NATIONAL8 (Spotlight Weekly]

Armed With Documents

A field survey has it that almost all refugees have documentary evidences to prove their Bhutanese citizenship. Will the Dragon Kingdom listen?

BY A CORRESPONDENT

It could not have come at better a time. Just when Nepal and Bhutan are engaged thrashing out the refugee-verification modalities and the 56th session of the United Nations Commission of Human Rights is underway, a survey has claimed that almost cent percent of the Bhutanese refugees in Nepal have documentary evidences that they are Bhutanese citizens.

In its recent field study covering 51 percent of the around 100,000 refugees in the camps in eastern Nepal, Association of Human Rights Activists, Bhutan (AHURA, Bhutan) has found 99.83 percent of the surveyed refugees having documentary evidences to prove their Bhutanese citizenship.

The Bhutanese human rights organization in exile surveyed 4,553 Bhutanese refugee families to prepare a digitalised database which it will present in the ongoing UN's Human Rights session. Said Ratan Gazmere, Chief Coordinator of AHURA, "Up to 95 percent have either both the citizenship papers and legal land and property holding documents."

According to the survey findings, the refugees in the camps have different documentary evidences including citizenship certificates, identity cards, tax receipts, land and property documents issued by the Bhutanese government.

Besides, the digitalised database also has the details of 50,000 refugees surveyed. The information includes their names, their addresses in Bhutan, their present addresses in the camps, family structure, the date when they were evicted from the Dragon Kingdom, among others.

So much so, the database also explains what made the Bhutanese citizens leave their homelands. Of those interviewed (4,553 families), 57 percent were found to have been forced to leave Bhutan -- most of them under gun point or with serious threat to life. What's more, the findings claim that most of those forced to leave the Druk Yul were forced to sign the voluntary migration forms.

According to Gazmere, most of the people filling the voluntary migration forms are those from interior districts and villages from where fleeing to safety is impossible.

Going by the details and figures in the database, almost all of the refugees stand a fair chance to return home, though half of them in the camps are yet to be surveyed. With such data at hand, refugees have already begun to challenge their categorization into four groups -- Bonafide Bhutanese, Bhutanese who have emigrated, Non Bhutanese and Bhutanese who have committed crimes. Nepal and Bhutan agreed to categorize the refugees in 1993.

AHURA's database may come as a big hope for the frustrated refugees languishing in the UNHCR managed camps for nearly one decade now. But equally prepared is Bhutan to keep the refugees out of Bhutan.

Take the case of the documentary evidence. Before beginning its ethnic cleansing policy - that resulted into eviction of the southern Bhutanese, Bhutan introduced its Citizenship Act 1985 requiring its citizens to have land tax receipt dating before 1958. It was during its census in the late 80's Bhutan shooed out many of the Lhotsampas (southern Bhutanese) alleging that they did not have the land tax receipt document issued before 1958.

Of course, AHUAR's survey has found some of the land tax receipts of refugees dating back to 1890's. But, the database is yet to be clear how many refugees actually have what Bhutan calls the valid land tax receipts.

Then there is the case of voluntary migration forms. Since it made many of the refugees sign the voluntary migration forms, Bhutan has been pressing that it would not take back the second category refugees -- Bhutanese who have emigrated. Nepal has been maintaining that Bhutan has softened its stand on the second category refugees after the eighth Joint Ministerial Level meeting last year -- when both the sides agreed to work on the verification modality.

Before the field verification begins, the two Himalayan Kingdoms are expected to have a ministerial meet. Whether AHURA's digitalised data will make any tangible impact on the upcoming meet of the ongoing UN's Human Right meeting remains to be seen.