New home for Bhutan refugees

Source: Stuff.co.nz

The refugees are expected to arrive on April 24 after spending six weeks in the Mangere Refugee Centre.

Another intake of about 40 will arrive in the city in June.

New Zealand is taking up to 120 Bhutanese this year, to be settled in Christchurch and New Plymouth.

They come from a group of more than 100,000 Bhutanese people who have been in refugee camps in Nepal for more than 15 years.

The mainly Hindu people were forced out of the Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan in the early 1990s and have not been allowed back.

Tens of thousands of them are now being offered a new life in the West.

Refugee Services Aotearoa training co-ordinator Judi Barshin said New Zealand was the first country to take them in. She said conditions in the Nepalese refugee camps were basic. Their shelters were made of bamboo and netting and regularly flooded during the monsoon season.

Service providers were planning an official welcome for the group and were holding a culture and language day to learn more about their Bhutanese background and beliefs, she said.

Barshin was looking for more volunteers to work with the second group of refugees arriving in June. Also for any donations of bedding or furniture.

Christchurch Resettlement Services (CRS) manager Felicity Jardine said the refugees were likely to bring the legacy of distress and trauma with them.

CRS would help by providing social and youth work, along with mental and general health services and promotion.

"There will be difficulties in accessing interpreters as there's no existing community. We don't have people who speak Bhutanese and only a very small Nepali-speaking community," she said.

Bhutan is a tiny Himalayan kingdom of 700,000 inhabitants sandwiched between India and China.

Known by its people as the Land of the Thunder Dragon, about 20 per cent of the population has sought asylum in India and Nepal since 1991 owing to their government's stance on ethnic minorities.

Finding a new life in alien land

Source: Nepalnews.com

By Indra Adhikari

On the day Bhutan goes to historic polls to transform its absolute monarchy into a constitutional one, a group of Bhutanese refugees taking asylum in Nepal for the last 18 years nervously waits to set out for third country resettlement.

In Bhutan, it is the beginning of a new system, and for refugees here it is the beginning of new life in new countries.

On March 24, International Organization of Migration (IOM) and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced in Kathmandu that they had formally began taking Bhutanese refugees to third countries for resettlement as per their wish.

The resettlement process has begun amidst opposition from a few 'communist groups' within the refugee community announcing their intention to initiate armed rebellion inside Bhutan to overthrow the despotic monarchy there.

UNHCR country representative for Nepal Daisy Dale said despite the beginning of the third country resettlement of the Bhutanese refugees, the international community and the UNHCR will continue to advocate for the right of the refugees to repatriate to their homeland once the situation becomes conducive.

"Repatriation is the first priority," she said adding, "Failing to see any progress in repatriation process, resettlement has become a rescue for finding solution of the protracted crisis."

While some of the refugees complained that they were warned not to make any inquiry regarding their education, as they leave it in the middle of the session, UNHCR chief in Nepal said arrangements will be made for education of the refugee children.

Out of seven members in the core group expressing their interest to resettle the refugees, only two countries - United States and New Zealand - have began taking the refugees. Australia is expected to begin the process sometime soon.

Editor of Kathmandu based Bhutan News Service T. P. Mishra said majority of the refugees are complaining of unclear process of selecting refugee families for interviews.

Former country representative of the UNHCR Abraham Abraham had said refugees will be called for interviews on first come first serve basis according to the date they file their interest papers to the UNHCR. However, Mishra said it has not been so and that the refugees have not been able to make an informed choice on resettlement.

IOM chief in Kathmandu David Derthick, however, says that it is the UNHCR that decides who will be going to which country.

US government officials while visiting refugee camps last year had hinted that 60,000, the number of refugees they want to take for resettlement, would not include those who are involved in "armed groups". Yet, the government has not spoken anything about those having records of human rights violations. Accordingly, Hari Bangale, then secretary of Belgandi camp-2, because of who two refugees lost their life last year in Beldangi camp, was the first to be flown to US under resettlement.

Some 100 refugees have already left Nepal in the last three months. Media persons and other visitors were strictly barred from meeting those refugees on grounds of security and protection policies.

