Source: The Kathmandu Post
POST B BASNET
BELDANGI (JHAPA), Oct 23 - Like many of his countrymen, Hom Bahadur Dahal, 50, a Bhutanese refugee from Beldangi camp in Jhapa district, rushed to sign up for resettlement in the United States earlier this year. He felt his days of hardship were finally over.
His neighbours in the camp are now all set to fly abroad for resettlement but not Dahal. His hopes suddenly ended two months ago when he was rejected for resettlement in the United States.
"My family had opted for resettlement to begin a new life in the United States, but my application was rejected," says Dahal, a former corporal in the Bhutanese Army. However, the applications of his son's four-member family and daughter were accepted.
For Bhutanese refugees, the reason why U.S. officials rejected Dahal seems bizarre at best. The paper handed over to Dahal explaining why he was rejected reads: You are ineligible for refugee status because it has been determined that you ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in the persecution of others on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.
"You were a member of the Bhutanese Army that was involved in the persecution of ethnic Nepalese in Bhutan," Dahal quoted U.S. Homeland Security officials telling him.
"I am myself a victim of ethnic cleansing. I cannot even think of committing atrocities against my people," says Dahal. He appealed for revision of the decision, but to no avail.
According to Dahal, he had been serving in the Bhutanese army at Paru Guincha, northern Bhutan, when Nepali speakers were being evicted from Bhutan.
Three months after his parents were evicted from Bhutan in 1991, Dahal was sacked from his job and asked to either leave Bhutan within a month or face persecution.
In the chilly winter of 1992, Dahal and his family joined a refugee caravan flocking to neighboring India. A few months later, he ended up in the refugee camp in Jhapa.
He is now separated from five members of his family, including two grandsons -- five-year-old Manish and nine-month-old Anish. They are soon leaving for the U.S., leaving Dahal, his wife Lilamaya, 45, and one of his sons behind in Nepal.
The U.S. embassy here said that it does not have a policy of commenting on individual cases.
According to Ram Bhandari, a refugee activist at Beldangi, refugees have been rejected on the grounds that they made material contributions to the Bhutan People's Party (BPP) or supported the underground Bhutan Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist).
"I don't get why they reject settlement for BPP supporters as the party's youth wing - Youth Organization of Bhutan (YOB) is operating from the U.S. itself?" Bhandari said.
Bhutanese refugees say resettlement forms of some three dozen Bhutanese refugee teachers who sang revolutionary songs during Tihar festival last year have not been processed.
"Generally, we do not grant resettlement permission to individuals that have been affiliated to groups involved in acts of violence or have serious criminal convictions," said Nicole Chulick, U.S. embassy spokesperson.
According to her, about 8,400 Bhutanese refugees have been interviewed and around 20 have been refused permission to resettle in the U.S.
The U.S. had initially announced resettlement of 60,000 refugees, but said this number could increase if there is interest among refugees.
Kimberly Roberson, senior durable solutions officer at UNHCR, said the UN office cannot question why a host country has rejected resettlement of a particular person.
"Every country has its own laws," she said.
She said that those who have been rejected for resettlement by any country should tell the UNHCR about themselves and it would direct them toward resettlement in some other suitable country.
Besides the US, New Zealand, Australia, Denmark, Canada, Norway and Netherlands are also resettling Bhutanese refugees.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Not all Bhutanese can get resettled
Working to help his people, again
Source : Syracuse.com
Thursday, October 23, 2008
By Maureen Sieh
Urban affairs editor
Hari Adhikari nearly lost his life when he began advocating for the more than 100,000 Nepalese-speaking Bhutanese deported from their homes.
He was imprisoned seven times in the 1980s and early 1990s, tortured and beaten for opposing the government's decision to force his people to leave the only home they had ever known in Bhutan, a small South Asia country bordered by India and Tibet.
Adhikari next helped his people find food, shelter, health care and education in seven refugee camps in neighboring Nepal. He traveled internationally to raise awareness of their plight.
When the effort to bring his people home failed, Adhikari urged the international community to take in the refugees. The United States agreed to take 60,000 refugees.
After fighting for his people for years, Adhikari is now their man in Syracuse, the first person who greets his fellow Bhutanese when they arrive here to start a new life.
