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Kathmandu Saturday November 10, 2001 Kartik 25, 2058.
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Our
fecklessness
That the Nepal-Bhutan official level talks were doomed from
the very start was quite clear from the manner in which the Finance Minister, Dr Ram
Sharan Mahat, and the Royal Nepalese Ambassador to Bhutan, Dr Bhek Bahadur Thapa, said
publicly that the refugees verified at the Khudunabari camp would return home by the end
of the year. Dr Mahat said this in August after the ministerial level talks in Thimpu and
Dr Thapa said almost the same thing except for a delayed time frame at the Reporters Club
just recently. Their optimism was too good to be true and we had said as much. The
Bhutanese stand on the refugee issue has been rigid all along despite the pressure brought
to bear on Thimpu by the Western powers to restart the delayed talks that finally go
underway late last year. During the talks the verification process was agreed upon. But
there is now no mistaking that all this was a mere gesture on Thimpu’s part to remain
in the good books of West without really conceding anything. The verification process at
the Khudunabari camp where almost 13,000 refugees have been languishing for the past
decade is almost complete. But their return home to Bhutan is still a distant dream. The
categorisation of the refugees will have to follow and despite their having been forced to
sign signifying their "voluntary exit" from the Druk Kingdom, most of the
refugees will not be allowed to return because of antiquated and inhumane laws. Such laws
prevent the return of "voluntary" exiles back into Bhutan, no matter how subtly
coerced such "voluntary" exits might have been. Then there is the
"Bhutanese with criminal records" category. As long as they are Bhutanese,
whatever their records, they should be Bhutan’s responsibility. It is not a
responsibility that the Druk government can shirk by simply disowning its own bad boys,
especially when such disowning means another country has to be saddled with them.
It is worth reiterating that Nepal should never have conceded
to any categorization of the refugees other than Bhutanese and non-Bhutanese. Conceding to
anything in between was only capitulating to Druk diplomacy which has deftly managed to
fudge and obfuscate things to take full advantage of the fact that we are faced with a
fait accompli and are not negotiating from any position of strength. Some observers are
beginning to say that Nepal might be hinting at its willingness to live with some of the
refugees after all. That would only mean Thimpu is succeeding in its designs. It also
means that we have failed to take the whole problem with the seriousness it deserves. We
never took the initial inflow of refugees seriously until the trickle became a flood. We
never took the Bhutanese establishment seriously only to learn to our cost what formidable
diplomatic adversaries they can be. Blaming Bhutanese intentions is one thing. But it
should go hand in hand with the condemnation of our own fecklessness. We should now
examine the options that face us and choose from them and act upon them with the requisite
will power to make up for past failing.
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