This week another 120 refugees will fly for third country resettlement. IOM plans to send at least 1,500 individuals in a month. By the end of 2009, half of the total population proposed by the US will find their shelters in the new countries.

While it's been widely accepted that resettlement would not give permanent solution to the crisis, the relocation of refugees is believed to give relief to UNHCR and Nepal being burdened for the last two decades.

Election a sham, say refugees

Source: The Times Of India

Nearly 3 lakh people in Bhutan cast their vote on Monday in the kingdom’s first parliamentary election, which was promptly denounced as a sham by the refugee community of the Buddhist kingdom, now living in Nepal.

Over 1 lakh people, almost a sixth of the total population of the tiny nation, continue to be barred from their country, let alone take part in the much touted transition-to-democracy polls, putting a question mark on the whole electoral exercise so carefully orchestrated by the former king Jigme Singye Wangchuk.

"The election has no meaning," said an outraged Ghanshyam Timilsinha, who was evicted from his home in Danabari in eastern Bhutan 18 years ago when the Druk government began a crackdown on citizens of ethnic origin.

"It is a ploy to throw dust in the eyes of the international community. The election will put in power (former) king Jigme Wangchuk's men, who will rule through them. I too am a bona fide citizen of Bhutan. If I, and people like me, can't vote, what is the meaning of this election?" he asks.

After spending 18 years in the Beldangi camp in eastern Nepal, Timilsinha is finally flying out to the US this week, along with his wife, parents and three children.

Royalists Win Election in Bhutan

Source: AP

By MATTHEW ROSENBERG

Long known as a quirky holdout from modernity, the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan ended a century of absolute monarchy Monday by electing a staunch royalist as its first prime minister.

So it goes in Bhutan, possibly the first country in history where a king had to convince his people that democracy was a good idea.

Known by its people as the Land of the Thunder Dragon, Bhutan's snowcapped peaks and mountainside monasteries have long intrigued Westerners in search of a Buddhist nirvana. But the kingdom is, in many ways, a strikingly conformist place where the outside word is viewed warily and self-promotion and confrontation are frowned upon.

Just a few months ago, criticism of high officials was unimaginable to many here. Now they're wondering what will become of their Precious Ruler as he gives up most of his power to politicians.

"There was much resistance when His Majesty told us that we must decide our future if Bhutan was to prosper," said Karma Dorji, a 55-year-old civil servant waiting to vote in Thimphu, the capital.

That order came in late 2006, and Bhutan was already prospering. Its average annual of income of $1,400 was twice neighboring India's, and nearly all its people had access to schools and hospitals, a rare achievement in this corner of the world.

Such success contrasts sharply with South Asian countries like Nepal or Bangladesh, which often seem like case studies in democracy gone wrong — a fact that left many here dreading the change.

But "we have come to see that this is an opportunity he has given us because he is farsighted and wise," Dorji said. Still, he added, "We prefer our king."

So does the new prime minister, Jigmi Kinley, who twice served as premier under royal rule. Kinley's Bhutan Peace and Prosperity Party was considered the more royalist of the two very royalist political parties in Monday's elections.

Kinley was celebrating his landslide — his party took 44 of the 47 parliament seats — in remote eastern Bhutan on Monday. The party's spokesman, Palden Tshering, called the win a "victory for His Majesty."

Kinley is likely to be named prime minister soon. The king, 28-year-old Jigme Keshar Namgyal Wangchuck, will remain head of state and likely retain much influence.

Kinley's party, like the opposition, hews closely to the king's vision. Both vow to follow the latest five-year plan — they call it "His Majesty's vision" — and promote Gross National Happiness, an all-encompassing political philosophy that seeks to balance material progress with spiritual well-being.

Despite the near-identical ideologies, watching candidates drawn from the political elite compete has been baffling — and worrying — to Bhutanese.

"How does this end? Do we become India or worse, Pakistan? Are people going to riot every time a politician says so?" asked Phuntso Lhamo, a 23-year-old student, as she waited to vote in Thimphu.