Catholic Charities, which has resettled 115 Bhutanese, hired him as a case manager after he moved here in March to help settle the refugees, many of them he knew from the camps.
More than 200 Bhutanese have arrived here, more are expected. It's the latest wave of refugees who have resettled in this region.
In the last three months, Adhikari, 47, has put in some long hours. He made trips to the airport to pick up new families. He scrambled to find them a place to stay. He takes them to the grocery store and medical appointments.
He's also learning a lot about the American system and the amount of paperwork needed to process the refugees through the Department of Social Services, Social Security and other agencies. Last week, he traveled to Buffalo to help some of the Bhutanese families.
"I feel it is my duty as a community man, not only as a staff member, to see that our community is doing well," he said.
A familiar face
When Kazi Gautam, 27, arrived at Syracuse Hancock Airport on May 19, he was thrilled to see Adhikari's familiar face.
Adhikari took Gautam and his wife, Santi, who was pregnant with their first child, to his home on the city's North Side for a traditional Bhutanese dinner - hot curry made with chili and cheese, chicken, rice and vegetables. After dinner, Adhikari took the couple to their apartment on Elm Street.
"I was exhausted from a long distance (journey)," said Gautam, whose wife gave birth to their son, Bassan Ethan, on July 15. "When he was there to receive us, we were happy."
Kip Hargrave, director of the Catholic Charities refugee program, said he was all set to hire someone else for the job, but Adhikari came up to him one day and said, "you should hire me."
"He just knows the culture and he knows all these people because of his work on the international level," Hargrave said. "He's gone to all the different camps and he's met all the Bhutanese refugees. He knows them all and he's brought them together as a community."
An activist is born
In Bhutan, Adhikari quit his teaching job to open a footwear store.
In the mid-1980s, he took up the cause for his people when the government started a campaign to suppress the Southern Bhutanese because they were prosperous farmers. The government tried to convert the Nepalese-Bhutanese from Hinduism to Buddhism and imposed a national dress code on all ethnic groups.
Women were required to wear the kira, a thick floor-length rectangular piece of cloth wrapped around the body over a blouse and the men wore the gho, a long robe-like dress that extends to the toes.
Many of the poor villagers who sold produce in the markets couldn't afford the national dress, Adhikari said. The dress, he said, is heavy and would be too hot to walk around in the summer months when people are carrying large bags of produce on their heads.
Street vendors who wore shorts and a T-shirt were harassed, fined and jailed for failing to wear Bhutan's national dress, Adhikari said.
"You can make this compulsory for people who work in offices, why do you make it compulsory for people in the market and all public places?" he asked. "This is how I got involved in the movement of human rights for the people."
The dress code was just one of the tactics the government used to deport the Nepalese-speaking Bhutanese - descendants of Nepalese agriculturalists who migrated in the 19th century to Bhutan, a landlocked country that sits in the middle of the Himalayan Mountains.
Bhutan granted them citizenship in 1958, but the government revoked it in the early 1990s and called them "Lhotshampas" or illegal immigrants.
They had to prove their citizenship by showing 1958 tax receipts, an impossible task for most, Adhikari said. Those without tax receipts were considered second-class citizens, he said.
In 1975, the government tried to deport Adhikari's parents, but they appealed and were allowed to stay in the country.
"We have sacrificed a lot. My parents didn't want to leave everything behind. My fathers' brothers and my grandparents were given 13 days to leave the country," he said. "They're in Nepal."
During the 1990s, some families were split up - parents were considered Bhutanese, but the children were not, he said.
"Many families got this decree that they didn't pay their taxes, they made them second-class citizens," said Adhikari, whose parents were born in Bhutan. "How can members of one family be separated? We raised the issue with the king and they started arresting people, and they arrested me."
Arrests, beatings
The first time Adhikari was arrested was in 1984. He spent three days locked up in the bathroom of one of the government offices.
There would be six more arrests from 1984 to 1991. The longest time Adhikari spent in jail was 18 months. During that time, he was beaten and tortured for telling the guards that they couldn't make people cut fire wood for the army and not pay them.
"The police constable was asked to jump on my legs," Adhikari said, talking about his arrest in 1991. "The pain was so much I would cry like a goat. Some people were killed. They beat me in the back with a cane, those were the kinds of torture.
