Nepali Times
Domestic Brief
Refugees still on hunger strike


Nepali foreign affairs experts are trying to turn on the heat on Bhutan to take back the 100,000 of its nationals from camps in eastern Nepal, and are using an international donor meet in Geneva next month. "There's no other alternative but to internationalise the refugee issue," says Hiranya Lal Shrestha of the Bhutanese Refugees Repatriation Support Group (BRRSG). "We've tried unsuccessfully to settle it bila-terally." The group has been lobbying with western ambassadors accredited to Bhutan in New Delhi and with the Foreign Ministry in Kathmandu to solve the 12-year-old refugee problem. BRRSG has once more stressed that India needs to be involved in the process. Since 1991, more than 100,000 refugees have been languishing in refugee camps in eastern Nepal. A joint Bhutan-Nepal refugee verification exercise interviewed 12,000 refugees from Khudunabari camp in Jhapa before the process broke down more than a year ago. BRRSG is visiting the refugees who have been on a relay hunger strike in the camp for the past two weeks.


LATEST ISSUE
638
(11 JAN 2013 - 17 JAN 2013)


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