 |
Kathmandu Friday January 18, 2002 Magh 05, 2058.
|
Refugees seek US intervention
By DR D N S DHAKAL
Appropriately, it should have been the role of the Indian Government. For reasons unknown
India
is unwilling to come forward to mediate the Bhutanese refugee issue despite its enormous
clout
over the ruling elite in Thimphu and its binding responsibility based on the Indo-Bhutan
Treaty of
1949. Nepal had clearly stated from the beginning that it would approach for India’s
assistance if
the Bhutanese refugee problem in Nepal could not be resolved through bilateral talks.
Nepal gave
up its effort when the latter ignored the call of then Nepalese Prime Minister Girija
Prasad Koirala
who said in 1998 that ‘the Bhutanese refugee issue is a tri-lateral problem,
requiring India’s
involvement in finding the lasting solution. Since then, HMG Nepal has turned to
international
assistance for resolution of this decade old problem.
No one disagrees that over 100,000 Bhutanese refugees have become victims of circumstance
in
Bhutan. Earlier the Royal Government was not even willing to accept that there are any
Bhutanese people in the camps. Its position was ‘The UNHCR organized camps in Jhapa
and
Morang districts of eastern Nepal was feeding poor Nepali people from north eastern India
or from
within the Kingdom of Nepal’, thereby questioning the integrity of the reputed
international
organization and HMG Nepal. Now with the verification of over 12,000 individuals at
Khudunabari
camp by the Joint Verification Team commissioned by the governments of Bhutan and Nepal,
the
Bhutanese identity of these innocent people is well established. This result is primarily
due to the
initiative of the United States of America in December 2000, when Karl Inderfurth and
Julia Taft,
two Assistant Secretaries of State, visited Thimphu and Kathmandu, to persuade the two
governments to commission the process of verifying the refugees.
Now the hurdle to repatriation is the issue of categorization. Way back in 1993, when
Bhutan was
refusing to acknowledge the presence of any Bhutanese nationals in the camps, HMG Nepal
acceded to the demand of the Royal Government to categorize the refugees into four groups:
(1)
Bhutanese forcibly evicted, (2) Bhutanese who emigrated, (3) Non-Bhutanese people, and (4)
Bhutanese with criminal records in its attempt to bring Bhutan to the negotiating table.
Neither of
the two parties revealed their intentions in agreeing to such a framework, nor did they
expect the
issue to drag so long because of this agreement. Perhaps, Nepal’s view was: whether a
refugee
signed a so-called voluntary migration form, fled country for the fear of persecution, or
committed
criminal acts in Bhutan—they are all Bhutanese and the concern of the Royal
Government. Nepal
revealed this thinking in December 2001 during the Secretarial Level Technical Meet in
Kathmandu for the categorization of about 12,500 individuals verified from Khudunabari
camp.
The meet ended without conclusive results: Nepal, demanding that ‘Bhutan allow its
citizens,
irrespective of the categories to which they belong, to return with honour and
dignity’, and Bhutan
sticking to the need for so-called harmonization of position of each country on each of
the
categories. It is widely believed that Bhutan is hoping to disown through this process a
large
chunk of Bhutanese people, particularly those who signed the so-called voluntary migration
form,
and the land of the refugees has already been allotted to people form north or east
Bhutan.
The US is not new to the Bhutan problem. Robin Raphael, Assistant Secretary of State, was
one
of the first dignitaries to visit the Bhutanese refugee camps in the early 1990s. The
State
Department Reports on the Human Rights situation in Bhutan have been critical of the
policies of
the Royal Government, and they carry detailed descriptions of the techniques used by the
Royal
Government to create the refugee exodus from Bhutan. In the early 1990’s, the US was
alone
among the western countries to speak about human rights violation in Bhutan. Only after
the
official visit of Madame Sadako Ogata, did there occur a change in the attitude of donor
countries
to Bhutan. Almost all the major donor partners assembled at the 7th Round Table Meeting
held in
Thimphu in November 2000 voiced the need to correct Bhutan’s discriminatory policies
towards
people of Nepali ethnicity and advised the Royal Government to draw a time-bound program
for
reintegration of Bhutanese refugees residing in the UNHCR organised camps in eastern
Nepal.
These days US involvement is increasingly becoming a critical input in the resolution of
all
contentious issues. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world community at large
had
expected a peace dividend, wherein the lone superpower was expected to toe the line of a
benevolent dictator, demanding fairness and justice to hapless and marginalized peoples,
and
facilitating release of resources engaged in military build-ups. Understandably, in the
case of
Bhutanese refugees, the US has no interest besides humanitarian concern. This is an
opportunity
for the super power to reinforce its principled stand that it will not tolerate
uncivilized behaviour
towards any people, be it in the United States of America or in the remotest part of the
eastern
Himalayas.
Bhutanese refugees are the victims of Bhutan’s brand of ethnic cleansing. The
innocent
subsistence mountain farmers living in remote hamlets were summoned to the offices of
district
administrators. They were threatened of dire consequences if they did not sign the
so-called
voluntary migration forms, issued an ultimatum for their stay in Bhutan, and compelled to
accept
at gunpoint some token compensations for the land and properties inherited through the
toil and
sweat of generations. The eviction program was a carefully charted course: occasionally
government high officials, including His Majesty the King, issued statements condemning
the
forcible migration. How can the Bhutanese people migrate voluntarily in thousands in a
span of a
few days when the Kingdom’s 1979 Land Act stipulates that ‘Anyone who wishes to
migrate
selling his/her land and property should inform the authority of his/her intention at
least one year
in advance from the intended date of departure’? The so-called voluntary migration
was a state organized campaign to achieve ethnic cleansing in Bhutan. It requires telling
Bhutan that ten years is long enough for pretension and procrastination.
India’s involvement is necessary as a guarantee for the security of the returnees and
for finding a
permanent solution for the refugees, of which about 30,000 live in India as non-registered
refugees. Rightfully, the European Parliament passed a resolution in the year 2000
stating, ‘The
Indian authorities should take full account of the humanitarian situation of Bhutanese
refugees in
Nepal and should take political initiative in order to support the solution of the
problem’. The
non-EU donor countries to Bhutan have expressed similar intention. There is a need for
Nepal to
convince Secretary of State Colin Powell that intense US involvement is necessary at least
at the
beginning, and this would not only contribute towards the success of the forthcoming
bilateral
talks in Thimphu but also encourage India to decide on a decisive role for finding a
lasting solution
of this political problem.
Other Stories
|
