Bhutan fools Nepal again
Prime ministers from Nepal and Bhutan, who met after a long gap, discussed possibilities of repatriation the Bhutanese in exile. Nepal stressed on repatriating the remaining Bhutanese exiles while Bhutan accepted to take the genuine ones.
Despite the fact that 80 percent of the exiled Bhutanese have been resettled to the western, the two countries continue their usual exchange of words of repatriating and accepting them.
Nepalese Prime Minister Sushil Koirala has stressed the need to conclude the repatriation process of Bhutanese refugees, who have been taking shelter in Nepal for more than past two decades, at the earliest possible, media reports from Nepal say.
The two head of the governments met on the sidelines of the Third Summit of Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC).
According to Nepal’s national news agency Rastriya Samachar Samiti, Koirala drew the attention of his Bhutanese counterpart towards providing constructive cooperation to fulfil the long-cherished dream of Bhutanese refugees to return to their motherland when refugee problem has become more complicated day after day.
“I have requested him (Bhutanese Prime Minister) to create environment conducive for respectful return of refugees to their homes at a time when most of their offspring had set out to abroad under third country rehabilitation bid and the elderly are still languishing in refugee camp”, the Prime Minister Koirala was quoted by the agency.
For Koirala, Tobgay’s “we will see” is a positive response while in reality it the most negative of all statements given by Bhutanese prime ministers. Tobgay strongly objects repatriating refugees. In a blog post in 2012, Tobgay had said,
No. Repatriation is no longer possible. Repatriation of some people was a genuine possibility 10 years ago, but even then, only if the verification process was honest and complete. That didn’t happen. Now it’s more than 20 years since people settled in the camps, plus most of them have opted to resettle in third countries. If repatriation was not possible 10 years ago, in spite of the best efforts of the governments of Bhutan and Nepal, I don’t see how the prime minister can even talk about it as a possibility now.
Last talk between the prime ministers of two countries on refugee issue was in April 2010 when then Bhutanese prime minister Jigmi Thinley visited Nepal.
See the previous statement of Bhutanese Prime Minister Thinley.
