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As Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal wind down, resettlement program is considered a success

It’s Teacher’s Day at Beldangi refugee camp. Students at Tri Ratna Secondary School are thanking their teachers with speeches, songs, and folk dances on a bamboo stage decorated with their mothers’ saris.

This has been a yearly tradition since the school opened in 1992, when the refugees had just arrived and classes were held in an empty field. Now, they study in a modest complex of bamboo classrooms that even has a science lab and small teachers’ lounge. But there aren’t many students left. The school’s principal, Purna Gurung, says the student body has dropped from nearly 3,000 to fewer than 200 as kids leave the camp and resettle in new countries. But he has no plans to leave himself.

“I have chosen to be here, longing for repatriation to Bhutan, my own country,” Gurung says.

Principal Purna Gurung, left, and one of his teachers at Tri Ratna Secondary School at the Beldangi refugee camp.

Credit: 

Salim Ali/PRI

Fleeing ethnic cleansing, finding new homes in third countries

In the 1990s, people in Nepal like Gurung, with certain ethnic backgrounds, were pushed out of the country through a severe campaign to retain Bhutanese national identity. Around 108,000 people moved through India to Nepal, where camps were eventually established. In 2007, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, started accepting applications for moves to third countries. After almost a decade of the resettlement program, more than 105,000 Bhutanese refugees have moved abroad. The vast majority have started new lives in the United States.

With about 90 percent of the refugees now abroad, the Bhutanese program is actually a huge success, as far as refugee resettlement goes. More often, refugees never get the option to move. According to Kevin Allen, the Kathmandu-based representative of the UN refugee agency, global displacement has now reached World War II levels. And fewer than 1 percent of refugees typically find safe homes in new countries.

“There are currently 65 million people forcibly displaced, it’s in the news, the Syria situation, South Sudan, Somalia, etc., and so the international community is hard pressed to meet needs globally,” Allen says.

The Bhutanese refugees were given until Nov. 15 of this year to apply to go abroad. By the end of the year, UNHCR will stop forwarding applications for resettlement. Allen predicts there will be about 10,000 people left here at the end.

One of the last to leave will be 29-year-old teacher Sita Adhikari.

Adhikari teaches high school math in the camp and makes $7 a month. She actually has a master’s degree in humanities. But when the camp’s last math teacher moved to the US, she was the most qualified person to take over.

Back in her bamboo hut, she teaches herself the lessons while trying to keep her young kids occupied enough to ignore the oppressive heat and mosquitoes. A small fan quietly fights back in the corner, but sweat trickles with any movement. When a problem stumps her, she texts her brother for help. He used to teach math in the camp too, but resettled to Rochester, New York, in 2008. Soon she’ll join him.

“I want to experience life and I want to provide my children more facilities than I used to have because I have taken much struggle in life now,” Adhikari says.

Sita Adhikari with children at a refugee camp, where she also teaches high school math.

Credit: 

Salim Ali/PRI

Some refugees don't want to be resettled

Adhikari says she’s late to apply for resettlement because her recent divorce has complicated her application. But some of her neighbors are still here because they don’t actually want to move. Some think they’ll be given land in the area if they stay.

“Some want to return back to Bhutan also. There are people. There is one grandfather there. He wants to move back to Bhutan.”

But Adhikari knows this is unlikely. She says people have been talking about moving back to Bhutan since the ’90s, but it hasn’t happened. One of these people holding out for return was Adhikari’s own primary school teacher, Dhanman Khadka, who came to her hut to talk.

Khadka has been teaching primary school in the camp since 1994 and was adamant against resettling; so much so that his wife and son moved to Australia without him in 2012. They haven’t spoken since. But now 64 and living alone, he’s resigned himself. Last March, Khadka applied for resettlement to Dallas, where his daughter lives.

“What to do — so many relatives are there. Better to go there, our life is better than here,” he says.

Khadka’s friend, 70-year-old Dal Bahadur Bista, disagrees.

“I’m not going. I’m staying here.”

Dal Bahadur Bista makes a cradle out of bamboo.

Credit: 

Salim Ali/PRI

Bista has lived in the camp for 24 years. He still considers Bhutan, where he had to abandon his house and fields of cardamom and orange trees, home.

“I have really really big hopes that I could be back one day in my land in Bhutan, and if not, I’d like to die here in this land, but I won’t go to a third country. At least I can die here in peace in this camp.”

Bista sits outside his hut sweating over bamboo he’s fashioning into a baby cradle. Refugees aren’t legally allowed to work in Nepal, but the informal economy is flush with their labor. He sells his bamboo crafts both in the camp and to locals outside, but he knows these skills won’t translate well in the West.

Global: Fr Varkey Perekkatt SJ gives Bhutanese refugees a voice

During the 36th General Congregation for the Society of Jesus, JRS had the opportunity to meet with Jesuits that previously worked for JRS.This is the first of a series of articles featuring their experiences in the field. 

Rome, 5 December 2016 - Fr Varkey Perekkatt SJ, former field director for JRS in Nepal, believes that education is what enabled more than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees to be resettled and find a better future. 

