Asia-Pacific, Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights, Population

RIGHTS- NEPAL: Bhutanese Refugees Face Doomed Future

Damakant Jayshi

DAMAK, Nepal, Feb 25 2004 (IPS) - More than 100,000 refugees from neighbouring Bhutan confront dimmed prospects amid an impasse over repatriation and cutbacks in aid.

The Lhotsampas, Bhutanese nationals of Nepalese origin who fled cultural persecution in southern Bhutan, have settled in refugee camps here since the late 1980s.

Many of the Lhotsampas, who are Hindu, left Bhutan because the kingdom had launched a cultural and religious drive advancing Bhutan’s Buddhist identity.

Fifteen rounds of talks between the foreign ministers of Nepal and Bhutan, aimed at securing the refugees’ safe repatriation and dating back to 1993, have yielded little tangible progress.

Some of the refugees were deemed eligible to return to Bhutan and their repatriation was to have begun on Feb. 15. But the process stalled even before it began. Scuffles broke out Dec. 22, 2003, when officials were sent to brief the refugees, and the two governments have since locked horns over finding and punishing those responsible for the melee. Two Bhutanese officials and a Nepalese police officer were injured when refugees pelted them with stones.

Underlying the outbreak was refugees’ fear that they would face persecution anew upon their return to Bhutan. Stoking that fear, the Bhutanese officials had told refugees that after leaving here, the refugees would have to live as aliens in camps within Bhutan for another two years, during which time they would have to prove their loyalty to Bhutan’s monarch, history, and culture.

”Do you really think we should go back under the prevailing circumstances? Has the situation that forced us to flee in the first place improved? We do not think so,” Bhawani Prasad Adhikari, a 62-year-old refugee, told IPS.

Since the Dec. 22 melee, the Nepalese government has decided to seek guarantees from Bhutan that it will treat the returning Lhotsampas with dignity and grant them full rights as citizens. Previously, Nepal had shunned the issue as an internal Bhutanese matter.

"We will seek written assurances from the Bhutanese government," Madhu Raman Acharya, the Nepalese foreign secretary, told IPS.

If Bhutan does not accept the refugees, Nepalese officials said they would approach the United States, European Union and India, thought to have significant influence over Bhutan, for help in resolving the impasse.

Meanwhile, the refugees’ troubles have been compounded by implementation of an Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) plan to reduce aid to the camps. Since Jan. 1, the agency has stopped supplying certain spices and has reduced its rations of kerosene fuel. More such cuts are expected.

While UNHCR has said it supports the bilateral refugee talks, it also has said it was weighing shutting down the camps.

In addition, the Nepalese government has warned camp-dwellers that those deemed eligible to return to Bhutan would lose their refugee status if they refuse to go back.

Consequently in limbo are the futures of refugees like Laxmi Prasad Kharel, who came to the camp as a four-year old child. Now 16 years old, he is an eighth grader at the Panchavati English School, in the Beldangi-II refugee camp.

Kharel said that since the Dec. 22 scuffles, he had lost hope of going back.

”We are leading a very miserable life in the camps as we are stuck here since legally we cannot go out of the camp,” he said. ”We had hoped for the repatriation of the Khudunabari camp-dwellers.” Since that has not happened, Kharel added, he now hoped to get Nepalese citizenship.

But Shankar Dhital, a 25-year-old refugee, said there was little hope of that because Nepal’s citizenship laws were too tough. ”We have been reduced to stateless people and if we cannot go back, we are doomed to stay like this forever,” he said.

Bhekh Bahadur Thapa, Nepal’s de facto foreign minister, has said that although provisions have been made for refugees to apply for citizenship here under certain circumstances, few are likely to succeed.

Bhutan and Nepal had agreed to allow the refugees to apply for citizenship of either country. But Bhutan has since suspended the repatriation process and demanded that Nepal punish those responsible for the Dec. 22 scuffles.

”The Bhutanese government’s stance is most unfortunate,” said Acharya, the Nepalese foreign secretary. ”We are trying to bring the derailed process back on track.” He declined to elaborate.

 
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