-tobacco-char","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/bhutanese-protest-tobacco-char","title":{"rendered":"Bhutanese Protest Tobacco Charge against Buddhist Monk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NEW DELHI (RNS) Protesters in Bhutan are denouncing the three-year prison sentence of a Buddhist monk charged with violating the small kingdom&#8217;s anti-tobacco law.<br \/>\nThe 23-year-old monk, Sonam Tshering, was the first victim of a ban rooted in the religious zeal of Bhutanese elders who believe smoking defiles sacred spaces, according to local media reports.<br \/>\nThe police nabbed the monk in the capital city of Thimphu with 48 packets of chewing tobacco he had bought from neighboring India.<br \/>\nLast month, a court punished the monk for not paying import taxes under the Tobacco Control Act, a 2010 law that levies 100-percent tax on tobacco intended for personal consumption.<br \/>\nThe act cites concerns about tobacco &#8220;from a spiritual and social health point of view,&#8221; and states that &#8220;physical health and wellbeing&#8221; are under the purview of Bhutan&#8217;s unique Gross National Happiness (GNH) policy.<br \/>\nBhutan is best known in the West for its GNH index, based on Buddhist principles to measure the nation&#8217;s progress in terms of wellbeing and not economic growth alone. Bhutan aims to be the world&#8217;s first smoke-free nation.<br \/>\n<strong>&#8211; VISHAL ARORA<\/strong>, <em>Religion News Service<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEW DELHI (RNS) Protesters in Bhutan are denouncing the three-year prison sentence of a Buddhist monk charged with violating the small kingdom&#8217;s anti-tobacco law. The 23-year-old monk, Sonam Tshering, was the first victim of a ban rooted in the religious zeal of Bhutanese elders who believe smoking defiles sacred spaces, according to local media reports.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":264,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-news","category-rns"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Bhutanese Protest Tobacco Charge against Buddhist Monk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/bhutanese-protest-tobacco-char\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bhutanese Protest Tobacco Charge against Buddhist Monk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"NEW DELHI (RNS) Protesters in Bhutan are denouncing the three-year prison sentence of a Buddhist monk charged with violating the small kingdom&#8217;s anti-tobacco law. The 23-year-old monk, Sonam Tshering, was the first victim of a ban rooted in the religious zeal of Bhutanese elders who believe smoking defiles sacred spaces, according to local media reports.&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/bhutanese-protest-tobacco-char\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-03-05T10:15:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"editor\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Bhutanese Protest Tobacco Charge against Buddhist Monk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/bhutanese-protest-tobacco-char","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Bhutanese Protest Tobacco Charge against Buddhist Monk","og_description":"NEW DELHI (RNS) Protesters in Bhutan are denouncing the three-year prison sentence of a Buddhist monk charged with violating the small kingdom&#8217;s anti-tobacco law. The 23-year-old monk, Sonam Tshering, was the first victim of a ban rooted in the religious zeal of Bhutanese elders who believe smoking defiles sacred spaces, according to local media reports.&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/bhutanese-protest-tobacco-char","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-03-05T10:15:30+00:00","author":"editor","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/bhutanese-protest-tobacco-char","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/bhutanese-protest-tobacco-char","name":"Bhutanese Protest Tobacco Charge against Buddhist Monk","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-03-05T10:15:30+00:00","dateModified":"2011-03-05T10:15:30+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/58d12601cbe230a61e6f2ea91d341249"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/bhutanese-protest-tobacco-char#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/bhutanese-protest-tobacco-char"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/bhutanese-protest-tobacco-char#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Bhutanese Protest Tobacco Charge against Buddhist Monk"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/58d12601cbe230a61e6f2ea91d341249","name":"editor","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dfc\/dfcc0838a84dd70003db24678b13c234x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dfc\/dfcc0838a84dd70003db24678b13c234x96.jpg","caption":"editor"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/editor"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/264"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2560\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}