Organization: Arizona State University
Date: Friday, 21 Aug 1992 16:54:12 MST
From: <ASRPA@ASUACAD.BITNET>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nepal
Subject:    More News from Bhutan

                      Copyright 1992 Inter Press Service
                           August  15, 1992, Saturday

HEADLINE: BHUTAN: THE DRAGON KINGDOM'S DARK SECRET

BYLINE: by Mana Man Singh

DATELINE: GOLDHAP REFUGEE CAMP,  Nepal,  Aug. 15

 BODY:
   They arrive packed into trucks lurching through the monsoon
slush, bearing human cargoes of misery.

   Competing for international attention with the world's other
crises is a  little-known refugee emergency in South Asia as one
desperately poor Himalayan  kingdom drives thousands of its people
to another desperately poor Himalayan kingdom.

   The refugees are the Nepali-speaking population of Bhutan,
thrown out by rulers of a country who call them names like
"squatters" and "anti-national terrorists."

   As they get off the back of the trucks in this refugee camp 240
miles east of  the Nepali capital, Kathmandu, the haggard families
have the look of a people who have lost all.

   The refugees recount horrifying tales of torture and harassment
from the Bhutanese authorities, and relief workers here say it is
South Asia's own version of "ethnic cleansing."

   "Thirty (Bhutanese) soldiers came and carried me out. I fainted.
I was  handcuffed and tortured in prison. My daughter died while I
was there because  there was no one to take care of her. Then the
sub-district administrator asked  me take my belongings and leave,"
recounts Thakur Prasad Luitel.

   Luitel, 52, looks bewildered and lost as he lowers a wet
mattress (his only belonging) from a truck that brought him here
from Bhutan.

   About 20 trucks carrying about 50 people each arrives here every
day. Relief  officials here say the number of people who have fled
Bhutan into  Nepal and  India is nearing 100,000.

   The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates there
are already  about 60,000 refugees in the six camps it runs in
Nepal  with help from the  Lutheran World Service, Save The
Children (UK) and other relief organizations.

   Despite this, hundreds of children have died since January in
epidemics of  diarrhea and measles. Malnutrition is common.

   Bhogendra Sharma, of the center of victims of torture, sums up
the stories  from the new arrivals: "Whole communities in Bhutan
are being turned into battlefields. Schools have been turned into
barracks, houses are razed, women  are raped by soldiers."

   Bhutan's Buddhist Drukpa rulers, worried that their identity is
about to be  swamped by Nepali-speakers, appear to have launched a
well-planned program of  depopulating the country.

   Government data show the Drukpas form 57 percent of the
population and the  mainly-Hindu Nepalese 30 percent. Thimpu has
officially reduced the country's  population from the previous 1.4
million to 700,000, and many relief officials  say the difference
represents ethnic Nepalese.

   The Bhutanese government is willing to recognize only Nepalese
who arrived before 1958 as citizens. But refugees say villages
where Nepali speakers have  been living for generations are being
emptied. Many refugees here still carry their Bhutanese citizenship
cards.

   "My family has been living in Bhutan 86 years. I was put in jail
for having funded militants, and under torture I was forced to say
yes. Within one week, I  was told to leave," recounts Pushpa Raj
Dahal, who arrived in the Goldhap camp a  few months ago.

   Bhutan's Foreign Minister Dawa Tsering said in a recent
interview the Nepali  Bhutanese had left of their own free will,
and instead blamed militants of  carrying out "terrorist" attacks.

    Thimpu claims most of the Nepali-speakers in the south are
illegal migrants -- laborers 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 foothills.

    Early refugees streaming in to  Nepal  were peasants and
laborers, but now  Bhutan's senior civil servants and businessmen
are also leaving, complaining of  discrimination.

   One such official is Hari Chhetri, a diplomat assigned to
Bhutan's embassy in Kuwait, who got asylum in Nepal last month.
Says Chhetri: "The government has  actually destroyed the
Bhutanization process by its harsh measures of cultural
assimilation."

   Bhutanese exiles here blame India for not pressuring Thimpu 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 defense and foreign policy, and India
may feel it is  expedient to preserve the status quo.

    Nepal  has been trying to urge Bhutan to take back the
refugees. Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala has pursued what he
calls "quiet diplomacy."

   But despite several meetings with Bhutan's King Jigme Singye
Wangchuk and  Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, the crisis
and the misery of those  displaced show signs of getting worse.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nepal