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OPINION

Ethnic Nepalis Leaving Bhutan are Not Refugees
The ethnic Nepalis leaving Bhutan over the past months arc not refugees as claimed by the so-called Bhutan People's Party (BPP) and other groups like the Bhutan National Dcmo-cratlc Party (BNDP) agitating against the royal government. Nor are all the ethnic Nepalis tn the camps Bhutanese nationals.
There have been two phases in the departure of ethnic Nepalis from Bhutan. The first phase was in 1990-91 following the violent demonstrations organised by the BPP In September 1990. The people who left the country in this phase were the hardcore antinationals and their supporters. They fled because they had been involved in terrorist activities and had otherwise violated the laws of the country.
The second phase Is the migration that has been taking place over the recent months. The majority of these migrants are not hardcore supporters of the antf-nattonal groups. They have, however, been persuaded and Instigated by the anti-national groups to leave Bhutan and register themselves as refugees in the refugee camps in Nepal.
The anti-national organisations are doing everything possible to congregate as many ethnic Nepalis as possible in the refugee camps In Nepal so that a serious refugee problem can be created to mobilise support from the Nepalese government and the international community.
As the number of people who left in the first phase was not large enough to mobilise adequate International sympathy and support for the anli-natlonals, a strategy for increasing the number of refugees In camps In Nepal was worked out by the BNDP and the BPP. One part of this strategy is to encourage as many ethnic Nepalis as possible from the north-eastern states of India and other nearby areas to come to the refugee camps and register them as Bhutanese refugees. The other part of the strategy is to engineer a mass migration of ethnic Nepalis from Bhutan. They have set themselves target of registering at least 1,00,000 people as Bhutanese refugees.
It is, therefore, no coincidence that the anti-national groups are already claiming
that over 1,00.000 ethnic Nepalis have been evicted from Bhutan. The BPP. for Instance, has been recently giving press conferences on this line. It may be of interest to note that this same BPP has already exposed itself as a terrorist organisation and that many of its senior members arc either themselves non-nationals or married to foreigners. The first General Secretary of the BPP, D K Itai, was captured by village volunteer forces tn Slb-soo sub-district on 17 November 1991 while personally leading one of the many terrorist raids carried out by him. He was handed over to the police by the village volunteers who were all ethnic Nepalis and is currently under trial In the High Court. Mr Rakesh Chettri, the General Secretary of the BPP giving the recent press conferences absconded last year after audit of accounts were started In the State Trading Corporation where he worked. Incidentally, his wife is the daughter of a politician in eastern Nepal.
That the so-called evictions of ethnic Nepalis from Bhutan arc actually planned migrations masterminded by the BNDP and the BPP was exposed when almost 400 families applied to migrate enmasse from Gaylegphug sub-district on 9 July 1992. The migrants gave an ultimatum that they would leave within two days regardless of whether their applications were processed within that time or not. On hearing the report from the local administrative authorities, the King postponed his Seventh Plan meeting for the district of Pare and went down immediately to meet the people and appeal to them not to migrate. Asked by the King Why they wanted to leave their country, the migrants who spoke in the minting all said that they had decided to migrate because the sub-district administrator "had told them to leave the country as they were of Nepalese origin. They also said that Indian nationals from across the border had been looting their properties.'
An investigation team comprising of the Chairman of the Royal Advisory Council, two High Court Judges, one of whom Is an ethnic Nepali, and a senior official from the Home Ministry who is also an ethnic Nepali, was sent down to
Gaylcgphug to investigate the complaints made by the migrants. After a thorough investigation. the team found that the allegations against the sub-district administrator were fabricated to blame the government for the migration. The charges of looting by Indian nationals was also proved baseless as the team obtained 121 receipts showing that the migrants had sold their house building materials, cattle and other property to the Indians they had accused of robbing them.
On the other hand, the team found that the migrants l^d destroyed all the service and development facilities In the three blocks of Lalal, Tak-lal and Danabarl in collaboration with the anti-national terrorists based across the border. A total of 29 building belonging to the primary schools. The Basic Health Unit, the Agriculture and Animal Husbandry extension centres and the block office had been stripped and destroyed. Eleven rural water supply schemes had been destroyed and a|l the pipes stolen. Materials for two new rural water schemes under construction were also stolen. A suspension bridge had been destroyed and stripped of its structures. All the house and bridge construction materials and water pipes were sold across the border. It is no wonder that even after the personal appeal made by the King, only 73 families out of the 388 he had met have stayed back.
For the record, the crux of the southern Bhutan problem is the opposition of the antinational groups to the measures taken by the government to curb illegal immigration by ethnic Nepalis from neighbouring areas through the strengthening of the citizenship rules and regulations. The antl-natlonals jvant to change these rules and regulations so that all the Illegal immigrants who had entered the country till now can be registered as citizens, a demand that the royal govern ment obviously cannot accept. As Bhutan's population is only about six hundred thousand. If these rules are relaxed, the continued influx of economic migrants would soon reduce the Bhutanese to a minority in their own land.
Royal Bhutanese Embassy
Dhaka