Published on Wednesday, July 2, 2008 (the Kathmandu post)
Having stayed long in the camps in limbo, the gullible Bhutanese refugees left no stone unturned to return to Bhutan but in vain. They made several attempts for repatriation. They hoped that the bilateral talks between Nepal and Bhutan where without the goodwill of India would yield tangible result. However, India instead purposely vexed the refugee imbroglio.
On 27th September, 2006 Ellen Sauerbrey, the US Assistant secretary for the bureau of population, refugee and migration before the senate Judiciary committee, (subcommittee on immigration, boarder security and citizenship in Washington DC) made this comment “The international community is making some, albeit slow process in achieving agreement on durable solution for 100,000 Bhutanese refugees in Nepal, the year 2007 will be the end of the decade long stalemate process and produce concrete result”. Different media carried out this that “The US motivation is humanitarian” which was made public on 19th October 2006 in Nepal. At the time many refugees in the camps have felt like they have arisen from the graveyard being touched by some divine hands.
Along with UNHCR a group of seven countries have been working for resettling Bhutanese refugee in those third countries and by now over 1200 refugees are already been resettled.
The US has the commitment of resettling the biggest number of over 60,000 refugees and the international organization for migration (IOM) is screening the refugees who are forwarded by UNHCR for resettlement. During the process of screening, few people who worked as village representatives (“mondal” and “karbari”) and Government job holders when they were in Bhutan are found to be disqualified. In fact, they rendered social service and couldn’t follow the authorities’ prejudiced order and with this they were evicted in the allegation of disloyalty towards the Druk Government. Similarly, they are proved ineligible for resettlement by Department of Homeland security (DHS) in IOM, Damak. The IOM must have meticulous process of investigation during the case work however it is equally important to note that some refugees fear and fall nervous when they have to speak to any officials and blurt out unnecessarily. They were asked anything with undue threat of yelling or scolding from authorities in Bhutan. In Nepal, many Supervisors of Refugee coordination Unit (RCU) in the camps do the same.
The innocent people who are said to have given donation to the political party in Bhutan too are made ineligible for the third country resettlement. The people were under threat by the party with the so called “blind movement” to take place at home if not involved in and did not donate to the party. When asked to the people about what they had to donate for, the answer was to save themselves from the so called blind movement and some have no idea at all what they did for. Hardly, we can find the people in the refugee camps who had not donated to the party with 51 Ngultrum (equivalent to Rs.51 Indian currency) to save themselves.
Meanwhile, when an unmarried individual is enters in the room of primary case work, s/he is asked for marriage plan and sometime encouraged to marry if there is love affair with another refugee or other possible person. But newly married couples have to wait for so long that they finally be separated from their parents on whom the parents fully depend. The implication of family separation in this way is serious. Once the decision is made to get resettled, it is hard to wait with the long-monotonous process for all the applicant refugees and thus have frail patience.
Refugees with mixed marriage cases (refugee married with outsiders) are not yet under the process of resettlement. New mixed marriages have different reasons. Some may have lacuna of suspicion being a fraud while others may not. Those who were married a decade ago and have children from them must not have any other reason than a natural phenomenon. This type of marriage usually takes place without the bride’s parents’ consent as the bride-groom is a refugee. As a result, the couple neither gets parental support nor of UNHCR as the wife is not given entry to UNHCR’s registration. So, they have been facing difficulty for hand to mouth existence. On the other, refugees under non-entry cases who were disqualified in determining refugee status in the screening process in immigration section-Kakaribhitta and who crossed boarder after the screening post was closed are still in the camps begging to refugee fellow-mates and relatives. Such people need a serious scrutiny and are to be processed urgently with the necessary arrangement from the authority concerned. In doing so, some vulnerable refugees would be rescued in time.
When resettlement offer was declared, many political parties in exile opposed it especially the one which believes in armed struggle in Bhutan. But to my astonishment when I had gone to see my friends at IOM transit camp in Kathmandu, I overheard one of my friends telling to a man, “I will soon join Bhutan Maoist party”. Then the man asked why it was so. The answer was “to fill the vacant post where you were before”. Later it was revealed that the man was a politburo member of CPB-MLM, Gangaram Lamitare alias “Chatyang” who was standing with a “khada” worn ready to fly to the United States.
Friends grousing at me took another name, alias “Vaskar/Pandu” of CPB-MLM. He visited the IOM office, Damak for interview with masks, goggles and a hat with a complete disguise. The second man was the chief of 5th working zone-Kathmandu of the party. Both them strongly opposed resettlement process being high level mandarin of the party and were involved in threatening pro-resettlement people. Had they thought pragmatically in time, the subsequent death of two persons on May 29 and 30, 2007 would not have taken place when Haree Bangale was perceived ruthless in his speech. Still there are many standing against this process. Such an outfit has really distracted thousands of youth in the camps. The bomb-explosion incident of Monday evening (30th June.) in the IOM office is another waywardness which can be well speculated.
The long monotonous process, disqualifying, taking less concern of mixed marriage and non entry cases, etc, may be may have rendered to such mischief.
To pin point any one doesn’t mean I am against nor it’s my wish but I felt the importance of bringing out some scaremongering elements.They have been terrorizing the refugees in the name of political parties. Most refugees are willing to resettle in the third countries where many are with “wait and see” situation having inadequate information still and rest are terrorized by such underground outfits. More application would have been dropped in the UNHCR office for resettlement but the long and frequent visit to the IOM office for the process makes the refugees more vulnerable from the underground outfits.
Having known such elements within the refugee community, people in the camps especially the youth need to be more cautious and make one’s own decision without losing self acumen in emotion. No body denies that the repatriation back home is everlasting solution and political change in Bhutan is crucial but the quick humanitarian relief is absolutely imperative, when the acceptance of third country resettlement does not extinguish the refugees’ rights to return back home.
Posted by: Ashok Gurung
E-mail:asokgurung@gmail.com