That's not likely. Bhutan's election campaign was exceedingly mild by the standards of other democracies with candidates more likely to compliment competitors than criticize them.

But there were ugly moments. One party accused the other of vote buying (it was actually paying its workers); a candidate charged his opponent with trying to influence powerful monks by having his wife donate a butter lamp to a monastery.

But in the political confrontations that so many find unseemly, others see an opening to be relished.

"Criticizing a minister, a civil servant. Can you imagine?" said Jitsen Dorji, a 32-year-old engineer. He said he hoped the democratically elected government would be more transparent.

He also had one other wish — "get rid of these ghos" — the traditional checkered robe Bhutanese men must wear to work. Women wear embroidered silk jackets and wraparound skirts.

That's probably not going to happen. Bhutan's monarchy, which only opened the country to the outside world in the early 1960s, has made a point of preserving Bhutanese culture in ways that seem heavy-handed to outsiders — and a few Bhutanese — such as the mandated dress code and not allowing television or the Internet in until 1999.

They also said they needed to protect their culture by driving out more 100,000 ethnic Nepalis — a Hindu minority concentrated in southern Bhutan — in the early 1990s. Most now live in refugee camps in Nepal and Bhutan refuses to take them back.

Even with tens of thousands of other ethnic Nepalis still in Bhutan, candidates were barred from speaking about matters of security or citizenship (that is, the refugees) as well as the royal family.

The Bhutanese say that such rules are needed to protect their tiny country, which lies between Asian giants India and China.

In the last half century, they've seen every other Himalayan Buddhist kingdom — places like Tibet and Sikkim — swallowed by foreign powers or swamped by outsiders.

While the Bhutanese insist they care little for such places — the recent unrest in Tibet, for instance, garnered little notice here — the country's kings recognized in the 1960s that they needed to embrace the modern world to survive.

Back then Bhutan was a medieval society with no paved roads, no electricity and no hospitals. Almost no foreigners were let in.

Not anymore. The country is likely to soon join the World Trade Organization and it welcomes about 20,000 tourists a year, albeit on heavily supervised, expensive trips.

But on those tours — which almost always present the fairy tale version of Bhutan as a land of fortress-like monasteries where monks chant amid the riotous murals of temple walls — one can nonetheless get a sense of how tightly controlled Bhutan remains.

When one visitor ditched his guide to go for a walk around Thimphu, he barely made it two blocks before his mobile phone rang. "Where are you," said his nervous guide. "I need to know where you are."

Sixty more refugees flown to Kathmandu for third country resettlement

Source: Nepalnews.com

Sixty more Bhutanese refugees have been flown from Beldangi and Shanishchare camps in Jhapa and Morang districts, respectively, to Kathmandu on their way for the third country resettlement.

The International Organisation of Migration (IOM) flew them to Kathmandu on Friday.

The refugees flown to Kathmandu are expected to be shortly resettled to the United States and Denmark.

The Nepal Samacharpatra daily quotes Jhapa's assistant chief district officer Laxman Hamal as saying that on Saturday additional 61 refugees will be flown to Kathmandu for the same purpose.

A few weeks ago, the first lot of twenty families of refugees had been flown to the US and New Zealand.

As the Bhutanese refugee imbroglio has dragged on for over one and a half decade, the international community has decided to resettle them on humanitarian grounds.

Refugees from Bhutan arrive in Auckland

Source: Radio New Zealand News

A group of Bhutanese refugees who have been living in United Nations camps in Nepal has arrived in New Zealand.

The 40 refugees are the first to be resettled from the camps to a third country.

More than 100,000 people were forced out of the remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan up to 17 years ago.

The group will undergo a six-week orientation programme at the Mangere Refugee Reception Centre in Auckland.

They will then be resettled in Palmerston North and Christchurch.

Three families reached US safely

Source: Apfanews.com

California (USA), March 14: Three families from Sanischare camp who flew to the United States as part of the third country resettlement of the exiled Bhutanese on March 10 afternoon reached US safely.

