The Bhutanese refugees have a problem. The world outside Nepal does not know they are there. The few that hear of them are told that they are migrants from the Indian northeast, illegal immigrants finally being deported, or that a few are Bhutanese who have left voluntarily after receiving generous compensation from the Thimphu Government.
Foreign Minister Dawa Tshering told the BBC in March 1992 that most of the residents in the camps of Jhapa District in Nepal´s eastern Tarai were not really refugees. Patrick de Silva, who heads the South Asia desk of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR in Geneva, told the BBC that he had witnessed the exodus and had heard from refugees that they formalities. When they realise that I represent authority, for example, they bow in a very special Bhutanese way.
Amo Coerver is chief of the Lutheran World Service´s (LWS) refugee operations in Jhapa. Asked about the refugees´origin, he replies, "All I can say is that 95 to 98 per cent have Eved their lastyear in Bhutan."
The Refugee Count
The arrival figures in Jhapa speak of the relentless pace of Thimphu´s eviction programme. The refugee-run Human Rights Organisation of Bhutan (HUROB), which manages the camps, counts arrivals. There were 234 refugees in 1991 July, and an average 1500 Lhotshampas arrived every month since then until December 1991, when there was a sudden dip to 412 arrivals for longest serving Foreign Minister in the world or the UNHCR official? A visit to the camps of Jhapa helps to resolve doubts. Every day, for the past few months, 300 to 400 refugees have been arriving in trucks from the roadheads of Bhutan in West Bengal and Assam, says M.A.Awad, UNHCR´s Nepal officer-in-charge.