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“Being a poor farmer in the country is better than being a refugee”
Arun, 7-year-old boy in the refugee camp.
Political Background
Bhutan is a small nation located between India and China. It is governed by the Royal Government of Bhutan
(RGOB), a political body empowered by the absolute rule of his Majesty the King and the Royal Family,
Under the patronage of His Majesty the King, The RGOB has exploited and oppressed the people of Bhutan culturally, economically as well as politically for many decades. These years of tight and discriminatory rule by the royal family, embody in the
RGOB, results in inequalities and the repression of the human rights of the people of Bhutan.
Series of discriminatory laws, rules and regulations were implemented and imposed to local communities and forced people to abandon their own distinct language, religion and culture. In order to establish ‘One Nation, One People’, as the RGOB claimed, people of Bhutan, especially women, were violently tortured and forced to obey these rules.
Under this tragic scenario, the circumstances strip the Bhutanese of their natural rights. Efforts to achieve a democratic government have been brutally obstructed. Those who fought or were against the RGOB were either incarcerated or harmed. Their only choice was to leave the country.
Refugee Camp and Its Development
It has been 12 years now since the refugees first left their motherland. Back in 1988, the first camp was founded in Nepal under the name of “Maidhar”, where there were only 250 Bhutanese refugees in the camp. Two years later in 1992, as more refugees were forcibly expelled from Bhutan to the camp, the camp extended into 7 camps until present. The 7 camps are Beldangi 1-3,
Timai, Goldhap, Khudushi and Sanisdare. The population of the Bhutanese refugees in the camps is almost 100,000 people. These 7 camps are located near
Damak, southwest of Kathmandu.
Situations and Conditions of the Camps and Refugees
Refugees are not able to legally work in Nepal, or in other words, they cannot achieve the state of self-dependency. UNHCR (United Nation High Commission for Refugees), CARITAS-Nepal, and Red Cross are the main international organizations which provide food, shelter, education, water supply and medical care to the refugees.
Their shelters, are so-called ‘huts’, are made of bamboo and earth. Huts are equally spaced for each family. In the plots, if there is some additional free spaces, vegetation are planted in order to feed the families.
Prohibited to work outside the camp, most of the refugees wait daily for the distribution of goods. Some of them teach within the camp’s school or work in public health
centres, but these jobs are low-paid.
Food distributed to refugees is not enough, especially to those families with many members. This forces some refugees to work outside the camps illegally. Those who work outside the camps are harassed and paid with low wages by Nepalese employers. Many of them often face racial discrimination from the Nepalese. Last year, in 2000, a Bhutanese refugee child was killed unreasonably by a group of Nepalese people right in front of Sanisdare Camp. Up until now, the Nepalese police department still cannot find the murderers to prosecute.
However, despite the fact that they are refugees, the educational system in the camp is impressively well organized. Children in the camps have an equal opportunity for free schooling, which is the fundamental right for children all around the world. The schools have a curriculum from the 1st grade up until 10th grade. To acquire higher education beyond the campground, students have to study outside the camps and pay on their own.
Refugees run and manage this education system on their own. All teachers in the camps’ schools are voluntary Bhutanese. It is extraordinary and astonishing to find out that most of the young children in the camps can speak three languages; the Bhutanese dialect
Dzongkha, Nepali and English. This condition is even better than those education systems in some of the third world countries. Above all, from a long history and experiences of the struggling for their repatriation, they have a subject of ‘socialist theory’ in their school as well.
Moreover, with support from UNHCR, WFP, and OXFAM the refugees have formed the Refugee Women Forum
(RWF) in 1995. Their very progressive objectives are to make the refugee community aware of women literacy, skill development, as well as human and women rights. The grass root of this forum are raised from the women’s oppression by their culture, tradition and superstitious practices, which limits women to work just inside the house and serve their husbands, in other words, limit their human rights.
RWF works toward the cessation of the cultural oppressive regime by many activities. RWF organizes non-formal educational classes on women’s rights and the need of awareness. It also provides training classes in jute mat weaving, chalk making, sewing, cotton weaving, etc. for women in the camp. After this training, women in the camp themselves can earn money for their family and decrease the burden of having a daughter in the house.
