Kathmandu, Mar.14: As the secretary level talk between Nepal and Bhutan on the Bhutanese refugees continued for the third day at the Foreign Ministry here today, around three dozen Bhutanese refugee activists this afternoon staged a sit-in in front of the ministry’s entrance in a bid to draw the attention of the Nepalese and Bhutanese official delegations.

Under the banner of Appeal Movement Co-ordination Council (AMCC), a Bhutanese refugees’ human right organisation in exile, the refugees, who had arrived here from seven different camps in eastern Nepal, made three specific demands: Drop the categorisation of the Bhutanese refugees, invite Teknath Rijal, Bhutan’s ace Human Right leader, in all future refugee talks, and halt the resettlement of the other Bhutanese citizens onrefugees’ lands in Bhutan.

The activists displayed banners, placards and flyers bearing their demands and the photo of Rizal who was recently freed by the Druk Government. Nepal and Bhutan had agreed in 1993 to categorise the around 100,000 Bhutanese refugees in Nepal into four groups: Bonafide Bhutanese citizens, Bhutanese who have emigrated, Non Bhutanese, and Bhutanese who have committed crimes.

Forcefully evicted from the Dragon Kingdom in the early 90s, the Bhutanese refugees continue to languish in the UNHCR managed seven camps in eastern Nepal.

“The sit-in programme is in a series of activities the AMCC has decided to launch in the coming days targeting the Nepal-Bhutan bilateral talk,” read a press release issued by the Council here today.

Meanwhile, Centre for the Protection of Minorities and against Racism and Discrimination in Bhutan (CEMARD-Bhutan), another Bhutanese human right organisation in exile, has urged the Foreign Secretaries of Nepal and Bhutan to come out with concrete plans for the early constitution of verification mechanism for repatriation of Bhutanese refugees.

For its argument that the verification team should interview the heads of the refugees’ family and not the individual member of the family, CEMARD has reasoned that Bhutan keeps the census records of its citizens and their lands in the name of the head of the family and not on individual basis. The government has also been stressing that only the head of every refugee family should be interviewed.

CEMARD has further suggested that the verification team should first interview the refugees possessing citizenship cards issued by the Bhutanese government. “Then the team should proceed on verifying other documents such as cattle, house and land tax paid receipts, employment letters, government service records, award of scholarships, school enrolment records, militia training evidences, payment of forced labour contribution tax like goongdawoola and saptolemi for those whose citizenship certificates were confiscated by the Bhutanese government.

In a press statement, signed by its Executive Director Rakesh Chhetri, CEMARD has urged both the governments of Nepal and Bhutan to withdraw the categorisation of refugees from their agenda. It has also requested the Bhutanese Government to send Tek Nath Rizal abroad for proper medical treatment.

In the ongoing talks, the two Himalayan kingdoms are working to chart out the modality of the verification of the refugees. As of writing this late night, the talks were still in progress. The secretary-level meet is scheduled to continue tomorrow as well.