Ethnic cleansing in the kingdom of happiness

Posted By Joshua Keating Monday, December 13, 2010 - 11:59 AM Share

Often overlooked in all the attention received by the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan's much-touted "Gross National Happiness" program is that the government's version of happiness includes being free of any unwelcome ethnic minorities:

More than 100,000 ethnic Nepalese - a Hindu minority in Bhutan for centuries - were forced out of Bhutan in the early 1990s by authorities who wanted to impose the country's dominant Buddhist culture. They have lived as refugees in Nepal ever since.

The United Nations - with the help of the United States and other countries - set up the resettlement program in July 2007. More than 60,000 refugees originally signed up, while the rest said they preferred to wait in camps or try to return to Bhutan. The first refugees began leaving Nepal in November 2007 and they have resettled in the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands.

The 40,000th refugee was to leave Nepal on Monday, and 50,000 others have now applied, said Stephen Jaquemet, a U.N. refugee agency official. More than 34,000 refugees have relocated to the United States, said Scott DeLisi, the U.S. ambassador to Nepal. He said the U.S. is willing to take in a large portion of the 50,000 new applicants.

Bhutan refuses to allow the refugees to return, saying most left voluntarily and renounced their citizenship. Nepal - worried about the cost of integrating them into society - has refused to offer them citizenship.

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