Fr Varkey started working for the Jesuit Refugee Service South Asia Region in Nepal in 1998 after tens of thousands of Bhutanese people of Nepali origin fled persecution and crossed into India and Nepal for protection and asylum. The Bhutanese government cracked down on minorities, using rape, arson, deportation, and other tactics in an attempt to "protect" Bhutanese culture. By 1991, one-sixth of Bhutan's population was seeking asylum in Nepal and India.

Since 1994, JRS and Caritas Nepal along with UNHCR and other NGOs have worked together providing emergency relief, medical care, shelter, primary and secondary education, teacher training, vocational education, and education for adults and refugees with disabilities. JRS staff also visited refugees and their families in their homes to emphasise the importance of education.

In 2003, Fr Varkey become the field director in Nepal where he oversaw all levels of JRS' Bhutanese Refugee Education Programmes (BREP). During that time, he made constant visits to schools through the camps and noted that students were always eager to do well. Some schools had nearly 7,000 children. 

Working with a largely Hindu population, Fr Varkey described how people of different faiths would stand in solidarity with another. 

First song ever by Kishor Siwakoti from his Album "TRIBUTE".

What The World’s “Happiest” Country Did To Its Ethnic Minority Is Horrific

By Akshay Tarfe:

The media narrative about Bhutan still remains as a peaceful Himalayan utopia with a green economy. Most of that, might be true. But perhaps what we don’t know is that Bhutan is home to some of the most draconian and dictatorial laws coupled with a glaring history of xenophobia and ethnic hatred.

In 1996, the population in the refugee camps of Nepal exploded. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) declared that the camps had more than 100,000 people from Bhutan. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the UNHCR had to start a large-scale rehabilitation program for those people who had suffered due to the ethnic cleansing in Bhutan. The main reason was that they were not ‘Bhutanese enough’ to stay in a country where they had lived for generations. The Bhutanese army forced them to sign the forms which said they are leaving the country voluntarily. Overnight, these hardworking people became refugees and were forced to settle in 10 camps across Nepal.

It was part of a massive project sanctioned by the government to protect the culture and the identity of Bhutan. The Citizenship Act of 1985 was mostly targeted against the ‘Lhotshampas’ community in Bhutan. This ethnic group consisted of people of Nepalese origin who migrated to Bhutan after economic reforms were announced in 1960s. They came here as construction workers and labourers and settled in the southern parts of the country. Their distinct language, culture and religion were considered to be against the ‘Driglam Namzha’, the Bhutanese national dress and etiquette code.

Bhutanese refugees wait for food at a camp. Source: Prakash Mathema/Getty

After Sikkim became part of India, the political masters in Thimphu saw it as a victory for the Nepali migrant majority over the monarchy of Sikkim. This, combined with other factors, forced them to pass draconian and dictatorial laws to make Bhutan a homogeneous country with one language. Immigration is strictly prohibited in Bhutan today. The so called ‘One Nation, One People‘ policy enacted by the government pushed the Himalayan Kingdom into long lasting ethnic violence.

The importance of Buddhism cannot be denied in the national identity of Bhutan but the country has rejected idea of secularism by making Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism as the state religion. The constitution of 2008 provides religious freedom but it has remained largely on paper. The International Religious Freedom report published by the U.S. State Department says that societal and governmental pressure for conformity with religious norms was prevalent.

‘I am encouraged by the openness of Nepal government to discuss the fate of remaining refugees’

We have been stepping up our advocacy and diplomacy with the government of Bhutan on this issue. At this point, we do not have green light but the conversation is still going on. The dialogue is there, the Anchordiplomacy is there, and we are in talks with Bhutan about this.

Jun 20, 2016- The third-country group resettlement of the Bhutanese refugees is almost coming to a close. While the referral process has been stopped, the process could take until early 2017 to complete. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) believes that about 10,000 refugees will be left behind in camps for various reasons; about two thousand have declined to take part in the resettlement and instead have opted for voluntary repatriation to Bhutan; there are cases of mixed marriages; and, several hundreds have been rejected by recipient countries. With the resettlement window closing, UNHCR has two other durable options that it is pursuing: voluntary repatriation and local integration. Against this backdrop, John Narayan Parajuli spoke with the outgoing UNHCR Nepal Representative Craig Sanders—in the first week of June before he left to take up his new assignment in Geneva—about the end of the resettlement process, the fate of the remaining population and prospects of local integration and repatriation to Bhutan.

So when is the resettlement process for Bhutanese refugees coming to an end?

A: The large-scale resettlement is coming to an end. But I hope there will always be an opportunity for resettlement for some people-- through family reunification or through other means. But that’s going to be in a very individualized basis and not group resettlement. We finished most of our referrals at the end of last year. We’re now processing other cases. As you know the departure time is around 18 months. So while we finished our referrals in the December of last year, those people may not depart until the end of this year or sometime in 2017. So, in short, the process is coming to an end. But hopefully, there will always be a small window of resettlements. But it will be in small numbers.

What will happen to the UNHCR presence both in the camps and in Kathmandu once the group resettlement process is over?

A: Well, our interest is to find solutions for everyone, including those who for various reasons are likely to remain behind in Nepal. We have a lot of mixed marriages and we have approximately 2000 people who did not want to pursue resettlement. We have had people who said they want to pursue resettlement but later changed their minds. So there will be a population that will remain behind. And our interest is to see that everyone has a solution. So, in terms of our presence, I think we will try, as much as possible,