"They hanged me upside down and blood came from my nose and mouth and they still wanted me to be hanging there," he said. "They used to (say) that if we're hanged and three quarters of blood is taken from our body, you will die."
A year later, he was released after Amnesty International visited Bhutan and urged the government to release all prisoners.
After his release, the government forced Adhikari to sign a statement saying he would stop speaking against the government. Then, the police took him to the India-Bhutan border, beat him and forced him to sign another statement saying that he was voluntarily leaving the country and had taken all his belongings. The government took over his store and sold everything in it.
Continuing the fight
In Nepal, he got involved in a human rights group that advocated for the Bhutanese people and worked with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, which managed the camps.
He started classes to offer refugees computer training, teach them weaving and tailoring. He helped enroll children in school.
In between his human rights advocacy work, Adhikari organized peace marches to Bhutan in 1995 and 1996. About 35,000 people participated in the marches.
When those efforts failed, he began pushing for refugee resettlement in 2002.
Not everyone was pleased with the resettlement idea. Adhikari was threatened and beaten by an armed rebel group that wanted the refugees to stay in Nepal to help mount an uprising against the Bhutanese government.
"I was thinking I couldn't do much more for the people to establish peace and a democratic culture in Bhutan," Adhikari said. "The camp is not a secure place for people to live."
Adhikari stressed that he was committed to finding a peaceful solution to the refugee problem. On May 27, 2007, he was at a meeting when rebels blew up his hut in the camp and beat his parents.
A May 29, 2007, article in The Times of India reported that "a mob of refugees attacked Adhikari" and set fire to the camp office as well as a police station."
"My family had to leave the camp," said Adhikari, who last September received the Ambassador for Peace Award from the Universal Peace Federation, an international organization which works to foster world peace and freedom. "They believed that if they kill me, nobody will be talking about resettlement."
Syracuse: a new home
On March 4, Adhikari arrived in Syracuse with his wife, Uma, and their two teenage children, Heman, 17, and Leena, 15. Three months later, his parents, a brother and two sisters arrived.
Adhikari was still looking for a job when he found out about the vacancy for a case manager at Catholic Charities refugee program.
He used to volunteer and paid attention to what the case managers did. He applied for the job because he thought it would be a natural fit.
As more families arrived, Adhikari has gathered them on Saturday mornings at Rose Hill Park on Lodi Street to meet new families, talk about their adjustment and learn about American life.
He runs the Saturday meeting the same way he ran meetings in the refugee camps. He gives people a lot of helpful information, but he also lectures them about the importance of helping each other and working hard to succeed in America.
But he's worried about the refugees' future because of the economy. Refugee resettlement agencies are trying to help people find jobs, but it's not easy, he said.
"Everyone is saying the U.S. economy is down. This is not going to help the refugees that are coming," Adhikari said. "Come on, do something that brings the economy up. These are people who will be contributing to the society. We're hardworking people, peaceful people."
Maureen Sieh can be reached at msieh@syracuse.com or 470-2159.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Demand for repatriation
Kathmandu, October 21: A group of exiled Bhutanese led by chairman of Human Rights Organization of Bhutan S. B. Subba submitted a memorandum to Prime Minister of Nepal Pushpa Kamal Dahal Monday urging the Nepalese government to take up efforts for repatriation.In a memorandum submitted to PM Dahal, the group claimed resettlement to third countries was against the international standards which caused confusion on some exile Bhutanese who are ‘not farsighted’ and Nepalese diplomats.
The memorandum stated that resettlement has brought negative impact in camp life such as weakening security situation, family split, suicide, decreasing interests on student towards education among others.
However, there have not been any reports of suicidal cases in the camps since the resettlement process began.
The group demanded suspension of resettlement process unless Bhutan clearly states it position, organize a round table meeting among Nepal, Bhutan, India and representatives of the exiled Bhutanese and formation of a special committee to look after the issue among many. Bhutan News Service
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Non-Druks seek to resettle in West
BELDANGI (JHAPA), Oct 17 - Facilitating settlement in western countries of Nepali nationals posing as Bhutanese refugees who no longer live in camps has become a lucrative business for some here lately, police said.
On Sunday, police arrested Amrita Darji, 30, a Bhutanese refugee in Beldangi, Jhapa, on a charge of forgery. She has confessed to police she received Rs 100,000 in initial payment for helping one Mukti Dahal, a Nepali national, fill a resettlement form, posing as her missing brother Raha Darji.
