Washington D.C., Jun 11, 2009 / 00:55 am
Two Bhutanese refugees resettled in the United States in 2008 through the U.S. bishops’ refugee resettlement program will speak at the World Refugee Day event on June 18. They show the problem of “statelessness” that thousands of Bhutanese, mainly ethnic Nepalis, face after being forced to leave their own country.
Khagendra Baral, who was born and raised in Bhutan, recalled how he came to leave his home country.
“I still have fresh memories of my beautiful country and peaceful environment growing up. Then one day, I was forcefully evicted from my homeland with my family and left to become a refugee,” he explained.
In 1991, when he was 17 years old, Khagendra and his family left Bhutan in the middle of the night for India. His father, a Ltshompa leader who advocated for equal rights in Bhutan, was imprisoned. The Indian government did not allow the family to stay and they settled in the Beldangi Refugee Camp in Jhapa, Nepal.