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The Dragon Kingdom's Dark Secret
*** The Bhutanese government has started systematically evicting its Nepali-speaking people. Thousands are arriving in crowded camps in Nepal, creating yet another refugee emergency clamouring for international attention. Mana Man Singh reports from Goldhap, Nepal. ***
A world away from Sarajevo and Somalia, truck loads of refugees are arriving at overcrowded and disease-ridden camps at the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal.
They are Nepall-speaking Bhutanese, who have been displaced two years after Bhutan passed laws requiring all citizens to wear the traditional Buddhist dress and speak the Dzongkha language.
Since then, relief officials here say the number of Ncpall-speaking Bhutanese who have fled the tiny Dragon Kingdom' to neighbouring Nepal and India Is nearing 100.000. About 20 trucks packed with 50 Bhutanese each crosses Nepal's eastern border to arrive at six refugee camps here every day.
. The refugees -recount horrifying tales of torture and harassment from the Bhutanese authorities, and relief workers here say ft is South Asia's own version of "ethnic cleansing".
Bhogendra Sharma, of the Centre of Victims of Torture, summed up the stories : "Whole communities arc being turned Into battlefields. Schools have been turned Into barrack*. hou*e* are razed.
women are raped by soldiers."
Bhutan's Buddhist Drukpa rulers, worried that their identity is about to be swamped by a growing majority of Nepali-speakers. appears to have launched a well-planned programme of depopulation.
Government data show the Buddhist Druk pas form 57 per cent of the population and the mainly-Hindu Nepalts 30. per cent. The government tn Thlmpu has officially reduced the country's population from the previous 1.4 million to 700.000. and many relief officials say the difference reflects ethnic Nepalls. ■
The Bhutanese government is willing to recognise only Nepalls who arrived before 1958 as citizens. But refugees say villages where Nepali speakers have been living for generations are being emptied.
"My family has been living tn Bhutan 86 years. I was put In jail for having funded militants. and under torture I was forced to say yes. Within one week, was told to\leave." recounts Pushpa Raj Dahal. who 1* now living In a thatch hut in
the Goldhap camp.
Bhutan's Foreign Minister Dawa Tsering said in a recent interview the Nepali Bhutanese had left of their own free will, and instead blamed "anti-national terrorists" of murder and atrocities within Bhutan.
Thlmpu claims most of the Nepali-speakers in the south are Illegal migrants — labourers from work gangs brought in for the Bhutanese roads who stayed back, or those brought in privately to man the orange groves and cardamom plantations in the south.
But exiles here say the Bhutanese government has always been strict about Imported labour for Its projects and ensures there is complete
repatriation.
While the refugees streaming in to Nepal earlier were peasants and labourers, however. more and ntore of Bhutan’s senior civil servants and businessmen are leaving, complaining of discrimination.
One retired civil servant, now a refugee, feels that though some Nepalls of Nepal and the adjacent Indian hills have sneaked into the country, their numbers could not be significant enough for tl?e government to tar all Nepalls as Illegal migrants.
In August, a Bhutanese diplomat assigned to the country's embassy in Kuwait requested asylum ih Nepal. Says Hari Chhetrl : "The govern-
ment has actually destroyed the Bhutanisation process by its harsh measures of cultural assimilation."
The departure Is carefully choreographed. A Nepali-speaker is led in to a room full of officials sitting before voluminous records to prove his or her pre-1958 status.
When families are declared illegal they are forced to sign a "voluntary leaving certificate". Each family ts then asked to stand up for a black and white group photograph and a statement tape-recorded.
Bhutanese exiles here blame India for not pressuring Thlmpu on the refugee question. They say India is passing on its own refugee problem to Nepal, which does not share a border with Bhutan. A treaty between Bhutan and India gives New Delhi a major say over the Himalayan kingdom's defence and foreign policy, and India may feel tt Is expedient to preserve the status qua.
The refugees coming down to the roadheads tn eastern India, are told to head for Nepal. Agents arrange for
trucks, and the families make the roughly USS 150 payment for the day-long Journey to Nepal, a land most regard as their country of origin, but have never visited. _
The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates there are already about 30.000 refugees in the Nepal camps and some 40.000 outside. It is expected that more refugees staying in India will also make for the camps.
Faced with a relentless tide of refugees. Nepal fearp It may lead to tensions among the local population in the politically volatile eastern region where the Bhutanese refugee camps are Situated. The camps are now being administered by the Lutheran World Service while Save the Children (UK) take care of the refugees' health and nutritlOTial needs.
Nepali has been trying to urge Bhutan to take back the refugees. Prime Minister Glrlja Prasad Koirala has pursued what he calls "quiet diplomacy". but despite several meetings with the Bhutanese monarch and the Indian Prime Minister, the crisis remains unresolved. — IPS