''Of the Rs 225,000 promised her, she had received Rs 100,000," said Inspector Mahesh Bista of the Armed Police Force at Beldangi. Dahal and two other Bhutanese accomplices -- Kiran Gurung and Bikram Gurung -- are still at large.
Some western countries including the United States are resettling the Bhutanese refugees. So far, 5,000 have been resettled, mostly in the United States, while 57,000 have applied for resettlement.
Inspector Bista said that a powerful racket seems to be involved in this business. "But very little can be said with certainty until Kiran and Bikram Gurung are arrested," said Inspector Bista. "From this [Darji's] arrest, we understand this type of activity is going on secretly in the refugee camps," he added.
According to Ram Bhandari, a former camp management official at Beldangi Camp -2, both the camp management committee and the Refugee Coordination Unit (RCU) set up by the government have to certify a person as a Bhutanese refugee before a resettlement form is processed.
RCU official Khem Raj Khanal and Beldagi Camp-2 management committee secretary Narad Mani Sanyasi denied having certified Dahal as a Bhutanese refugee.
When asked about this, Bimal Khatri, UNHCR public relations officer at Damak, said police are investigating the case and the truth will come to light only after the investigation is wrapped up.
Darji's case is not an isolated one in the refugee camps, according to Ram Bhandari.
Only five months ago, when Pasang Lama, 32, of Beldangi Camp-2 returned to Nepal after spending two years in a monastery in Sikkim, he was shocked to see the photo of an unknown person in the resettlement form filled in his name.
According to him, around 1,000 Bhutanese refugees have gone missing from the seven UNHCR-run refugee camps. He said some of them had joined the Maoist insurgency in Nepal and others were settled in remote parts of Nepal and India.
Over 108,000 Bhutanese refugees have been living in the seven UNHCR-run refugee camps in Jhapa and Morang districts after being evicted from Bhutan in the 1990s.
Nepalese expelled from Bhutan head for US to seek new life
The 36 hours of flights from Nepal’s capital Kathmandu to New York was the first international flying experience for the refugees
IN Zurich’s gleaming airport, Bhutanese refugee Dambari Kumari Adhikari was exhausted but amazed. “Look at this place,” she said as she gazed in wonder at the neat roads and sleek modern buildings outside the transit terminal. “I doubt Nepal could ever be a tenth of this place.”
The 56-year-old ethnic-Nepali refugee was on her way to start a new life in the United States after more than a decade living in a hut with her family of five adults and three children. Along with 31 other refugees, Adhikari was embarking on a unique resettlement programme with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). She is one of more than 100,000 refugees of Nepalese origin who left Bhutan in the early 1990s and have been living in United Nations refugee camps in southern Nepal ever since.
“I felt I had to leave Bhutan because I was scared for the safety of my family,” said Adhikari who was a widow when she fled, walking six days to Nepal through India in 1991. Despite her dearest wishes Adhikari is not allowed back to Bhutan, so she has chosen to make a new start in the US.
“I would rather go to America than stay in camps for the rest of my life where I have already ruined my children’s future,” said Adhikari, as she travelled to the US with two of her five adult children. “At least in the States, they can have a second chance.”
The 36 hours of flights from Nepal’s capital Kathmandu to New York was the first international flying experience for all the refugees.
Dressed in traditional bright red sari and with a Buddha necklace around her neck, Adhikari carried a tattered white bag covered in IOM stickers. “I am more nervous than happy right now. I have no idea how my life in the United States is going to be,” she said. “I speak no English and I am too old to learn any new tricks.” Adhikari was joining her two sons and a daughter who have already been resettled in Seattle and found jobs.
“I am just so glad and lucky I will be around my family. I have no one left in Nepal,” she said.The US might be the land of opportunity, but “for an old woman like me, the opportunities will be limted,” she said.
Whatever the challenges in starting anew, Adhikari is convinced she has made the right choice. “Camp life was hard and primitive. We had two rooms for a family of five adults and three children. Water, electricity and toilets were luxuries,” she said. After being evicted from eastern Bhutan, Adhikari raised her family alone in Nepal’s Goldhap refugee camp, one of seven UN settlements. “It’s hard raising a family in a refugee camp,” she said. “My children have no citizenship, no money and few opportunities.”
