The continued exile of Lhotshampa refugees weighs heavily on Bhutan’s past, present and future

This is the second of a two-part series. Read the first here.

The government in Kathmandu has provided shelter to the lakh-plus Lhotshampa refugees ousted by Bhutan between 1988 and 1992 and transported by India, but its diplomacy has not succeeded in sending them back. Nepal’s polity was preoccupied over the decades by the Maoist insurgency and subsequent peace process, constitution-writing and the continuously unstable domestic politics.

The third-country settlement of the refugees was largely an initiative of the West, very interestingly linked to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US and the drying up of “refugee intake” infrastructure.

While the bulk of the Bhutanese exiles are now overseas, the situation has never been worse for the 7,000-odd remaining in Jhapa, some for lack of registration papers and life support, others wanting only to return to their homes and fields in Bhutan.

However, among Nepal’s political class there were individuals not above trying to make a quick buck on the back of the refugees. Over the past few years, journalists’ investigations uncovered a “refugee scam”. The fraudsters with links to the political parties provided hundreds of Nepali citizens with fake documents as Bhutanese refugees, duping them with the promise of sending them to the US under the settlement...

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