A string of Bhutanese prayer flags, imprinted with sacred Buddhist prayers, flutters in a verdant lane leading to Ratna Maya Dorji’s quarters in the Beldangi II camp. It’s one of the handful of sites for people from Bhutan seeking refuge in the Damak municipality of eastern Nepal.
Dorji is one of thousands of Nepali-speaking Bhutanese citizens forced to flee their country in the early 1990s during Thimphu’s “One Nation, One People” policy. Under that policy, Bhutan banned the teaching and speaking of the Nepali language, and anyone who protested was imprisoned. Today, the refugees remain in limbo without the proper documentation to go back or integrate into Nepalese society.
“They kicked us out,” Dorji, who has lived in the refugee camp for 32 years, said. “I had to leave everything there and come here.”
Dorji, now 60 years old, owned farmland back in Bhutan and used to cultivate rice, millet and corn. She invested the money she made farming at a local bank.
But having fled the country, she can no longer has access that bank account. Not only that, but Bhutan no longer recognizes her land ownership, even though she still has the papers proving the land is hers.
“I had a home, I had land, I had cattle. I loved farming and taking care of my cows,”the petite woman, dressed in a pink sweater and green sari, said.
“I feel sad leaving it all behind. I am just ready to go back and cultivate my farm. I dream about the farm, my house, time and again,” she added, tearing up.
Bhutan and Nepal do not share a border. But between 1991 and 1992, more than 100,000 people undertook the strenuous journey across India to seek refuge in Nepal.
They thought they would be easily accepted into Nepalese society because they shared a common language. Instead, their lives remain in limbo, and they’re forced to live in refugee camps.
They can’t visit Bhutan because they’ve been stripped of their Bhutanese citizenship. Further complicating the situation, a recent scam in Nepal — where people were falsifying documents to pose as refugees in the hopes of getting to the US and other countries — has made local authorities extra vigilant.
“Renewing the Bhutanese refugee ID card has been slow since we are taking time to verify all documents after the recent refugee scam in the country,” said Dil Kumar Tamang, Nepal’s home ministry undersecretary.
Fifty-year-old Khadka Bahadur Magar, who lives in the camp with his 86-year-old father, said having only identity documents that no one officially recognizes has made it harder to fight for their land back home.
“We have documents saying we own the land. We also used to pay taxes on our land. How can we be kicked out against our will?” Magar said. “We feel cheated. This is injustice.”
San Bir Biswakarma, Khadka’s neighbour, is outraged at the situation. He was a political prisoner in Bhutan before fleeing the country.
“We are so connected with the land. If there is no land, we are nothing,” Biswakarma said. “Bhutan’s king kicked us out. They took our land and gave it to other people even though we still possess documents which say we own the land. This is land grabbing.”
Dharm Raj Joshi, a Nepal-based land advocacy specialist with the International Land Coalition, said it’s not uncommon for the land of refugees to be taken by the people in power in the countries they flee.
“But through evidence of land records or tax payments, we can hope that in the future the evidence might be very strong for the international community to help them claim their land rights back in Bhutan,” he explained, adding that the global community can play a bigger role in the process.
While the older people are fighting for land rights, many young people, like 17-year-old Anisha Rai, who lives in the camp with her parents, want to migrate elsewhere for work. But the lack of necessary identification documents has made that challenging.
“I want to be a teacher,” Rai said as she made tea with her father. “All I have is a birth certificate which says I was born in a refugee camp in Nepal. My father is a Bhutanese refugee and my mother is Nepali. This has made it hard for me to acquire citizenship in Nepal and I can’t go back to Bhutan.”
Bhutan’s government did not respond to The World’s requests to better understand its policy toward the ethnic Nepali-speaking community that has fled the country.
Neither Nepal nor Bhutan has refugee policies since they are not members of the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention. In 2023, Nepal announced it would resume talks on the matter with Bhutan but, there has been no progress so far.
Bhutan’s King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck visited Nepal last month. But his visit was “unofficial,” according to under secretary Tamang.
Nonetheless, in the Beldangi II camp, people were eagerly following the local news channels, hoping the king would address their situation.
Glancing at his land documents, Padam Bahadur Magar, the 86-year-old, said he hopes he will get to see his land again before he dies.
“When I reach Bhutan, the first thing I want to do is see my land,” he said. “I am old, I am dying. I want to see my land one more time and introduce it to my children and grandchildren.”
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