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Kathmandu Wednesday February 27, 2002 Falgun 15, 2058.
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Sickening delay
The 12th ministerial level Joint Committee Meeting (JCM)
between Nepal and Bhutan expected to take place this week has been put off indefinitely.
Neither side has made any statement about another joint committee meeting. And how long
will it take for the Druk regime, which has undermined the refugees’ rights so long,
to take back its refugees languishing in seven UNHRC-run camps in eastern Nepal since
1991? If the meeting had taken place, it would have at least resolved the deadlock on
categorization, if not the fate of one hundred thousand refugees. But the way the meeting
has been put off shows that the Deuba government has no clear policy to deal with the
decade-old refugee problem. As a result, the fate of more than one hundred thousand
Bhutanese refugees remains as uncertain as ever. It is also clear the Bhutanese government
has deliberately initiated a resettlement plan on the land that belongs to Bhutanese
refugees. Thimphu has allocated refugees’ land in Samchi and Sarbhang districts to
police and army personnel. Such a resettlement plan has not only affected the repatriation
process but also undermined the refugees’ rights.
The Joint Verification Team (JVT), formed last March after
the US exerted pressure on Bhutan, has verified 1363 families at Khudunabari camp. It took
seven months to distinguish Bhutanese from among the non-Bhutanese refugees at Khudunabari
camp, leave aside the categorization process. If the JVT verifies refugees at snail’s
pace, it will take at least seven years to complete the verification process in the
remaining six camps. Will these refugees be able to ever return to Bhutan has been the
question that has been haunting everyone ever since they entered into this country through
India. Neither India has taken any initiative to resolve this decade old refugee deadlock,
nor have successive governments of this country succeeded in repatriating the refugees.
Former foreign minister and incumbent finance minister Ram Sharan Mahat and Nepalese
ambassador to Bhutan Bhekh Bahadur Thapa had assured the refugees that they would be
returning home with dignity and honour by December last year. Unfortunately, the assurance
turned out to be a lofty ideal.
Of the total numbers verified, ninety-five percent of the
refugees have produced evidence of being bonafide Bhutanese national. This provides a
picture of how Bhutan forcibly evicted thousands of minorities, citing its archaic laws
— Driglam Namzha and one nation one people policy. This was a sort of forced
assimilation and cultural annihilation that the authoritarian regime adopted to evict the
Nepali minority from Bhutan. Now Bhutan has encouraged Nomads, army and police personnel
to resettle on refugees’ land. The secretary level talks on the categorization
process that took place last December did not yield any tangible result. The main factor,
why one-sixth of Bhutan’s population has been languishing in seven different camps,
is the poor Nepali leadership. The main opposition party, which should have joined its
hands with the ruling Nepali Congress, has instead joined its hands with the Koirala
coterie to overthrow the Deuba government. NC president Girija Prasad Koirala has been
trying to topple the Deuba government citing Maoist insurgency. Koirala should better urge
the government to resolve the refugee deadlock rather than hankering after power. |
