KATHMANDU: About 10,000 Bhutanese refugees demonstrated on Wednesday on the India-Nepal border, where Indian troops had opened fire a day earlier, killing one refugee, officials said.
The refugees gathered at the Nepalese border town of Karkarvitta to protest the shooting, and more were expected, police official Diwakar Katwal said.
Police stopped the refugees from marching to a border bridge to head off possible violence, he said. He said they were chanting slogans against Indian officials.
Thousands of Bhutanese refugees have been camping in the border area for three days, demanding they be allowed to march through India back to their homeland, the same route they travelled to Nepal in the early 1990s.
“We want free passage through India to Bhutan, the same way we were brought here,” chanted the refugees, according to Katwal. More than 100,000 ethnic Nepalis from Bhutan have been living as refugees in eastern Nepal since the early 1990s, when they were forced out by Bhutanese authorities who wanted to impose Buddhist culture across the country.
Most have been living in UN-run camps for the 16 years.
Bhutan is unwilling to receive the refugees back, saying most left voluntarily and renounced their citizenship.
Authorities and human rights activists were holding talks with Indian officials on the Indian side of the border, Nepal’s home ministry spokesman Baman Newpane said.
Meanwhile, Indian authorities released 15 of the protesters who were taken into custody during the past two days, the area’s Indian administrator Rajesh Pandey told The Associated Press. “The situation is under total control, but we have not lowered our guards,” Pandey said.
Pandey said he and his officers held a meeting with Nepalese officials on the border on Wednesday to explore more ways to restore normalcy. “It was a good meeting and we expect that the Nepalese officials will be able to talk to the people there and persuade them not to resort to violence or force their way,” he said.—AP
