Nepali Times

One of the few privileges governments in developing countries enjoy is a free hand in matters of foreign policy.

The everyday existential problems means citizens in these countries couldn’t care less about how their government deals with refugees. When Nepalis are ill-treated by Nepalis, there is little time to find out how we deal with those who have sought refuge in our land.

So when a Tibetan man burns himself to death in Kathmandu or Bhutanese refugees are refused entry into their own country, people go about their business as if nothing has happened.

In countries like ours, the common citizen’s interest in foreign affairs is limited to status of demand for manpower in Qatar, Malaysia, and South Korea. The urban middle-class despise it even more. Their international concerns stretch only as far as Raxaul from where our regular supplies of oil enter the country.

When the people of an erstwhile Hindu kingdom celebrate their great festival in a couple of days, thousands of refugees and ‘second-class’ citizens of this country will be denied cultural rights to celebrate the birthday of a spiritual leader.

But like the year before and the year before that, Kathmandu’s brightest whose conscience is offended to see the prime minister pictured alongside war criminals, will willingly look in the other direction at the way refugees from Bhutan, Tibet, Somalia, and Iraq are treated here.

When the Vietnam War broke out in the 1960s, thousands of Americans came out on the streets against their own government. Four decades later the same people protested on the streets against American foreign policy in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Closer to home, critical sections of the Indian media and civil society have been condemning the UPA government’s tacit support of Sri Lanka’s human rights violations during the war and their government’s mistreatment of the Kashmiri Muslims.

Even a small country like Ecuador stood up to a western superpower and granted asylum to international whistle blowers against possible persecution. The fact that we live in a landlocked state, trying to survive at the mercy of two nuclear giants needn’t stop us from doing the right thing.

On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a show cause notice against Nepal Police for detaining four Tibetans who were on their way to TU Teaching hospital to pay tribute to a 25-year-old self-immolator. The same police later that evening were arresting young men wearing ponytails and earrings. Last time I checked this country’s interim constitution, neither was listed as a criminal offense.

Every government in Kathmandu since 1956, after Nepal recognised Tibet as a part of China, has used the Chinese card to leverage its political influence vis-a-vis Indian pressure. We have leaned over backwards to be friendly to the North to counterbalance our dependence on the South.

The failure of Nepal’s diplomacy in the last six decades has reduced its foreign affairs to a balancing act and crude economics that only seeks to influence domestic politics. Assertion of national interests, defined in terms of influencing regional geopolitics by elevating international image of the country has remained a dream.

Nepal’s inability to sign the 1951 Refugee Convention and blatant violation of customary international laws in the treatment of refugees fly in the face of the Foreign Minister who makes lofty claims about defending national interests.

We don’t just have the right but an obligation to protest against government policies that have turned us into an international pariah.