Beldangi, Jhapa, Jan.18: Well aware that a joint verification team of Nepalese and Bhutanese officials will soon be landing up at any one of their camps here or in nearby Morang District, Bhutanese Refugees are keeping their fingers crossed amidst mixed feelings.

Some are already smiling with great expectations while others are still frowning with their “ifs” and “buts.”

Exhausted of having lived in the thatched huts for around 10 years at the camps here, the refugees, however, agree that their verification would indeed be a significant move toward the solution of the protracted refugee crisis.

“This is our chance to prove that we are Bhutanese,” said Padam Lal Dhungel, Head of Sector “A” in Beldangi Camp I – one of the three camps here that houses around 50,000 Bhutanese refugees. Above 100,000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese have been spending their exile life in Nepal, mostly in eastern region, for the last 10 years.

“Since we have the documents to prove our citizenship, we trust all will go well and we will return home,” said Dhungel, a one time Chieftain of Labsi Bote Village of Goseling Block in southern Bhutan.

“We believe in god and so we trust that we will reach our homeland,” said Dhanmaya Adhikary who was forcefully evicted from Dagana, another village in southern Bhutan. “I believe this problem will be solved before we end up as stateless people.”

Narad Mani Neupane, another Bhutanese refugee in Beldangi Camp II, also believed that verification is necessary for the early repatriation of the refugees. “The joint verification is good news but how will that happen remains to be seen.”

As agreed last month during the 10th round of bilateral talks, Nepal and Bhutan agreed to form a joint team of five members from each side to verify the Bhutanese refugees in the camps in eastern Nepal.

The joint team, according to Joint Secretary at Home Ministry Usha Nepal who will be leading the Nepalese side, will now decide when and which camp to begin the verification from.

But there are others in the camps here who think more than the verification issue. These Bhutanese in exile here are equally fearful about what treatment they would receive if in case they go back home. “The question that haunts me these days is how will life be in Bhutan once we return there,” said Bhagirath Uprety, a 67-year-old refugee in Beldangi Camp I.

Echoing the same fear, Dhanmaya Adhikary, Uprety’s close neighbour in the camp, referred to the case of refugees from Rwanda in Africa. “Sometimes we even fear that we might end up as the refugees from Rwanda.”

And there is equal number of refugees in these camps who are still trying to “decipher” the Bhutanese Government’s latest move – its agreement to form a joint verification team. “Given our government’s old habit of resorting to different tricks, we are still confused,” said Tulsi Ram Regmi, a Bhutanese refugee in Beldangi Camp II.

“Since our government, in the last 10 years, has been saying something and doing something else, nothing can be said on the verification issue as well,” said the former member of the Bhutanese National Assembly.

It is this fast-and-loose-playing track record of Bhutan that has left even the Bhutanese political and Human Rights leaders here clueless. “We hope for the best but nothing can be ruled out about Bhutan’s tricks,” said Dr. Bhampa Rai, an Executive Member of Bhutanese Refugee Representative Repatriation Committee (BRRRC).

Leaders of most of the leading Bhutanese refugee’s organisations in this district and also in Kathmandu claimed to be brainstorming on “how to enable the mass-refugees to deal with the joint verification team.”

That appears important, especially for the refugees having problems on documentary evidences. For instance, there are, according to refugees themselves, few of them whose documents were destroyed by fire in the camps.

“Our huts in the camps caught fire in Sector B in 1999 and in Sector G in 1996 ,” said Dhungel the Head of Sector “A” in Beldangi Camp I.

Then there are others who had to flee the Dragon Kingdom in the early 90’s after the Bhutanese authorities snatched even their documents at gunpoint.

That apart, the orientation is also necessary for the young ones who had arrived in the camps when they were kids. “We want to make sure that they should be able to pronounce their villages’ names since they do not even clearly remember their houses in Bhutan today,” said Dr. Rai.