Deported to nowhere: Bhutan rejects refugees US sent back, it's a story of Lhotshampas

More than two dozen refugees from Bhutan were left in a limbo after they were deported from the US to their home country, but the Himalayan nation rejected them, leaving them stuck in a refugee camp in Nepal. According to a CNN report, refugees from Lhotshampa, a Nepali-speaking ethnic minority, were denied entry to Bhutan after they were deported from the United States.

The ethnic minority group was expelled from Bhutan back in the 1990s. After spending decades in refugee camps, more than 100,000 of them were legally resettled in countries like the US, Australia, Canada and other nations. The process took place under a UN-led program that commenced back in 2007.

Until very recently, the United States had not deported a single person to Bhutan in years. One of the main reasons behind this is the fact that the Bhutanese government have been unwilling to repatriate its refugees, who were stripped of their citizenship when they fled. This technically leaves them stateless.

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Deported to nowhere

According to CNN, since March, more than two dozen Lhotshampa have been deported from the US back to Bhutan. However, the Himalayan nation is still refusing to take them in, and they had to settle in refugee camps set up in Nepal.

Many deportees told CNN that they are now back in refugee camps where they lived as children. One of the deportees told the American news outlet that he was put on a one-way flight to New Delhi, India, then to Paro, Bhutan. When he arrived in Bhutan, the country’s local authorities took him and two other refugees to the border with India.

The deportee recalled that the Bhutanese authorities paid “someone” to take the refugees to Panitanki, a town on the India-Nepal border, giving the deportees 30,000 Indian rupees (about $350) each. The refugee admitted that he and the others paid someone to smuggle them across the Mechi River into Nepal.

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Most of the refugees find themselves in a diplomatic grey zone, with no documentation for either the US, Bhutan or Nepal, where many are currently residing. While all this is taking place, four of the US deportees have now been ordered deported by a second country, after they were arrested and briefly detained by the Nepali government for illegally crossing the border.

However, Tikaram Dhakal, the director of Nepal’s Department of Immigration, told CNN that the country has nowhere to deport the refugees. “We are in a dilemma: the US is unlikely to accept them back, and deporting them to Bhutan is not straightforward either," he told the American news outlet. Hence, these deportees are still stuck in Nepalese refugee camps with no country they can call their home.

Bhutan’s crackdown on ethnic minorities

Bhutan, a small Buddhist kingdom, houses 800,000 people. While the country is known for peace and tranquillity, it has a dark history of crackdowns on ethnic minorities. In the late 1970s, the government of Bhutan began cracking down on ethnic Nepalis who had migrated to southern Bhutan in the 19th century by introducing discriminatory policies.

In 1989, the government pushed its ambition to “Bhutanise” the country by enforcing a dress code and outrightly banning the Nepali language. Anyone who resisted faced abuse, threats and coercion in the country.

Adhering to international law, the US did not send someone to a country where they could be persecuted; in this case, it was Bhutan. However, the Trump administration’s recent crackdown on immigration has led to the deportation of people to states with grave human rights records, such as Libya and South Sudan.

Under pressure of tariffs, some countries are accepting deportees, but Bhutan has refused to receive Lhotshampa refugees. Interestingly, the Himalayan nation was initially included in a draft “red” list prepared by US diplomatic and security officials of 11 countries whose citizens would be barred from entering the US.

The draft was initially published in March by The New York Times. However, when the final list of 19 countries with full or partial travel bans was released in June, Bhutan was not included. Hence, it is still unclear where the Trump administration stands with Bhutan on the issue.