In order for the refugees to be considered back into Bhutan, they must go through a verification process set up by the
RGOB. Though some refugees still face discrimination since the RGOB is willing to take back only genuine Bhutanese families. The 4 categorisation of refugees are just a ploy to deceit the people, as there should only be 2 categories; Bhutanese and Non-Bhutanese.
The current verification process is time consuming and is only able to verify on average ten families per day. With this rate, it would take approximately 7.5 years to verify 15,000 families at present, without considering the increase of population over the years. Also there is no guarantee that after the verification, all Bhutanese refugees are able to return home.
Feeling, Passion and Enthusiasm
“I don’t want to die here. I’d like to die with dignity in the arms of my motherland.” Said an old lady in the Sanidare camp.
It’s been ten years now since the refugees have been struggling for repatriation to return to Bhutan. Although the children and teenagers were young when they were expelled from Bhutan, and many children were also born within the camp, they all want to go home.
According to old people, refugees were angry and very active at the beginning of this decade long battle to return to Bhutan. But now, they are tired and frustrated. Most of the old people who were involved in the movements are waiting for a miracle from outside since they realized that their efforts melted in vain. Whereas young people have intense enthusiasm to do something, but the problems remain that they have no experience in political movements and do not know what to do.
One young adult sardonically said “I thought that there might be something that mislead the king, and I always believed that he will overcome it. But it’s now been ten years and I realized that there is nothing for the king to overcome, instead he has mislead the people.”
Despite ten years amidst bitterness and suffering lives as refugees, smoldered with discontent for the RGOB, they still have hope and faith. These feelings and emotions within are waiting to be freed, and ready to burst out in any given opportunity.
An Outsider’s Perspective
Although refugees in the camp have well-organized systems, they still consume raw material supplied from outsider organizations. In this sense, refugees cannot be self-dependent. With the limitation of means of production, refugees cannot stand on their own feet, instead they just wait for food from the outside. Their only means of production are weaving machines and small pieces of land in front of, or behind their homes to plant vegetation enough for only their family.
Acquiring self-dependence and self- determination is essential in the situation like this for refugees, especially when time comes to the critical point. Since most of the refugees were farmers and peasants when they were in Bhutan, it is a good idea if they could organize a collective farm in the camp. However, it is important to understand that it is also difficult for refugees to gain the means of production, especially land, from the Nepali Government.
Howbeit, the international NGOs and international organizations are trying to help the refugees, their roles, in a pessimistic view, despairingly demolished refugees’ ability to be self-sufficient. Generally, these organizations supply and provide raw materials and food for the refugees, but underneath this surface, they are depolicitizing them. Their roles should be to ‘support’ the refugees rather than to ‘help’. By supporting the refugees, the refugees can learn be self-dependent Whereas helping the refugees, as the organizations are presently doing, they bind the refugees’ abilities to be self-reliant.
Another important thing to note here is the characteristics of people’s thoughts on the act of emancipation. Most of them believe that this act will be carry out by those who are outsiders, and they always expect visitors to help or do something for them. They wait for a miracle. The critical point here is that refugees are not politically conscious enough to realize that the miracle is in their hands. The emancipation of the Bhutanese refugees must be the act of the Bhutanese refugees themselves.
Organizations like SUB. (Students Union of Bhutan), are trying to eradicate this problem. Working with grass root people in the camp is the only way to raise the political consciousness among refugees. The gap, in terms of political consciousness and confidence of their power, between those who are members of SUB and those who are not is considerably wide. Narrowing this gap is a key to the success of the repatriation with honor and dignity.
Light of Hope and the Future
“Bhutan is our homeland. We had been there for generations. We had lands and house to live. We have productive farms, self-reliant, and peace loving people. We want to go back to our home early. It is our plead to well wishes to send us back with dignity, safety and assurance of our human rights….”
-Written on a sign in front of the Camp’s Secretary Office of the Sanisdare camp.
The road going back to Bhutan is not too far for them if we give them full support with all our hearts, as requested by SUB, by extending this issue worldwide by any means to pressure the RGOB, and express sincerity to refugees in order to give them moral support.
At this point in time, a spark has been re-lighted amidst the misery of the Bhutanese refugees. The light of hope and solidarity among our comrades all around the world will help give way to them. Today, we witness the sufferings of the struggling of the Bhutanese refugees, tomorrow, we’ll bear witness on their LIBERATION!!
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