The US and six other countries have agreed to take at least 60,000 Bhutanese refugees, and after endless negotiations between Nepal and Bhutan, Nepal has allowed the refugees to head abroad.
“The decision by the government of Nepal to allow Bhutanese to leave the country is like a good dowry gift for a daughter getting married,” said Adhikari as she clutched a plastic bag with her documentation to enter the US. On the flight from Zurich to New York, Adhikari began missing dal-bhat, Nepalese rice and lentils with pickles and when told by the flight attendant that only European food was available, she made a face and turned the food down. “Why is all the food so sweet? Do they put sugar in everything?” she said.
“I’ve only been away for 24 hours and I have already started missing Nepalese food. How can I live without rice and lentils?” As she touched down in her new home, she looked at her 23-year-old daughter and sighed with relief. “We refugees suffered too much. Everyone has their day and I believe our day has come,” she said. afp
Dreams of home fade for Bhutan's expelled Nepali refugees
Subedi is one of 100,000 Bhutanese of Nepalese origin who fled Bhutan in the early 1990s after compulsory national dress was introduced and the Nepalese language was banned.
The new regulations sparked protests which led to a harsh clampdown by authorities.
"I gave up wanting to return about a year ago," said the 53-year-old once-wealthy farmer in the sprawling Beldangi refugee camp that sits next to rice fields in southern Nepal.
"We have spent too long in this camp where we are forced to live like beggars and rely on United Nations handouts," said Subedi outside his simple hut.
Bhutan's government says the people who left in large numbers in the early 1990s were either immigrants who had settled illegally in Bhutan or people leaving Bhutan voluntarily.
"Life in the camps is often much better than that prevailing in Nepal, India or Bhutan. This is the reason so many people have congregated in the camps claiming to be refugees," Bhutanese spokesman Kinzang Dorji told AFP.
But human rights groups have said the refugees are victims of an ethnic cleansing campaign that saw one-sixth of Bhutan's 600,000 people forced out.
Nepalese farmers began settling in what is now Bhutan hundreds of years ago, and numbers increased through last century due to the underused fertile land in the foothills of the Himalayas.
The ethnically Nepalese farmers were given Bhutanese citizenship in 1958, and many in the camps still hold onto their documents in the hope that they might one day get their land back.
Subedi still has his papers -- and is in no confusion about his status.
"I am a refugee. The Bhutanese forced me to leave. I was in hiding because I had taken part in peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in 1990 and my wife was tortured," he said.
The governments of Nepal and Bhutan have held 16 fruitless rounds of negotiations over the refugees and, with no sign they will ever be allowed back, many like Subedi have given up hope.
-- Giving up the right to return --
The chance of a new start arose for the 107,000 camp residents in 2006, when the US offered to resettle at least 60,000, with Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark and Norway agreeing to take smaller numbers.
But the resettlement offer caused serious tensions between factions in the camps.
Radical Bhutanese Maoist groups have bombed the offices of the International Office of Migration (IOM), the organisation resettling the refugees.
And they have attacked empty buses returning from the airport after dropping off refugees to begin their long journeys overseas.
Five thousand people have already been resettled, and those who want to stay and campaign to be allowed back into Bhutan are losing ground, with around 50,000 of the refugees registered to leave the camps.
Refugee leader Bhampha Rai was surgeon to Bhutan's royal family before he fled in 1991, and he thinks the refugees who have applied to be resettled are making a huge mistake.
"Most people think America and these other countries are heaven but they are not. The refugees lack skills and are going to really struggle when they get there," said Rai.
He believes that by agreeing to resettlement, the refugees are giving up their claims to Bhutanese nationality, and allowing the issue to fizzle out.
"The people leaving are not thinking about the long-term consequences of their actions," said the leader, who has seen support for his standpoint dwindle.
"Once they go they will find it very hard to revive their nationality and are unlikely to be allowed ever to come back."
Deoka Bharati, 27, is committed to remaining a refugee in Nepal, even as she watches many of her friends depart.
"We are not very hopeful of being able to go back, but if we are here at least the dream of returning is kept alive," said Bharati, who teaches children in a town near the camp.
"If we are in a third country there will be no chance at all."
Despite fleeing Bhutan in the middle of the night with just the clothes she wore, Bharati is firm in her decision to stay.
