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Kathmandu Wednesday January 09, 2002 Paush 25, 2058.
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Help repatriation
The 11th SAARC summit provided ample
opportunity for bilateral contacts between member countries to resolve political
differences and, at the same time, strengthen economic ties. Even Indian Prime Minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh did not hesitate to meet Pervez
Musharraf and Abdul Sattar — despite the heightened tensions along their militarised
common border. Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba also claims to have met Bhutan’s
Prime Minister Lyonpo Khandu Wangchuk over the long-standing Bhutanese refugee problem.
What the two prime ministers discussed has not been made public. However, the fate of the
Bhutanese refugees continues to remain uncertain since Bhutan rejected Nepal’s
proposal regarding refugee categorisation at last November’s secretary level meeting.
Nepal wants the categorisation to be limited to Bhutanese and non-Bhutanese. The next
ministerial level meeting to decide categorisation related matters will take place some
time in February. Refugees already verified as genuine Bhutanese are waiting to be
categorised before they are actually repatriated. Differences between Nepal and Bhutan
over categorisation will delay the repatriation process further. Besides, intra-party
feuding within the ruling Nepali Congress (NC) has also come to the fore. NC president
Girija Prasad Koirala has begun rallying with the opposition parties over his call for the
formation of a broad democratic alliance, seen by many as a ploy to grab another stint as
prime minister. If the proposed alliance snowballs, it will no doubt affect the refugee
repatriation process also. It may be recalled that in the past the Bhutanese authorities
have cited government instability in Kathmandu as one of the reasons why progress on the
refugee issue has been slow.
Last December the Joint Verification Team
(JVT) completed the task of verifying the 1,963 Bhutanese refugee families at Khudunabari
camp. It took almost seven months to separate Bhutanese from non-Bhutanese among the
refugees. More than ninety-five percent of the refugees have produced "authentic
documents" to prove that they are bona fide Bhutanese nationals. There are six more
camps, which altogether contain more than 90,000 refugees, all waiting to be verified.
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. Unfortunately, more than 12,000
already verified refugees are still waiting for the day when they will set foot in their
own country again. The opposition leaders, who should have joined hands with the
government in its efforts to tackle such a serious problem, have also failed to support
its demand on categorisation. These leaders, who should have the national interest
uppermost in mind, have instead been quick to support Koirala’s proposed democratic
alliance, no doubt with a view to triggering and profiting from political instability.
Koirala must stop making political mischief at this juncture. He must realise that the
country is facing serious problems on all fronts, some of it as a result of his own poor
leadership while he was at Baluwatar. He must refrain from rocking the boat when it is
navigating particularly difficult waters. Any boiling over of difference within the ruling
party or a change of government mid-stream may well mean the manifold problems besetting
this country will linger longer and the refugees will continue to languish in the camps. |
