Source: www.metronews.ca
KATMANDU, NEPAL, August 9, 2010: A group of Bhutanese refugees expelled from their Himalayan homeland nearly two decades ago left Nepal for Britain on Monday to begin new lives after living in United Nations-run camps for years. Thirty-seven refugees left Monday and will be followed by many more, said Stephen Jaquemet, an official with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Nepal.
Britain is the eighth nation to take in Bhutanese refugees. So far 32,000 have left for Western countries, most to the United States.
More than 100,000 ethnic Nepalese — a Hindu minority in Bhutan for centuries — were forced out of Bhutan in the early 1990s by authorities who wanted to impose the country’s dominant Buddhist culture. They have lived as refugees in Nepal ever since.
[HPI note: to know more about the massive exodus of Hindu Bhutanese from their home country, read the Hinduism Today feature article on the Bhutanese refugees.]