"In my heart I am Bhutanese, and I don't think I will find a good life abroad. Bhutan is my motherland, I grew up there and I want to go back."
New home for Bhutan's refugees
It was in 1986, while I was in high school, that I first felt discriminated against because of my ethnicity. I was a Lhotshampa, which meant I was from the south of the country and spoke Nepalese. My other ethnic Nepalese friends and I wanted to celebrate Dashain, the biggest Hindu festival, so we bunked class. When the school principal berated us for our behaviour we apologised to him – little did I know that far greater repression was yet to come.After finishing school I went to college in eastern Bhutan. At that time it was the only higher education institute in the nation. I wanted to take science but couldn’t because I had only scored 59%. So I studied commerce.
After Zangley Dukpa (now minister of health) became the college principal, the atmosphere became tense. He introduced stringent rules that were intended to repress my minority Nepali-speaking community. He closed down our Nepali Literary Association, which organised recitals of Nepali poems. We were required to wear the national dress (called Gho, a knee-length robe tightened at the waist by a belt) instead of our ethnic Daura Suruwal, a long double-breasted garment flowing below the waist, worn with trousers.
Then in 1989 Principal Dukpa issued an order that prohibited Lhotshampa students from celebrating Dashain. We saw this as discrimination and decided to celebrate anyway. A debate ensued and the security forces were summoned. Our photos were taken, and later the security forces came to our hostel and arrested my classmates.
When I heard that Lhotshampa people were being arrested and tortured, I left for my home in southern Bhutan. When I got there I found that the area had already become a hotbed of peaceful pro-democratic protest. Soon I was told that the security forces were searching for me, and in February 1990 I left for India. I walked for two hours to Kulkule and from there I rode a bus to Jayagaon in West Bengal, India. In Jayagaon I met a lot of Bhutanese refugees. As the crackdown continued in Bhutan, the number of refugees grew.
In the Indian border town of Garganda, refugees were being relocated to temporary camps. Various refugee forums were established there. I joined a group of like-minded refugee youths and in 1990 we formed the People’s Forum for Human Rights. Some of the refugee leaders went to eastern Nepal looking for a place to shelter the refugees. Nepal, which doesn’t share a border with Bhutan, was generous and provided us with land on the bank of the Mai River in the south of the country. I shuttled between India and Nepal, transporting the refugees – mostly children, elderly people and women.
We were able to draw the attention of non-profit organisations and donor agencies. Caritas Nepal, Oxfam and Lutheran World Service were the first to help us. Then, towards the end of 1991, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) started to manage the camps. To this day, my fellow countrymen still live in these seven sprawling camps.
I was registered in one of the camps, but my desire to learn and explore kept leading me to the outside world. I won a scholarship to a college in Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal. It felt like my dream had come true when I was accepted to study science. After two years I won another scholarship to study for a bachelor’s degree in Calcutta, India.
In 1999, I married my long-time sweetheart, who was also a refugee. We left for Kathmandu, where I taught accounting in a number of schools. I wanted to teach because I didn’t like depending on the rations provided by the World Food Programme.
Life was good in Kathmandu, but the homelessness, lack of identity and the bitter past always came back to haunt me. Again, I and a few other professional Lhotshampas banded together to form an organisation – this time it was the Bhutanese Refugee Youth Forum.
In 2005 we were invited to attend a UN conference in New York, so I and one other member of our forum flew to the US. While we were there we met others from Bhutan who had sought refuge in America. They advised us to seek asylum. It sounded convincing. After all, the 15 rounds of talks between Nepal and Bhutan had failed to bring any hope to the 100,000-plus refugees languishing in camps in Nepal.
A year after I applied for asylum I was interviewed by the US Department of Homeland Security. But I have not been given asylum and no one has contacted me to tell my why. I have done several odd jobs while I’ve been here. For the past couple of years I have been working in New York, in software quality assurance. But every year I have to renew my employment authorisation card and life is still in limbo.
I am happy that the US has offered to resettle 70,000 Bhutanese refugees. Many of them are still trickling into the cities and communities of the US. I just hope that I will be granted the right to stay here – and I hope my wife and nine-year-old daughter will be able to join me. I hope that eventually we will have a place to call home.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Choosing Australia with Bhutan in heart
Source: Nepalnews.com
By Indra Adhikari
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Bhawani's house in Bhutan shows that poverty was part of his life in that country as well. | |
Bhawani Acharya faced it twice when he had to change the way of his life. Two days before the festival of Dashain, he left Nepal for what he hoped as a wonderland.
