Ethnic cleansing' the  Bhutan way
Bangkok Post April 9,200

A dozen students take a turn-rising from cross-legged positions on the hardpacked dirt floor of the bamboo hut to draw the unfamiliar letters, watched by a teacher who stands at their shoulder.

Three hours a day, five days a week, these students voluntarily study the language of the country they were driven from a decade ago when Bhutan's government forced tens of thousands of its ethnic Nepali citizens from the land they had settled a century earlier.

"Many were forcibly expelled," reported the US Department of State 1999 Country Report on Human Rights Practices.

"According to Amnesty International, entire villages were sometimes evicted en masse in retaliation for an attack on a local government official. Many ethnic Nepalese were forced to sign 'voluntary migration forms' wherein they agreed to leave the country, after local officials threatened to fine or imprison them for failing to comply."Today most of those Bhutanese refugees live in seven camps in eastern Nepal, in long lines of bamboo huts built as temporary shelters beginning in 1992. Prohibited from working by Nepal's Government, they volunteer on camp committees or as teachers and medical workers. About 2,000 are paid "incentives" (an amount less than the normal wage) for this work; others build their lives around the daily waiting for the distribution of rations.

Though none has been able to return to Bhutan in the interim, the refugees-most of whom were farmers in their homeland-have all heard how the government of the tiny Himalayan kingdom has settled northerners, ethnic Tibetans known as Drukpas, in their homes. Some say the settlers are told to assume the identities of the original inhabitants so they can claim ownership of the land.

And still, the Bhutanese refugees want to go home.

"Our feeling is that surely we will be going back to our own place. The people used to say 'we'll come back within 15 or 20 days'; they left their (household) materials hidden underground," says Bhawani Prashad Acharya, a middle-aged man in dark dress pants and a light-coloured long-sleeved shirt, with intense eyes and flashes of grey in his day-old beard.

At first people were angry, says Acharya, sitting at a table in the Goldhap Camp, which is a slow 3.5-kilometre ride from the main highway, along a narrow dirt road flanked by farmers' fields. Fifteen others listen from the periphery of the refugee camp committee's hut.

"Their anger, slowly it disappeared. Mostly they are tired, frustrated."With a forefinger Acharya traces circles in the dust of a table-top.

"Now the frustration is turning to tiredness, about talking.""I know that they are getting quite impatient," says Margarida Fawke, programme officer for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, at UNHCR headquarters, 10 kilometres from Goldhap Camp.

UNHCR is the funding agency for health care, education, water supply, sanitation and shelter in the camps and co-ordinates all the assistance activities.

"We try to give them as much to do as possible," Fawke says, "but that's limited."The refugees make all of the chalk that's used in the camp schools. They also produce blankets and jute mats, but only for refugee consumption or for export; the Nepal government prohibits them from selling goods in the country.

While the refugees are not supposed to work outside the camps, thousands of them use their day passes to do just that. Others busy themselves making the efficient camps run.

Refugees run the distribution network that's managed by the Nepal Red Cross Society. They dole out the food rations that arrive in burlap sacks in the backs of trucks.

Once a week kerosene for the cooking stoves is measured and poured into each family's plastic container: one litre per person up to three people, a half-litre for each additional person.

At Goldhap on a recent afternoon, six men repair kerosene stoves collected from all of the camps-they fix 250 each month; in a nearby hut women from "disadvantaged" families work antique-looking sewing machines as they learn to make and repair clothes; a dozen students practice sign language in a hut at the other end of the 20-hectare camp.

Many of these activities are financed by UNHCR or the six NGOs that support the refugees. The Red Cross, for example, offers training programmes in fire prevention, home gardening and first aid. CARITAS-Nepal runs the schools and offers vocational training in such areas as house wiring, welding and radio and TV repair.

"In other populations with the same number of people, the same budget, the conditions are much worse than here," says Fawke. The Bhutanese "show a good solidarity, they're willing to do things for one another."But there are fears these "model" camps could start to deteriorate. Budget pressures and refugee frustration are the main threats.

DONOR FATIGUE

"The donors have been passing signs this can't last forever," says Fawke.

When the international community starts to get tired, that means more pressure on the UNHCR, but "there's no way in a protracted operation like this we can ask for a budget increase."Until 1999, the Red Cross had supplied refugees with clothing. That task now falls to the UNHCR. And Fawke says she will have to cut programmes unless someone contributes the $200,000 required to cover last year's rise in the cost of kerosene.

