bhutan and Nepalese refugees

[brelief@xxxxxxx]

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This bit of background comes from the Daily YOmiuri newspaper raising the
questions: Who is Bhutanese and who is a refugee?  This issue is surely
complex, but we wonder about its relevance to Burma and are concerned at how
many peripheral (at best) items are being posted on Burmanet these days.

>this message is posted for those interested in following the developments 
>of indian region politics, in the hope that it may increase understanding 
>of the extreme problem growing in the region re refugees & india. it is a 
>very serious problem now, and will get worse before it gets better. many 
>burma supporters met the bhutanese leaders at the burma delhi conference 
>in January...
>
>
>Bhutanese marchers lathi charged


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Daily Yomiuri Newspaper
May 18, 1994

ETHNIC STORM THREATENS BHUTAN'S IDENTITY

By Nilova Roy

Yomiuri Shimbun New Delhi Bureau

NEW DELHI -- The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan,
sandwiched between giant neighbors, China and India, finds
itself struggling to retain its unique identity in the face of an
invasion of immigrants from Nepal, another landlocked
Himalayan kingdom.

So traumatized are the Bhutanese that the youthful monarch,
Jigme Singye Wangchuk, has threatened to abdicate his throne
unless he can resolve the problem of illegal Nepalese migration
to his country.

A tiny, picturesque kingdom, Bhutan has an unbroken,
centuries-old culture, and even today television does not exist;
the official radio functions for an hour daily, and there is only
one weekly newspaper, Kuensel. There are no political parties
and tourism is actually discouraged, except for a select few.

Recently, an attempt to introduce traffic lights in the capital,
Thimpu, created such a culture shock that local authorities
decided against their use and removed the offending lights.

"It is far more significant that Bhutan could be the last country
in the world to need traffic lights," Kuensel editorialized.

A Bhutanese diplomat in the Indian capital said the need to
preserve Bhutan's unique Druk culture was the reason behind
the relative, "isolation, call it backwardness if you like," of
Bhutan.

Native Bhutanese, or Drukpas, adherents of the ancient
Mahayana system of Buddhism, fear they will be swamped by
the steady influx of predominantly Hindu Nepalis, who crossed
difficult mountain terrain to the sparsely populated Dragon
Kingdom in search of a living.

Lured by the relative prosperity, high wages, free health care
and free education in Bhutan, unemployed laborers from
poverty stricken Nepal crossed over Himalayan passes through
the porous borders of the Buddhist kingdom. settling in its
fertile southern provinces bordering India.

The trickle of immigrants started at the end of the last century
and gradually turned into an influx after Bhutan's first five-year plan in the early 1960s, which set it on the road to
economic prosperity and modernization.

Worried by the influx, Bhutan conducted its first demographic
census in 1988, which revealed that ethnic Nepalese comprised
almost 40 percent of the 650,000 people living in the Hermit
kingdom, so called for its practice of sending at least one son to
a monastery and a daughter to become a nun.

In 1989, to stem the influx, the kingdom introduced the
"Driglam Namzha," a detailed code of conduct to propagate
the traditional Bhutanese way of life. It details precisely the
type of clothes to be worn in public, the correct modes of
formal greeting and speech, and designates the local Dzongkha
language as the sole official language.

The government also imposed a cut off year of 1958 for illegal
immigration, and told post-1958 migrants to leave the country.

Nepalese migrants cried foul and, under the aegis of the
Bhutan People's Party (BPP) in 1990, started an insurgency
against the Bhutanese government, claiming they were being
discriminated against in a campaign tantamount to ethnic
cleansing.

The Bhutanese government denies the claim and independent
observers, including those from international agencies like
Amnesty International, support the contention that while most
Nepalese unable to prove residency before 1958 have indeed
left, there has been no coercion or violence involved.

Legal immigrants have been offered a variety of incentives to
integrate with the mainstream, like a three - year tax holiday,
and benefits for marrying into the Drukpa community.

About 85,000 people of Nepalese origin, called Lhotshampas,
left Southern Bhutan and moved to camps in eastern Imepal.

The Nepalese government, plagued with a large population,
low resources and high unemployment, refused to accept them
as citizens and directed them into refugee squatter camps run
by the UNHCR. It wants Bhutan to take them all back. Bhutan
refuses to accept illegal immigrants and wants a bilateral
mechanism to determine the exact status of these refugees.

The BPP, banned in Bhutan and operating from Nepal, started
a campaign of terror in 1990, sending small groups of
supporters into southern Bhutan to burn bridges, hospitals,
schools and utility poles and commit executions.

The BPP also urged Lhotshampas to sell their property to the
Bhutanese state and come to the refugee camps in eastern
Nepal and claim protection under the UNHCR. The BPP
assured these refugees they could soon return to Bhutan as full
citizens.

The party's intentions are clear. In a recent policy paper it
outlines its objectives: "We must create a Gurkha state in
Bhutan and extend the borders of Gurkha states along the
Himalayas, which has always been the rightful home of our
people."

Bhutan is the last of the independent Buddhist kingdoms in the
Himalayas. It believes it will go the way of Tibet, Ladakh and
Sikkim, which were engulfed by other cultures, unless it takes
drastic steps to preserve its culture.

"It is important to preserve our sovereignty and independence
by ensuring that we have a distinct national identity," Foreign
Minister Lyonpo Dawa Tsering said in an interview. "We are
worried that we may disappear."

Tsering met his Nepalese counterpart, Sher Bahadur Deuba,
last month to finally work out modalities for determining the
status of the refugees. They agreed to form a 10 - member joint
verification team that will meet in June to resolve the refugee
problem.

Bhutanese diplomats accuse the Nepalese of not being serious
in their efforts to resolve this issue.


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