KATHMANDU: Seventeen years ago, Narad Muni Sanyasi was forced to flee his native Bhutan in the middle of the night, leaving his home and all his possessions behind.
Sanyasi was one of more than 100,000 Bhutanese who fled the country when ethnic tensions flared in the early 1990s and who ended up in eastern Nepal, where they have lived ever since in camps run by the UN refugee agency.
Now, the 65-year-old former member of Bhutan’s parliament is once again facing threats — this time apparently from within his own community.
Last month Sanyasi’s name appeared on pamphlets distributed by an anonymous group in the Beldangi refugee camp where he works as camp secretary, threatening him and eight other community leaders with death.
The pamphlets accused Sanyasi of supporting the resettlement of the refugees in Western countries and turning his back on the fight for their repatriation in Bhutan — a charge he strongly denies.
“I am neither against repatriation nor against resettlement. But I was accused of sending my family members to be resettled in a third country,” he said in the small bamboo hut that functions as his office.
“No one is so brave they would not be afraid of a death threat. But where can I go? I am responsible for the people in this camp.”
The anonymous threats have exposed bitter divisions within the Bhutanese refugee community over a UN scheme under which more than 20,000 of the exiles have resettled in third countries, the majority in the United States.
The ethnic Nepali refugees fled Bhutan, claiming ethnic and political persecution, after the Buddhist kingdom made national dress compulsory and banned the Nepalese language.
Bhutan’s government says the people who left were either illegal immigrants or went voluntarily. The refugees, who have no legal right to work or own land in Nepal, insist they are Bhutanese citizens.
Numerous rounds of high-level talks between Nepal and Bhutan have failed to reach an agreement on repatriation.
Police in the nearby town of Damak say they have increased security at Beldangi, the largest of seven refugee camps in eastern Nepal, after a 45-year-old male refugee was murdered there last month.
No one has yet been convicted over the murder, but police say they believe it was linked to the resettlement issue, and they are also providing protection to the eight community leaders whose lives have been threatened.
Facing little prospect of being allowed to return to Bhutan or settle permanently in Nepal, most of the refugees in the camps have now asked to be resettled, and applications continue to pour in.
But there are those who say they will only leave Nepal if it is to return to Bhutan.
Ramesh Chettri, 27, says he and a group of fellow refugees are preparing a “violent political movement” to fight for democracy in Bhutan, but fear resettlement will weaken their case.
“If the refugees are resettled we will not be able to achieve our goal of returning,” he said.