An additional 1,300 bamboo huts are required to house the growing population. A family of up to eight members gets a hut that measures 3.5 x 5.5 metres; families of more than eight get double that space. Growth in the camps is at two percent, less than Nepal's figure of 2.4.

Other NGOs that fund camp activities have cut their contribution from $1million a year during 1993-98 to $400,000 in 1999.

Only two percent of UNHCR's operating budget for these camps comes from the global UNHCR budget. The rest of the money comes from governments that want to help the refugees. The European Community this year will pay about one-half of the overall UNHCR bill of about $US3.5 million.

So far almost $100 million has been spent directly on the Bhutanese refugees, about $125 a year for each refugee.

Meanwhile, the refugees "do make the physical efforts but mentally they become tired," says Acharya. "They have talked so many times and nothing has happened."Adds Fawke, "To try and get them to volunteer is a constant challenge. It takes a lot of motivation.""The Bhutanese have been very patient, very very patient," she adds, as workers build a guardhouse at the UNHCR compound entrance; there is some concern that Maoist insurgents operating in the area could target the agency.

Authorities, she adds, "should be careful: there's nothing more dangerous than frustrated youth."S.B. Subba agrees. Chairman of the Bhutanese Refugees Representatives Repatriation Committee (BRRRC), he says "we are at least proud that we can contain the young frustrated people for the past 10 years, but how much longer?"

The BRRRC is the latest organisation that claims to represent the refugees.

Subba was elected to his position by 25 representatives who were chosen in elections in the seven camps. "We do not have any political ambitions at all," he says from a bare office in a house in Damak, close to the three Beldangi camps that house almost one-half of all of the refugees.

"Our objective is only repatriation of all the Bhutanese refugees to their home states with safety, dignity and honour."A single objective that will be very difficult to attain, based on recent history. In 1993, Nepal and Bhutan agreed after talks to place the refugees into four categories:-1. bona fide Bhutanese that were evicted forcefully,2. those who left Bhutan on their own initiative,3. non-Bhutanese, and4. Bhutanese who committed criminal acts.

Since then, the countries have argued over a verification process.

Last September, Bhutan apparently agreed to permit some refugees it had claimed should belong in category 2 into category 1. Since then, the frequency of meetings between the countries has increased, leading some people to conclude that a deal is imminent.

Still, the two sides got up from the negotiating table after another three days of talks in March with no apparent progress.

In January, US Secretary of State Madeline Albright sent a letter to the Nepal Foreign Ministry expressing interest in the issue. Julie Taft, the country's Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, visited Bhutan in January.

"The interest that the US has shown has really put pressure on Bhutan," says Subba. "What is giving confidence is that there is more international concern."The BRRRC planned to present a memo on the issue to US President Clinton during his visit to South Asia last month.

In January the group threatened to lead all the refugees to Bhutan's border if no progress was made on repatriation by May. "We reached the decision looking at the situation inside Bhutan," says Subba.

"The situation is getting more complicated."Amnesty International officials who visited Bhutan in 1998 were "shocked at the level of marginalisation of the Nepali-speaking population," the director of AI's Asia-Pacific said in Kathmandu recently.

It is said that children of ethnic Nepalis, who make up about one-third of Bhutan's population, are not permitted to attend school. According to BRRRC sources in the kingdom, five of six border districts that were home to ethnic Nepalis have already been filled with settlers from the north.

"In the event of repatriation, where will people go?" Subba asks. "We want to avoid conflict."What sparked the expulsions in the early 1990s was Nepali protests at the drastic measures taken by Bhutan's government. It changed citizenship rules, forced ethnic Nepalis to wear the dress of the Drukpa, to learn Dzongkha not Nepali and to stop practising Hinduism.

Integration had been taking place at a slow but natural rate, says Subba.

When changes were made overnight, "that was a bit too much."Still, the leader concedes "there are certain things where we overreacted," and where today the ethnic Nepalis are willing to compromise. For example, they will "respect" the national language and national dress "but it should not be made compulsory in the house and there should be equal respect for our language."However, they will not give up their right to lands in the areas where they originally settled.

"We lost our properties, our houses have been destroyed," says Subba, our people must have their own land."The BRRRC leader is optimistic a solution is near. "What we hear now is the (Bhutan) government is saying 'How do we fix this?"'And when an agreement is announced, he adds, "within a week all people will be going back. They are very eager to go back."u Marty Logan is a journalist based in Kuala Lumpur.