Bhutanese Passport

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About

Bhutanese Passport refers to an audio recording featuring a spoken word version of the "Bhutanese Passport" Wikipedia article. In January 2015, the recording generated controversy on the wiki site after it began circulating online, with some interpreting it as a racist joke while others defended it as an authentic reading by a Bhutanese speaker.

Origin

On May 31st, 2013, Wikipedia^[1] user KuchenZimjah created an article titled "Bhutanese Passport." On June 10th, the user uploaded a spoken word version of the article to Wikimedia Commons^[2] (shown below). On KuchenZimjah's Wikipedia page,^[6] he claims to be a native of Thimphu, Bhutan who learned English while studying in New Zealand.

Spread

On September 24th, 2013, the Spoken Wikipedia YouTube channel uploaded the audio version of the Wikipedia article (shown below). In the first six months, the video gained over 299,000 views and 190 comments.

In January 2015, several Wikipedia users posted comments to the "Bhutanese Passport" talk page accusing the recording of being a racist joke, while others argued that the recording was made by a native Bhutanese speaker with an accent.^[5] On January 20th, Imgur^[4] user HenryKissinger uploaded a screenshot of the Bhutanese Passport article titled "You won't regret it," highlighting the "Listen to this article" section of the page. Within two months, the image gathered upwards of 142,000 views and 280 comments. On the following day, the pop culture blog Fusion^[3] published an article about spoken Wikipedia articles, which listed "Bhutanese Passport" as a notable example. On March 23rd, the file was nominated for deletion on Wikimedia Commons.