They landed in New Hampshire by US Airways to start the new beginning. They were warmly welcomed by the NGO and Nepalese community who were staying there for a long time.

New Hampshire is one of the 50 states in the United States. It is approximately 500 Kms away from the city of New York and 170 Kms from Boston, Massachusetts. It is touched by the Atlantic Ocean.

Living in New Hampshire offers natural beauties such as seashore, mountains, lakes, four distinct seasons and beautiful scenery. New Hampshire offers the ability to be at the seashore in the morning and later in the day at the mountains.

The city of Nashua is one of the top cities in the country to live in along with city of Manchester and Concord. All these cities offer cultural events, seasonal events, and museums, in addition to schools, colleges and universities. Picnic with family and friends is the common outdoor recreation among many. (Contributed by Lalit Gurung, USA)

60 Bhutanese refugees on way to US, New Zealand

Source: The Himalayan Times

Sixty Bhutanese refugees from Khudunabri, Goldhap and Timai camps in Jhapa district and Shanishcharey camp in Morang district today left on a Yeti Airlines flight from Bhadrapur to Kathmandu. These 60 refugees will be later taking international flights from Kathmandu to the US and New Zealand, said Jhapa CDO Shankar Prasad Koirala.

Bal Krishna Ghimire, a refugee at Goldhap camp, said the refugees belonging to 17 families seemed happy at the chance of rehabilitation in a third country. The US has said it will accommodate 60,000 refugees.

Jhapa assistant CDO Laxman Prasad Hamal said 150 refugees were given the clearance for third-country settlement. Of these, 60 left for Kathmandu today, he added. Earlier, the family of former secretary of Beldangi camp in Damak Hari Bagale and the family of Tilanga Dhital of the same camp had been sent to the US for resettlement. However, there is no official confirmation of this piece of news.

The UNHCR is handling the third-country resettlement of the refugees. International organisation IOM is interviewing other refugees. Controversy prevails over the question of third- country resettlement, with a small but unruly section of the refugees standing against it and threatening other refugees not to opt for third-country resettlement. In May, two refugees in Beldangi camp were killed in a clash over the issue.

10,000 Displaced as Blaze Engulfs Refugee Camp

Source: The Himalayan Times

At least 10,000 Bhutanese refugees have been displaced after a massive inferno burnt down nearly 1,350 huts at a refugee camp at Goldhap of Garamani VDC of Jhapa last night.
Four refugees were injured in the incident while a child is missing, police said. Among the 1600 huts in the camp, only 250 could be saved.

The fire spread from the kitchen of the hut of Kedar Dhakal at around 6 pm while all the members of the family were taking meal. They were rescued by neighbours. The fire then gutted 1,350 huts within four hours before it was doused at around 10 pm with the efforts of fire fighters from Bhadrapur, Mechinagar and Damak, Nepal Police and Armed Police Force personnel, Nepal Army personnel and locals.

SP at Jhapa district police office Rajendra Shrestha said Narayan Bhujel (17), Tilak Pokhrel (19), Tara Niraula (20) and Homnath Acharya (18) were injured in the blaze and they are being treated at Mechi zonal hospital. The name of the missing child is not known.
After the inferno, refugees have been stranded in nearby jungle, schools, food go-downs and open fields.

Dozens of livestock animals were reportedly killed in the blaze. The exact extent of the damage is yet to be assessed.

Meanwhile, Home Minister Krishna Prasad Sitaula this morning made an on-site inspection of the Bhutanese refugee camp. Sitaula acquired information about the extent of the damage and the situation of the victims. Preliminary estimates said the inferno caused damages worth tens of millions of rupees.

283 Exit Permits issued, first group to leave in mid-March

Source: Apfanews.com

Government of Nepal has so far issued 283 Exit Permits to exiled Bhutanese whose pre-resettlement processes have completed.

"We have an official deployed at Damak to issue Exit Permit to those who wish to adopt third country resettlement" said Sahana Pradhan, Minister for Foreign Affairs.

In a radio interview with one of private FM stations in Kathmandu Pradhan said "First group of Bhutanese would leave to America latest by mid-March".