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."

UNHCR says mixed marriage cases unlikely for TCR

Source: APFANEWS.COM

Kathmandu, September 23: When there are several pending cases of mixed marriages in camps, between exiled Bhutanese and Nepalese or Indian citizens, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has addressed some key issues connected to this.

A monthly bulletin of UNHCR published last month attempted to clarity an instance regarding resettlement of a family if a member has married a Nepali or Indian citizen.

UNHCR said, resettlement is a solution intended to provide assistance to 'refugees' and is not a right. For applying for resettlement, a person must be a 'refugee' from Bhutan registered with the Government of Nepal. If someone in such a family is married to a Nepali or Indian national, and that person is a dependent family member, UNHCR is reluctant to separate the family members and therefore additional assessments of the situation would be required before making any decision to process that case for resettlement.

The bulletin explained that UNHCR would refer the case of an exiled woman, who is married to a Nepali national, to the Nepal Bar Association which advises the woman on the Nepal law regarding citizenship.

"A refugee woman married to a Nepali man may not be eligible for resettlement because she is able to naturalize in Nepal", wrote the bulletin adding, "She would therefore no longer be a refugee''. According to UNHCR, such women do not require international protection and resettlement as a durable solution.

However, if an exiled man marries a Nepali woman, he may be eligible to apply for residency status in Nepal. "It is UNHCR policy, however, to conduct a thorough assessment of the entire family to determine the refugee family's situation and whether they should be referred for resettlement to a third country together due to the nature of dependency bonds between family
members."

Further, regarding marriages between exiled Bhutanese and Indian citizens, UNHCR has said that if an exiled Bhutanese has married an Indian national, the former may be entitled to residency status in India, and even citizenship.

"Each refugee married to an Indian will be carefully interviewed and assessed by UNHCR to determine the options for that person and the situation of the refugee family before referring them for resettlement."

The UN Refugee Agency has asked households having such cases to be patient. The agency said that additional interviews with such families are to be conducted which would delay the process.

Mix marriage complications in several families have rendered the burden of family separation among members whose cases for resettlement are pending since several months of relocation of other family associates. Bhutan News Service

More than 5,000 refugees resettled from Nepal

Source: UNHCR

KATHMANDU, Nepal, September 23 (UNHCR) - More than 5,000 refugees from Bhutan have left their camps in Nepal for resettlement countries so far this year. The United States has accepted the largest numbers, followed by Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Canada and Denmark.

The resettlement programme in Nepal began only this year but quickly became one of UNHCR's largest and most promising.

In total, 4,833 refugees have left for the US, 129 for New Zealand, 131 for Australia, 22 for the Netherlands, 19 for Norway, 16 for Canada and 13 for Denmark.

More than 50,000 refugees have expressed interest in resettlement - just under half of the total 107,000 refugees originating from Bhutan who live in seven camps in eastern Nepal. Some of them have been in exile for as long as 17 years.

"Five thousand departures mean that 5,000 refugees are now starting their lives afresh," said Daisy Dell, the UN refugee agency's representative in Kathmandu. "The resettlement process has been going very smoothly, thanks to close cooperation between UNHCR, the International Organization for Migration [IOM] and the resettlement countries."

She added, "We are especially grateful to the Nepalese government for facilitating the whole process, including hosting the refugees for so many years and now issuing them exit permits promptly."

Those who left have not forgotten about their friends back in Nepal. Many have written letters about their new country and new life.

"As a matter of fact, resettlement could be the best chance to rebuild our lives," said one of the refugee women resettled to the US. "Although starting over is not easy, there is a programme for everyone with the resettling agencies, no matter what age, qualification or gender. We have
seen other former refugees doing well, so we can do it as well."

According to another refugee in the US, the elderly are a little worried about their culture and day-to-day religious life. "We hope to build a Hindu temple nearby," said a recent arrival from Nepal. "We have to preserve our culture. The nearest Hindu temple is a one-hour drive away."

In Nepal's camps, UNHCR staff hold regular meetings with the refugees to answer questions about resettlement and other durable solutions. Special information sessions are organized for women at risk or people with disabilities. Refugees are being offered English language classes as well as additional vocational and skill-based training to prepare for a life in a
new country.

Another 2,000 to 3,000 refugees are expected to leave Nepal for third countries by the end of this year. At the same time, UNHCR continues to advocate for the option of voluntary return to Bhutan for those refugees who wish to do so, and hopes that talks on repatriation can restart soon.