In 1993, he was forced to flee his country of origin, Bhutan, to take asylum in Nepal – a country he had never seen before.
Acharya is among thousands of Bhutanese refugees to leave Nepal for resettlement to western countries, who have assured to absorb over 70,000 of them in the next five years.
However, this was, as the refugees themselves say, is not the solution of their choice but an alternative to get rid of their miserable life as refugees.
His eyes had welled up even though tears did not roll down the cheeks, when he talked to Nepalnews in Kathmandu before flying to his new homeland – Australia. The tears were reflection of his love and affection to his motherland, not of happiness, according to him. Bhutan, in recent years, talks of gross national happiness while over 100,000 of its citizens languish in Nepal, in UN-monitored refugee camps.
An illiterate, who was born in a remote village in southern Bhutan, Acharya had absolutely no idea what lies in store for him in a distant land, 'across the seven oceans' to borrow his words. Language barrier, culture shock, religious differences and separation from relatives have added woes to his elderly life.
Don't you like to be repatriated?
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Wife of Bhawani (middle in red blouse) outside her hut in Khudunabari refugee camp in Jhapa, eastern Nepal, before her departure to Australia. | |
He frowned and replied, "What are you asking? Bhutan is my country and I have the right to go back there. If not me, at least my children will go there. This (third country resettlement) is not a lasting solution."
His son and nephew were smiling when Acharya spilled over the sentimental statement. Nephew Dhyanu added, “Yes we hope to get back to that land from where we came. Australia is not our choice.”
US, Australia and Europe have been craze among residents of many countries, yet Bhutanese refugees put priority to their own homeland. It has astonished many, like rights activist Tapan Bose, who in an interview with Australian radio some months back said he was amazed by the choice of refugees.
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A nervous Dhyanu is all set to begin a new life in a new country | |
Dhyanu was merely seven years old when his family was evicted from Bhutan. He hardly remembers under what situation he lived or under what threats his family left Bhutan. Even though he grew up in Nepal, completed his Bachelors degree here, Dhyanu speaks of his affiliation and affection towards the land he was born to. He was the only one of his family to leave Nepal that day for Australia and was quite nervous from the separation.
Both these people can hardly imagine their life in an Australian metropolis. They are confirmed to be resettled in Melbourne, the second largest city of the Island-country. "I don't have any idea what I should do," Dhyanu says.
Nervousness had engulfed Bhawani more because he was not only illiterate but also has poor health and cannot do physical works. "Will I be a milkman?" he assumes about his work because he had little milk business while in camp that helped him buy vegetables and clothes for children.
"I will do anything that comes. After all, I have to live."
Dhyanu was a teacher in a boarding school while in Nepal. This has given no chance for him to acquire any professional skills that might be helpful for him in Australia. The orientation classes organised by resettling countries he attended made him more confused about choosing a profession. It was just like an information session on life and laws of that country.
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Bhawani still hopes his children will be able to get back to Bhutan one day | |
What Dhyanu and other family members of Bhawani, since Bhawani personally did not attend, learnt from orientation classes was that Australia has stricter laws. Dhyanu assumes he would have a hard time to adopt with the situation because he has grown up in Nepal where freedom has superceded responsibilities.
Bhawani rests his hope to live a decent life compared to his days in Bhutan and Nepal. He is more hopeful about the future of his children who are growing up and likely to get acquainted with the Australian society faster.
Above all, they hope to get back to their country to overcome the suppression Nepali speaking people have been facing in that country since two decades like this song says – we shall overcome one day. nepalnews.com Oct 11 08
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Exiled Bhutanese celebrate Dashain in Australia
Source: Apfanews.com
Adelaide, October 09: Bhutanese resettled in Australia recently have celebrated the Dashain, the greatest festival of Hindus, with merry making Thursday.
A total of 55 Bhutanese in Adelaide, Australia gathered at the residence of Bhanu Adhikari for the celebrations.
They received tika and blessings from the elder. This is the first big festival Bhutanese celebrated after being resettled to third country.
