Ganga Baral is among the first of thousands of Bhutanese refugees who will be arriving in the United States during the next several years. She and her family arrived this Spring in Phoenix from a refugee camp in the farthest eastern reaches of Nepal, a landlocked country known to Americans, if at all, as the location for Mount Everest.
The victory of the Maoists in Nepal's election sets a critical challenge for the government that will follow, says Meenakshi Ganguly of Human Rights Watch.
On April 10, the people of Nepal voted to elect representatives to a constituent assembly which will write a new constitution and decide what future role—if any—the monarchy will have. Preliminary results show that the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (CPN-M) is leading in almost half of the seats where counting has begun. Leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, adorned in marigold garlands, vermilion smeared on forehead, has already made a victory speech, promising to “lead the country towards lasting peace based on a new ideology.” This is a promise that Nepalis most desperately hope he will keep.
Bhutan may profit from evocative tourist images of an isolated cloud kingdom whose people live in serenity and colorful traditional dress, but for many Bhutanese it's far from idyllic. It's a place where citizens can't get a government job, buy or sell land, or open a business without a police-issued card attesting that the bearer is not "anti-national." But it's still home - or at least it should be - for the more than 100,000 Bhutanese citizens expelled in the early 1990s.
The effects of ethnic cleansing aren’t confined to places like Darfur and Kosovo. Today, over 100,000 of Bhutan’s ethnic Nepali citizens languish in refugee camps here, stripped of their citizenship and stateless. It’s a decade-long tragedy that’s only getting worse.
Last September, in the wake of a royal coup six months earlier that had only deepened the country's longstanding crisis, Nepal seemed close to falling into the abyss. Since 1996, Nepal's brutal civil war had claimed more than 12,000 lives. Civilians in the countryside remained caught between the royal forces and Maoist rebels--increasingly ignored as street and royal politics in Kathmandu preoccupied the political class, diplomats, and the media.
Manakala couldn’t finish her story. Her voice cracked, her body began shaking and she fainted right before our eyes. The memories of three nights earlier, when security forces clashed with the Maoists in her small village, were too much for her.
In The Killing Terraces, a documentary by Nepali filmmaker Dhruba Basnet, there is an interview with a small boy who huddles over a fire in a dank mud hut, cooking a simple meal for his two younger siblings. At age 11, the boy finds himself as the family caretaker, the head of the household. His father and mother were killed by the police. He is not sure why. He glares at the camera, fighting back tears, and announces that he will join the Maoists when he is old enough. He says he wants to "drink the blood of the police" who killed his parents. It is a chilling moment, the innocence of childhood wiped clear from his face, replaced by an anger greater than his years should allow.
On the eve of King Gyanendra’s departure for the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York, Washington is deliberating whether or not Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should apply an exceptional waiver to allow lethal military assistance to the Royal Nepali Army to continue.
Ganga Baral is among the first of thousands of Bhutanese refugees who will be arriving in the United States during the next several years. She and her family arrived this Spring in Phoenix from a refugee camp in the farthest eastern reaches of Nepal, a landlocked country known to Americans, if at all, as the location for Mount Everest.
The victory of the Maoists in Nepal's election sets a critical challenge for the government that will follow, says Meenakshi Ganguly of Human Rights Watch.
On April 10, the people of Nepal voted to elect representatives to a constituent assembly which will write a new constitution and decide what future role—if any—the monarchy will have. Preliminary results show that the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (CPN-M) is leading in almost half of the seats where counting has begun. Leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, adorned in marigold garlands, vermilion smeared on forehead, has already made a victory speech, promising to “lead the country towards lasting peace based on a new ideology.” This is a promise that Nepalis most desperately hope he will keep.
Bill Frelick examines the plight of Bhutan's stateless ethnic Nepalese.
Bhutan may profit from evocative tourist images of an isolated cloud kingdom whose people live in serenity and colorful traditional dress, but for many Bhutanese it's far from idyllic. It's a place where citizens can't get a government job, buy or sell land, or open a business without a police-issued card attesting that the bearer is not "anti-national." But it's still home - or at least it should be - for the more than 100,000 Bhutanese citizens expelled in the early 1990s.
The effects of ethnic cleansing aren’t confined to places like Darfur and Kosovo. Today, over 100,000 of Bhutan’s ethnic Nepali citizens languish in refugee camps here, stripped of their citizenship and stateless. It’s a decade-long tragedy that’s only getting worse.
Last September, in the wake of a royal coup six months earlier that had only deepened the country's longstanding crisis, Nepal seemed close to falling into the abyss. Since 1996, Nepal's brutal civil war had claimed more than 12,000 lives. Civilians in the countryside remained caught between the royal forces and Maoist rebels--increasingly ignored as street and royal politics in Kathmandu preoccupied the political class, diplomats, and the media.
Manakala couldn’t finish her story. Her voice cracked, her body began shaking and she fainted right before our eyes. The memories of three nights earlier, when security forces clashed with the Maoists in her small village, were too much for her.
In The Killing Terraces, a documentary by Nepali filmmaker Dhruba Basnet, there is an interview with a small boy who huddles over a fire in a dank mud hut, cooking a simple meal for his two younger siblings. At age 11, the boy finds himself as the family caretaker, the head of the household. His father and mother were killed by the police. He is not sure why. He glares at the camera, fighting back tears, and announces that he will join the Maoists when he is old enough. He says he wants to "drink the blood of the police" who killed his parents. It is a chilling moment, the innocence of childhood wiped clear from his face, replaced by an anger greater than his years should allow.
On the eve of King Gyanendra’s departure for the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York, Washington is deliberating whether or not Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should apply an exceptional waiver to allow lethal military assistance to the Royal Nepali Army to continue.