Kathmandu, Mar.15:Police arrested 30 Bhutanese refugee activists this afternoon as they tried to force their way inside the Foreign Ministry where the secretary level talk between Nepal and Bhutan on the Bhutanese refugee issue was still in progress for the fourth day today.

The arrested refugees including eight women were carted off in a police van at five p.m. to the nearby Maharajgunj Ward Police Station where they were detained for around an hour before being released, the refugees said.

The refugees, representing the Appeal Movement Coordination Council, a Bhutanese human rights organisation, were staging a sit-in programme with their three-point demands at the Foreign Ministry’s entry for the second day today.

According to the refugee leaders present in the scene, they had sent three written requests seeking an appointment with the Bhutanese Secretary leading the Bhutanese delegation here. “We wanted to know what decision was being taken about the refugees. We have the right to know,” said Ratan Gajmer, a representative of AMCC.

Having received no response, the refugees claim, they tried to force their way in when police intervened and whisked them away. “We have been told not to continue our programme at the ministry entrance,” said Gajmer.

The police, however, dismissed of having issued such instruction. “We arrested them since they wanted to push themselves in and we could not allow them to do so because the talks were still going on,” said Inspector Raj Kumar Lamsal who headed the police team that arrested the refugees. “They were insisting to get in as the office time was about to be over.”

The refugees who staged a sit-in in front of the Foreign Ministry have made three specific demands: Drop the categorisation of the Bhutanese refugees, invite Tek Nath Rijal, Bhutan’s ace Human Right Leader, in all future refugee talks, and halt the resettlement of the other Bhutanese citizens in refugees’ lands in Bhutan.

Nepal and Bhutan in 1993 agreed to categorise the refugees into four groups: Bonafide Bhutanese citizens, Bhutanese who have emigrated, Non Bhutanese, and Bhutanese who have committed crimes.

The ongoing bureaucratic level talk has been focussing on the modality of verification process of the four categories of refugees. Nepal’s stand has been interviewing the head of each family member of the refugees. According to Foreign Ministry officials, the talks between the two sides were continuing till late night today.

The refugees involved in sit-in programme today have arrived here from all the seven refugee camps from eastern Nepal where around 100,000 of them have been languishing for the last eight years.

The UNHCR built the camps for the Bhutanese refugees who entered Nepal after the Dragon Kingdom forcefully evicted them under its ethnic cleansing policy. Guided by its “one nation one people” policy, Bhutan began to crack down on its southern Nepali-speaking citizens, locally known as Lhotsampas, in the late 80’s.