Refugee talk

While we are happy that Prime Minister Jhalanath Khanal and his Bhutanese counterpart Jigmi Y Thinley, who was in Nepal in the capacity of sitting chairman of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), have at least agreed to resume the long-stalled bilateral talks on resolving the Bhutanese refugee problem, we suspect that the agreement between the two leaders is nothing more than a customary exchange of goodwill and is unlikely to lead to any meaningful resolution of the two-decade-old problem. Bhutan has, for too long, systematically avoided making any ‘sincere’ attempt to resolve the issue and unless it does something concrete, we cannot help being skeptical about its intent.



Since an angry group of refugees in December 2003 ‘tried’ to manhandle Bhutanese members of the Joint Verification Team formed after the 15th round of ministerial level talks held earlier in Thimpu the same year, Bhutan has not shown any interest or inclination in sitting for talks and finding a solution to the problem. Perhaps the freak incident was just the excuse that the Dragon kingdom had been looking for it. Nepal’s unstable political environment since then has made matters worse as it struggles to tackle far more pressing problems. It might push the refugee issue to the backburner again as in the past.



While the third-country settlement program of the international community has already taken over 40,000 Bhutanese refugees to foreign land, primarily the US, thus arguably giving them a life much better than the one that they used to lead in the seven refugee camps of eastern Nepal, questions remain on whether Bhutan can so easily be left off the hook for intimidating and forcefully evicting its own people out of their country. Though Bhutan has continued to maintain that the over 100,000 refugees who made their way to Nepal via India are not Bhutanese citizens, anecdotal evidences clearly tell a different story.



While too much water may have passed under the bridge to argue for the repatriation of all refugees back to Bhutan, the bilateral level talks can at least come to a decision on the future of all refugees who decide to opt out of the third-country resettlement program. Nepal has been magnanimous in providing the refugees shelter for over two decades now. Bhutan now has to be made to take the responsibility of its people in Nepal, however small or insignificant the number may be.



But for that to happen, the tiny Buddhist kingdom has to, first of all, accept that the refugees were its own people, which it is unlikely to. Herein fits the role of the international community. It must be ready to tell Bhutan that it cannot go scot free and has to do its bit. Letting it go off the hook so easily will only embolden it to harass and harangue its people even in the future.

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Let’s live and let live