Bhutan's "Nelson Mandela" struggling with life and death in Druk regime's jail

Source: Nepalnews.com

Bhutanese human rights leader Dhan Kuma Rai has been languishing in Bhutanese jail for the last 17 years on the charge of "treason".

Rai, 45, a resident of Sibsu bloc in Samchi district of southern Bhutan, was sentenced to life by the country's autocratic Druk regime for his involvement in 1990's pro-democracy movement in the tiny Himalayan kingdom.

The Indian police had arrested Rai from bordering Indian town of Chisang in the year 1991 while he was living a life of a political exile there and then, much to the dismay of pro-democracy Bhutanese leaders, handed him over to Bhutan.

Rai's family was among the hundreds of thousands of Nepali-speaking ethnic Bhutanese driven out forcibly from Bhutan in 1990 in the largest ever ethnic cleansing South Asia has seen. They took shelter in one of the UN-run refugee camp in Khudunabari, Jhapa.

Rai's family members told Kantipur daily that nothing has been done till now for the release of Rai from the Bhutanese jail.

Bhutanese refugee leader Tek Nath Rijal told the daily that the Druk regime had accused Rai of treason for his involvement in the 1990 pro-democracy movement.

Rijal said that Rai was also the first engineer of Druk Air, Bhutan's national flag carrier. Rai is also the founding general secretary of Bhutan People's Party, which had waged a short-lived armed movement in Southern Bhutan in the 1990s against Druk regime's relentless oppression of ethnic
Nepali-speaking populace of the region officially called the "Lotshampas".

BPP's spokesperson Gopal Gurung said that in recognition of Rai's relentless struggle to establish democracy in Bhutan the party has continued to retain Rai in the party's top post.

However, Gurung admitted that the party has been unable to launch a strong campaign for Rai's release.

"Due to torture he received in the jail my brother has somewhat lost his mental balance," Rai's younger brother Suman said. He had met his brother a year ago.

Rai has been kept in Chemgunj jail, 8 kilometers away from capital Thimpu. After falling seriously ill, Rai had been transferred to General hospital inThimpu a year ago.

From Bhutan to Chicago

Source: www.rabbibrant.com

September 22, 2008 by Rabbi Brant Rosen

Just enjoyed a wonderful potluck dinner at JRC with the Khatiwodas - a refugee family from Bhutan who recently resettled in Chicago. (There they are in the pic above with congregation members Edie Canter and Elaine Waxman). JRC is sponsoring the Khatiwodas through the Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Ministries, an NGO that partners with congregations and organizations and in Illinois to provide direct services to refugees and immigrants and encourages active involvement in refugee and immigration issues.

Needless to say, the refugee crisis in Bhutan/Nepal has not received a lion’s share of media attention. The basics: in the early 1990s, the Bhutanese government began expelling ethnic Nepalese, regarding them as a demographic and cultural threat. As of early this year, roughly 108,000 stateless Bhutanese were living in seven refugee camps in Nepal and the Bhutanese government still has not allowed any to return. As far back as 2006, the US government, offered to resettle 60,000 Bhutanese refugees, but they have only recently begun to arrive in the US.

By year’s end, over 10,000 refugees are expected to leave Nepal in what is being described as one of the world’s largest resettlement operations. Meanwhile, the situation in the Nepal refugee camps remain dire. This past spring a fire raged through the Goldhap camp in eastern Nepal, leaving nearly 8,000 Bhutanese refugees homeless - including the Khatiwoda family. (As if all of these ordeals weren’t enough, the Khatiwodas were dealt even more heartache when the family’s grandmother took seriously ill after they arrived at their stopover in NYC. She has now remained behind for treatment, accompanied by her son).

In anticipation of the Khatiwoda’s arrival, JRC donated furnishings and household items for their new apartment in Rogers Park and members of our Refugee Task Force spent the better part of two weeks cleaning the place up and getting it ready. The family finally arrived in Chicago last week - and fortunately, their readjustment has been aided by the presence here of extended family who arrived in town ahead of them. Many JRC members have also begun to help them negotiate through the challenges of the initial settlement into their new home.

We had a lovely time at our dinner tonight as members of our Task Force had the opportunity to formally meet the Khatiwodas. They are beginning a new and hopeful chapter in a long journey and we’re truly honored to be sharing it with them…