Nepalese expelled from Bhutan head for US to seek new life

Source: Daily Times

By Subel Bhandari

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

Source: AFP

BELDANGI REFUGEE CAMP, Nepal (AFP) — After more than 15 years living in bamboo huts in a refugee camp in Nepal, Hem Lal Subedi has no desire to return to Bhutan, and now sees his only option is a new life overseas.

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

Source: GuardianWeekly

Nestled between India and China, the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan seems an unlikely starting point for large-scale ethnic displacement. But since the early 90s more than 100,000 members of the Nepalese-speaking Bhutanese population have been living in refugee camps in eastern Nepal, evicted from Bhutan for their pro-democratic activities. This year almost 5,000 Bhutanese refugees will leave their camps for resettlement in the US, according to a report by the UNHCR. Kishor Pradhan, who has been in exile since 1990, hopes to become one of them.

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.

Choosing Australia with Bhutan in heart

Source: Nepalnews.com

By Indra Adhikari

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?

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.

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.

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

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.