Source: www.guardian.co.uk
UNITED KINGDOM, June 4, 2010: Those of the older generation want to go home; the younger are seeking a new life in the West. “Look how happy we used to be,” says Harka Jung Subba, pointing to a family photograph hanging on the wall of his hut. It shows him, his wife and their six sons and daughters when the family still lived in Bhutan, more than 20 years ago.
In 1990 they were forced to flee because of persecution of ethnic Nepalis (a story Hinduism Today covered and you can read here ). Harka thought they would be away only long enough for things to settle down again. But Harka and more than 100,000 other Bhutanese refugees have been living in refugee camps in Nepal ever since.
His son, Ram Kumar, seen in the family photo as a boy, moved to the US last year with his wife and his own two children as part of a UN resettlement programme. Fearful that his father would not give his consent to let him go (the UNHCR requires all members of a household to attend the verification interview), Ram, now 33, left with his mother’s blessing, while Harka was in India lobbying politicians and rights activists to pressure Bhutan’s government for repatriation.
For the younger generations, who have lived in the camps all their lives, reliant on handouts as they are forbidden by law to work, the resettlement program is their only way out. But the older refugees have no desire to move away from their community to a foreign country with an alien culture and a language they will never learn.
Harka, 68, admits he is fighting a losing battle against his grown-up sons. So far resettlement has been the only solution offered. In 2006, following 15 rounds of failed bilateral negotiations between the Bhutanese and Nepali governments, Washington offered an alternative: moving to America. Within a year more than 25,000 refugees had applied for resettlement in the US, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands. A further 15,000 are expected to be resettled by the end of this year, while 50,000 more have registered.