Who will bell the cat ?

Refugee camps are silent yet suffering. Each year passing by, Bhutanese refugee camps are making themselves awfully shanty, dwindling, dwelling places. Much to one's surprise camp people continue to keep faith on establishing themselves as a dignified citizens of democratic Bhutan. Strolling around the narrowly placed bamboo huts, one can find a unique composition of elderly people and school going children helping each other for are sustenance. For most active population, they have larger responsibilities to support their children's higher studies, provide nutritional care to the elderly and infants, clothing or look for a settlement finally.

If you had reached to the refugee camps in the beginning of April, it was a session break for camp students below grade 10 and SLC examination for outgoing batch. In Khudunabari camp, students as young as 12 years were gone to neighboring India for manual work during the vacation as part of income source. Students appearing SLC in Birtamode narrated stories of skirmishes, explosions and deaths amidst the fighting between the rebels and the government forces. They wrote answers in a tense situation with wide open eyes and shivering body.

Sita Kafley (name changed) was married to a school resource teacher in another camp two years ago. She experienced severe blows of domestic violence at the in-law's house and finally returned to her mother's hut with a six months baby boy. She doesn’t know where the husband has gone leaving her behind to take care of the baby.

Chitrakhar Adhikari was a brilliant science student potentially capable of making a good living out of his genius. After a long trial and erroneous medication of Tuberculosis he borne, he developed psycho-socio problem ending up with hatred to himself. Once very much visited by friends, no body likes to see him now.

The makeshift hut belonging to a widow and her two children below eighteen years in Beldangi I is in utter need of repair. The roofing material was decomposed, the bamboo pillars tilted and she has no resources to employ somebody for its maintenance. She almost broke into tears while narrating her condition. LWF stopped distribution of house building facilities.

Meanwhile, there are groups of old and young people joining relay sit-in protest in Beldangi and Khudunabari. It was a concern, at least for the verified refugees, to get an outlet from the long festering crisis. The youths in the camps are frustratingly probing on a dynamic method for reintegration process back in Bhutan, for which they seem to be determined to help the senior leaders finding the way out.

Tilchan Khanal from Khudunabari, Kedar Niroula from Beldangi, Balika Gautam from Sanischare camp, are some of the plus-two students in Birtamode who spent some hours of studies for cooking their meals with briquette given in camps. In their rented rooms, they ignite it with much difficulty liberating dense fumes of smoke. The locals almost deny giving rooms for camp students who use briquette. The students were found cooking their meals in turn, for only one set of oven is supplied in a hut.

The brand new generation of camp is very much unaware of the politics that made them refugees. Young girls and boys living in camps are making habit of hair dye, nail polish, hip-hops and jeans. It is nothing surprising after fifteen years. There is no mechanism designed concrete to streamline the increasing number of youths for reintegration process. The youths dispersing out of camps have justified reasons to seek a better way of living, higher education, access to job opportunities or fly abroad.

After a much awaited camp visit by T.N.Rizal in February early this year, people are little hopeful of some effective leadership roles that can bring together individuals for building a cohesive force. Simultaneously, many of the common people also whisper about the ways to settle in a small plot of land. They are desperately searching for a better source of income, though a hard-earned labor, which could help them to buy a small land. In fact, it is a backdoor assimilation process.

What can be the appropriate answer to all these tendencies that make refugee affair an intertwined ball of confusion? How can a suitable strategy be developed to reach an amicable solution of the stalemate is a big marathon, the refugee leaders and activists must perceive seriously.

(Dhakal edits 'The Bhutan Reporter' monthly)