Nepal’s bad carpenter and Bhutanese refugees

It was Julia Chang Bloch, the then US Ambassador in Nepal, who in the early 1990s preferred not to speak in favor of her host country regarding the incessant influx of the Bhutanese refugees in Nepal. She could then shield her country forwarding the claim that since her country has had no formal diplomatic relations with Bhutan and hence her country possessed no moral rights or whatsoever to put pressure on that regime which had been forcing her own nationals to flee into neighboring Nepal. However, it was not that Ambassador Bloch was totally averse to the Nepali problems. She in effect, we recall, sent some high level US diplomats to take note of the situation of the refugees languishing in Nepali camps. That was all then.

Later at the fag end of the Clinton administration, Carl Inderfurth and Madame Julia Taft did raise this issue with the Bhutanese authorities, which the two US dignitaries revealed at a press conference in Kathmandu held at Sangrila Hotel immediately upon their return from the Druk nation. Nepalese people believed that the Bhutanese regime will take note of the US seriousness but things remained as it was.

Nevertheless, the incumbent Ambassador, Michael E. Malinowski, who presumably himself remained a witness to the influx of the refugees from Bhutan during his previous Nepal tenure at time of Julia Chang, appears to have taken up the issue at hear and the net result is that he has been talking on this issue on "as is opportune basis".

The fresh statement coming as it does from Ambassador Malinowski says that the US would wish to see the refugee issue sorted out at the earliest. What is interesting here is that the US envoy reminds the Bhutan that since the origin of the issue is Bhutan and hence it should be Bhutan which should exhibit more interest in taking her own citizens back. Furthermore, the US envoy implies that Bhutan should take her denizens unconditionally.

The members of the European Union collectively and individually have visited the refugee camps in the past and they did exert enough pressure on Bhutan. The fact is that Bhutan listens to their appeal and dismisses it the other minute. The net result of such dilly-dallying is that the refugees are becoming more and more frustrated to the extent that only last week some of them reportedly misbehaved their own Bhutanese brethren housed in the Bhutanese delegation.

While on the one hand the refugees’ misbehaving the members of the Bhutanese delegation deserves condemnations, on the other, what compels us to understand as to what factors enraged them all to go on in for a rampage?

Rumors have it that the Nepalese side at time of the last formal meeting with the Bhutanese authorities had allowed greater concessions to the other camp at the expense of the rights of the refugees upon their return to Bhutan. It is in the rumor that it was this concession awarded to the other side that encouraged the Bhutanese side to put harsh conditions on the refugees for a return to Bhutan.

Doubts are being raised on the very credentials of Nepal’s Ambassador at Large who as rumors have it that he while negotiating with the Bhutanese in Thimpu granted greater political leverahe to them and now he is saying that the other camp is exceeding its diplomatic limits.

In the process, allegations and counter allegations are on from both the sides and again in the process the refugees are the hard hit ones.

Nepal’s inept handling of diplomacy with Bhutan is the real problem now. A bad carpenter quarrels with his own tools, it is widely believed. Unfortunately, when the entire international community is siding with Nepal on the issue of the refugees, our own men seated at the Foreign ministry have not been able to cash in on the moral support that we have been receiving and that too unconditionally. It is time that we need a good carpenter who should not necessarily be as Large as our incumbent Ambassador At Large.

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