Lunch and dances followed. While of the dancing floor, one put it, “People used to tell us that it is not possible to celebrate our festivals in third country, but it was wrong. We are celebrating like we celebrated in Bhutan and later in camps. It is in fact better than festivities in camps, we have a house to be in but what we miss is only our relatives."
They jointly said, "We were celebrating yesterday, we are celebrating today and we will be celebrating in future too."
They also paid a visit to nearby Hindu temple on October 5 on occasion of Durga Puja to offer prayer and sing hymns.
Similar celebrations were performed in Tasmania, Melbourne, Albury and Sydney.
People gathered to one of the elders in the city to receive tika and blessings.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
American refugees iternal story
Source: NepalBC.com
For 17 years, the Odari family was among more than 107,000 Bhutanese refugees in camps scattered over the southeastern plains of Nepal, hoping to return to their rightful place: Bhutan.
The nine-member family shared a small hut with thatched roof and dirt floor with no electricity, running water, toilet or kitchen. They lived on sparse rations of rice, lentils, vegetables, salt, sugar and oil distributed twice a month by United Nations agencies, but the food was never enough to fill their hungry bellies.
Then on April 9, three members of the Odari family arrived in Pittsburgh, in the US state of Pennsylvania to start a new life.
"We were having a tough time in the refugee camp. We're happy to be here," said a beaming Man Maya, 25, who is living with her younger sister, Yani Maya, 22, and brother, Dilli Prasad, 20, in an apartment at Prospect Park in Whitehall.
Last night, their elderly parents, two more brothers - one 24 and disabled and another 17, and two other sisters, 21 and 25, were expected to arrive here to join them.
The family's relocation is being assisted by Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Pittsburgh.
Man Maya was only nine when she was forced to leave Bhutan with her parents and other family members. They were among the 120,000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese - mostly Hindu and Buddhist - who were evicted from Bhutan in the late 1980s and early '90s when the Bhutanese rulers forced them to wear traditional dress, required that they speak the Dzongkha language and deprived many of citizenship.
Protests against the stringent rules resulted in the mass exodus of tens of thousands to neighbouring India.
India, in turn, forced most of them to enter Nepal, which does not share a border with Bhutan.
Dilli Prasad Odari said all of his family decided to resettle in the US. "In camps we had to rely on UNHCR for our daily needs. But here we can live on our own, and it's also good for future generation," he said.
Some of his other relatives have been resettled in Texas.
The family is gradually becoming accustomed to their new surroundings in the Whitehall area in the South Hills.
They are taking English classes in the mornings. They received health screenings shortly after their arrival. They also received food assistance to shop at Wal-Mart.
Even though he's 20, Odari last attended 10th grade in the refugee camp and hopes to further his education here. He likes to compare Pittsburgh with Ilam, a city in the eastern highland of Nepal that has similar topography. A lover of Nepali music, he has brought a collection of Nepali lyrics. "But I'm dying to listen to Nepali songs," he said.
Man Maya, a high school graduate, said it's hard to keep connected with her loved ones across the ocean. "It's hard to make phone calls to Nepal," she said.
Yani Maya is a little worried about finding work. "I hope we'll be able to work after four months," she said. "They seem happy and are feeling good about being here," said John Miller, director of refugee services for Catholic Charities. His organisation is resettling a total of 170 refugees in 2008.
Catholic Charities also provides core services such as applying for Social Security cards, medical screening, enrollment in English language training, employment counselling and orientation to the refugees. According to Miller, Catholic Charities provides its services for five years after they arrive. Catholic Charities in Pittsburgh also has helped resettle Vietnamese, Burmese, Sudanese, Somalian, Burundian, Iraqi, Meskhetian Turks (from the former Soviet Union) and Haitian refugees.
"Each refugee group has a different set of challenges," Miller said. "They have struggles but they also have emotional and psychological issues."
Odari hopes more Bhutanese will be resettled in Pittsburgh. "It feels good to be here but I'm also missing my friends in Nepal," he said, adding that he is developing friendships with young Burmese refugees in the neighbourhood.
He's learning the bus routes of the city and has learned how to follow maps to visit places.
On a recent afternoon, when he saw a deer in the nearby woods, he was thrilled.
Eventually he hopes to return for a visit to Nepal to see the place where he said he has spent "some of the hardest times of my life."
